Punishment: A Philosophy and Public Affairs Reader / Edition 1

by A. John Simmons, Marshall Cohen, Joshua Cohen, Charles R. Beitz

Overview

The problem of justifying legal punishment has been at the heart of legal and social philosophy from the very earliest recorded philosophical texts. However, despite several hundred years of debate, philosophers have not reached agreement about how legal punishment can be morally justified. That is the central issue addressed by the contributors to this volume. All of the essays collected here have been published in the highly respected journal Philosophy & Public Affairs. Taken together, they offer not only significant proposals for improving established theories of punishment and compelling arguments against long-held positions, but also ori-ginal and important answers to the question, "How is punishment to be justified?"

Part I of this collection, "Justifications of Punishment," examines how any practice of punishment can be morally justified. Contributors include Jeffrie G. Murphy, Alan H. Goldman, Warren Quinn, C. S. Nino, and Jean Hampton. The papers in Part II, "Problems of Punishment," address more specific issues arising in established theories. The authors are Martha C. Nussbaum, Michael Davis, and A. John Simmons. In the final section, "Capital Punishment," contributors discuss the justifiability of capital punishment, one of the most debated philosophical topics of this century. Essayists include David A. Conway, Jeffrey H. Reiman, Stephen Nathanson, and Ernest van den Haag.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691029559
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	12/04/1994
Series:	Philosophy and Public Affairs Readers , #2
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Introduction
Marxism and Retribution	3
The Paradox of Punishment	39
The Right to Threaten and the Right to Punish	47
A Consensual Theory of Punishment	94
The Moral Education Theory of Punishment	112
Equity and Mercy	145
Harm and Retribution	188
Locke and the Right to Punish	219
Capital Punishment and Deterrence: Some Considerations in Dialogue Form	261
Justice, Civilization, and the Death Penalty: Answering van den Haag	274
Does It Matter if the Death Penalty Is Arbitrarily Administered?	308
Refuting Reiman and Nathanson	324
The Contributors	336

Editorial Reviews

"Winner of the Charles Rufus Morey Award, College Art Association"

One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 1993

From the Publisher

"Ringside theorists can get more in 'Punishment', a set of strictly philosophical essays . . . 'Punishment' ends with a lively exchange about sentencing bias in capital punishment."

The Economist