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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Jean Hampton’S Theory Of Punishment: A Critical Appreciation, Richard Dagger
Jean Hampton’S Theory Of Punishment: A Critical Appreciation, Richard Dagger
Political Science Faculty Publications
Jean Hampton’s work first came to my attention in 1984, when the summer issue of Philosophy & Public Affairs appeared in my mailbox. Hampton’s essay in that issue, “The Moral Education Theory of Punishment,” did not persuade me—or many others, I suspect—that “punishment should not be justified as a deserved evil, but rather as an attempt, by someone who cares, to improve a wayward person” (Hampton 1984, 237). The essay did persuade me, though, that moral education is a plausible aim of punishment, even if it is not the “full and complete justification” Hampton claimed it to be (Hampton 1984, …
Social Contracts, Fair Play, And The Justification Of Punishment, Richard Dagger
Social Contracts, Fair Play, And The Justification Of Punishment, Richard Dagger
Political Science Faculty Publications
In recent years, the counterintuitive claim that criminals consent to their own punishment has been revived by philosophers who attempt to ground the justification of punishment in some version of the social contract. In this paper, I examine three such attempts—“contractarian” essays by Christopher Morris and Claire Finkelstein and an essay by Corey Brettschneider from the rival “contractualist” camp—and I find all three unconvincing. Each attempt is plausible, I argue, but its plausibility derives not from the appeal to a social contract but from considerations of fair play. Rather than look to the social contract for a justification of punishment, …