Download Free The Philosophy Of Punishment And The History Of Political Thought Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online The Philosophy Of Punishment And The History Of Political Thought and write the review.

In Punishment and the History of Political Philosophy, Arthur Shuster offers an insightful study of punishment in the works of Plato, Hobbes, Montesquieu, Beccaria, Kant, and Foucault.
Contemporary philosophy still lacks a satisfying theory of punishment, one that adequately addresses our basic moral concerns. Yet, as the crisis of incarceration in the United States and elsewhere shows, the need for a deeper understanding of punishment’s purpose has never been greater. In Punishment and the History of Political Philosophy, Arthur Shuster offers an insightful study of punishment in the works of Plato, Hobbes, Montesquieu, Beccaria, Kant, and Foucault. Through careful interpretation of their key texts, he argues that continuing tensions over retribution’s role in punishment reflect the shift in political philosophy from classical republicanism to modern notions of individual natural rights and the social contract. This book will be vital reading for political theorists, philosophers, criminologists, and legal scholars looking for a new perspective on the moral challenges faced by the modern criminal justice system.
"Conveniently divided into three sections, the book explores pagan and Christian pre-modern thought; early modern thought, culminating in chapters on Kant and classic Utilitarianism; and postmodern thought as exemplified in the theories of Nietzsche and Foucault. In all, the essays probe the work of Plato, Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Hobbes, Immanuel Kant, Cesere Beccaria, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Michel Foucault.
To scholars of Western intellectual history Hegel is one of the most important of all political thinkers, but politicians and other "down-to-earth" persons see his speculative philosophy as far removed from their immediate concerns. Put off by his difficult terminology, many participants in practical politics may also believe that Hegel's idealism unduly legitimates the status quo. By examining his justification of legal punishment, this book introduces a Hegel quite different from these preconceptions: an acute critic of social practices. Mark Tunick draws on recently published but still untranslated lectures of Hegel's philosophy of right to take us to the core of Hegel's political thought. Hegel opposes radical criticism like that later offered by Marx, but, argues Tunick, he employs "immanent" criticism instead. For instance, Hegel claims that punishment is the criminal's right and makes the criminal free. From this standpoint, he defends specific features of the practice of punishment that accord with this retributive ideal and criticizes other features that contradict it. In a lucid account of what Hegel means by right and freedom, Tunick addresses Hegel specialists and those interested in criminal law, the interpretation of legal institutions and social practices, and justification from an immanent standpoint. Originally published in 1992. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
This book introduces readers to analytical interpretation of seminal writings and thinkers in the history of political thought, including Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Bible, Thomas Aquinas, Machiavelli, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, Marx, and Nietzsche. Chronologically arranged, each chapter in the book is devoted to the work of a single thinker. The selected texts together engage with 2000 years of debate on fundamental questions, which include: What is the purpose of political life? What is the good life, for us as individuals, and for us as a political community? What is justice? What is a right? Do human beings have rights? What kinds of human virtues are there and which regimes best promote them? The difficulty of accessing the texts included in this volume is the result not only of their subtlety but also of the dramatic change in everyday life. The authors shed light on the texts' vocabulary and complexities of thought and help students understand and weigh the various interpretations of each philosopher's thought. • Accessible interpretive essays on the greatest texts in the history of political thought, from Plato to Nietzsche. • Includes key passage plus a succinct discussion that glosses the text, examines later-day interpretations, and guides students in forming their own interpretations. • Allows students to learn from, rather than only about, each thinker, and to apply their thought to the present day.
A pioneering history of incarceration in Western political thought. The prison as we know it is a relatively new institution, established on a large scale in Europe and the United States only during the Enlightenment. Ideas and arguments about penal incarceration, however, long predate its widespread acceptance as a practice. The Prison before the Panopticon argues that debates over imprisonment are as old as Western political philosophy itself. This groundbreaking study examines the role of the prison in the history of political thought, detailing the philosophy of incarceration as it developed from Demosthenes, Plato, and Philo to Thomas More, Thomas Hobbes, and Jeremy Bentham. Jacob Abolafia emphasizes two major themes that reappear in philosophical writing about the prison. The first is the paradox of popular authorization. This is the problem of how to justify imprisonment in light of political and theoretical commitments to freedom and equality. The second theme is the promise of rehabilitation. Plato and his followers insist that imprisonment should reform the prisoner and have tried to explain in detail how incarceration could have that effect. While drawing on current historical scholarship to carefully situate each thinker in the culture and penal practices of his own time and place, Abolafia also reveals the surprisingly deep and persistent influence of classical antiquity on modern theories of crime and punishment. The Prison before the Panopticon is a valuable resource not only about the legitimacy of the prison in an age of mass incarceration but also about the philosophical justifications for penal alternatives like restorative justice.
A new edition of the first systematic reading of Hegel's political philosophy. Elements of the Philosophy of Right is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important works in the history of political philosophy. This is the first book on the subject to take Hegel's system of speculative philosophy seriously as an important component of any robust understanding of this text.
This volume provides a fresh perspective on current democratic theory and practice by recovering the rich evaluations of democracy in the history of political thought. Each author addresses a single thinker’s reflections on the virtues and defects of democracy and the relationship between democracy and other regimes. Together, these essays explore the tensions within the democratic way of life that arise from an attachment to equality, liberty, citizenship, law, and the divine. Above all, this work aims at recovering a more complex understanding of democracy, connecting the perennial questions of political philosophy to the perplexities and crises of modern democracy.
This edition of Beccaria's On Crimes and Punishments and other writings presents an interpretation of his thought. Drawing on Italian scholarship, Richard Bellamy shows how Beccaria wove together the various political languages of the Enlightenment into a novel synthesis, and argues that his political philosophy, often regarded as no more than a precursor of Bentham's, combines republican, contractarian, romantic and liberal as well as utilitarian themes. The result is a complex theory of punishment that derives from a sophisticated analysis of the role of the state and the nature of human motivation in commercial society. The translation used in this edition is based on the fifth Italian edition, and provides English-speaking readers with Beccaria's own order of his text for the first time. A number of pieces from his writings on political economy and the history of civilisation which were not previously available in English are also included.