(Download) "Honor and Revenge: A Theory of Punishment" by Whitley R.P. Kaufman * eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Honor and Revenge: A Theory of Punishment
- Author : Whitley R.P. Kaufman
- Release Date : January 28, 2012
- Genre: Philosophy,Books,Nonfiction,Social Science,Professional & Technical,Law,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 924 KB
Description
This book addresses the problem of justifying the institution of criminal punishment. It examines the “paradox of retribution”: the fact that we cannot seem to reject the intuition that punishment is morally required, and yet we cannot (even after two thousand years of philosophical debate) find a morally legitimate basis for inflicting harm on wrongdoers. The book comes at a time when a new “abolitionist” movement has arisen, a movement that argues that we should give up the search for justification and accept that punishment is morally unjustifiable and should be discontinued immediately. This book, however, proposes a new approach to the retributive theory of punishment, arguing that it should be understood in its traditional formulation that has been long forgotten or dismissed: that punishment is essentially a defense of the honor of the victim. Properly understood, this can give us the possibility of a legitimate moral justification for the institution of punishment.