New answers tagged justice
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We should take a view as if we were in the position of a dictator, able to give rules to all of society. What rules would we wish to impose, in order to produce a society that we judge best? Naturally, this judgment of "best" is subjective, but there are similarities between what different people want society to be like. Most people would like ...
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I will present a not well-known but classical argument that is often ingrained into our current judicial systems. The argument is underdeveloped in Kant's philosophy of right and later fully developed by Fichte.
Fichte argues in his Foundations of Natural Right that legal punishment is, in a sense, a fulfillment of the original intention of a rational ...
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The community applying punishment limits the potential for revenge.
This indirectly implies the punishment is fair otherwise the aggrieved party would still want further revenge.
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On the simplest level, punishment is a natural social desire for balance and empathy. If someone punches you in the arm, you punch them in the arm; if someone takes your shovel, you take it back. That way the other person immediately feels the pain and deprivation you felt, and (ostensibly) comes to understand your feelings as their own. There's a certain ...
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One can make the case for the need to compensate the injustice of the wrong-doer having an advantageous position with respect to the victim of the harm if no punishment is applied.
A possible justification rooted on human psychology can be based on the additional harm caused by the unsatisfied revenge feeling that can be assumed to bother the victims or ...
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You already have the reasons for punishment in the first place, to discourage repetition/imitation of a bad action.
So what is the reason to have "fair and just" punishment? Because humans generally have a strong desire for fairness and justice, especially when it pertains to them personally, as well as desiring order and safety. So having laws, ...
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There are 2 main justifications for punishment used in modern philosophy.
Consequentialism
The idea is that punishing criminals deters them and others from doing crimes in the future. One of the strongest proponents of this stance was the utilitarian Bentham, who did a lot for prison and legal reforms in his own society.
Retributivism
'What goes around comes ...
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A reason? Implying, from outside of moral reasoning? Or like, using intersubjectivity reasoning, which resulted in the end of feudal bloodline/racist governance, ideas like universal citizenship, and adoption of catch phrases like "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights" in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?
You can ...
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Plato has Socrates make the argument that punishment, when it is just anyway, actually improves the individual. So if you’ve done wrong you should want to be punished so you can improve. To say the least this doesn’t track with a common understanding of human nature — but nevertheless the theory of virtue has been very influential. For something more modern ...
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