Matt Matravers

This book brings together moral and legal philosophers,criminologists and political theorists in an attempt to address the interdependence of the study of punishment and of political theory as well as specific issues, such as freedom, autonomy, coercion and rights that arise in both. In addition to new essays on the compatibility of rights and utilitarianism and of autonomy and coercion in Kant's theory, the book contains an extended treatment of the idea of punishment as communication. This theme is taken up in arguments over whether punishment is communicative, in the questions of what the content of any such communication could be in a pluralist society, and whether communicative accounts can make sense of the use of 'hard treatment'. By combining the techniques and expertise of different disciplines, the essays in this book shed new light on the problem of punishment. They also demonstrate the usefulness of that problem as a testing ground for legal and moral philosophy.

This paper is concerned with the tensions that arise when one juxtaposes one important liberal understanding of the nature and use of state power in circumstances of pluralism and (broadly) retributive accounts of punishment. The argument is that there are aspects of the liberal theory that seem to be in tension with aspects of retributive punishment, and that these tensions are difficult to avoid because of the attractiveness of precisely those features of each account. However, a proper understanding of both liberalism and retributive punishment allows us to dissolve some of the tensions whilst also bringing each position into sharper relief. The paper begins by introducing the liberal position and outlining the apparent tensions that may arise with retributive punishment. In so doing, there is also a brief discussion of how this debate relates to the more familiar dispute between legal moralists and their opponents. The paper then proceeds by considering each of the areas of tension in turn

This collection brings together essays which reflect on the detailed arguments of "What We Owe to Each Other", and which comment critically both on Scanlon's contractualism and his revised understandings of motivation and morality. The essays illustrate the uses of Scanlon's contractualism by applying it to moral and political problems and in so doing they provide an assessment of the ability of Scanlon's contractualism by applying it to other forms of ethical theory. So, the central questions are: "What is the best interpretation of the theory advanced in "'What We Owe to Each Other?'"; "How does the theory, so interpreted, stand up to criticism?"; and "How does contractualism handle certain difficult problems in politics and ethics?". To answer these questions, the collection includes the work of distinguished political philosophers. The resulting volume will make an important and original contribution to the literature on Scanlon, on contractualism and on contemporary political philosophy.

In the last thirty years, the USA and the UK have witnessed a profound change in the way in which we think about and respond to crime and social control. Crime has become part of everyday life as, for many citizens, has imprisonment. Managing Modernity brings together criminologists, social theorists, and philosophers to consider what explains these changes and what they tell us about ourselves and the way in which we live. The authors consider the pervasive, the obvious, and the covert ways in which crime and social order have come to structure social discourses and social life, from mass imprisonment to zero tolerance, to on-the-spot fines. This volume was previously published as a special issue of the Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy (CRISPP).

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Holding Psychopaths ResponsibleMatt Matravers (bio)Keywordspsychopathy, responsibility, meta-ethics, blameILevy's interesting paper seeks to resolve the issue of the psychopath's moral responsibility in a way that avoids traditional meta-ethical debates. In what follows, I take issue both with the substantive arguments he offers about the responsibility of psychopaths and with whether those arguments can be completed while avoiding meta-ethics.I shall take it for granted that psychopathy is a genuine phenomenon and that it is of the kind described by Levy. Moreover, I am sympathetic to Levy's claim that addressing the moral responsibility of psychopaths is not best done by starting with meta-ethical debates about the capacities relevant to moral responsibility in general. However, because I think that these debates come back to haunt Levy's arguments, it is worth saying a little more about the role meta-ethical considerations have had in discussions of psychopathy.The core question is this: "Are psychopaths properly held morally responsible?" It seems an obvious way to go about answering this question either to ask what capacities are needed for moral responsibility and then check whether psychopaths possess them, or to ask what capacities psychopaths possess (or lack) and then check the relevance of those capacities to moral responsibility. Either way, the method juxtaposes a list of the capacities needed for moral responsibility and a list of the capacities possessed (or lacked) by psychopaths and then simply asks whether the lists match in relevant respects.Although it seems that this must be the right approach, it has a serious flaw, which is that there is no agreement—and little prospect of agreement—among moral philosophers on what capacities are critical for moral responsibility. Kantian political philosophers connect morality with a certain kind of practical reasoning and thus think that whether psychopaths are morally responsible will turn on whether they possess some purely intellectual incapacity. Humeans, by contrast, relate morality to emotional responses and thus think the critical issue is whether psychopaths possess a capacity for "sympathy." Finally, Aristotelians think that a proper grasp of morality requires a combination of intellectual and emotional capacities.As Levy remarks, "we cannot settle a disputed question [the moral responsibility of psychopaths] by invoking principles [in this case meta-ethical principles] that are even more controversial than the original question" (2007, p. 130). That is right. Levy's response is to try to settle the 'original question' without recourse to controversial meta-ethical issues. For obvious reasons, it would be a neat trick if it could be done. For reasons given below, I do not think that it can.Levy's paper relies on a number of arguments. Two are of particular importance: First, that what [End Page 139] characterizes psychopathy is an inability to distinguish moral from conventional transgressions such that "all offences are merely conventional" (2007, p. 132); and, second, that psychopaths are not responsible for becoming psychopathic (they have a causal history of a certain kind).IIThe first of these arguments is presented around interesting empirical findings that do, indeed, suggest that psychopaths think of all transgressions as breaking conventional rules and that they do not appreciate the distinction between such transgressions and those that are, we might say, mala in se, or moral rather than conventional. Levy moves extremely quickly in concluding from this that the moral responsibility of psychopaths is significantly reduced. The argument is as follows: (i) "psychopaths … take harm to others to be wrong only because such harms are against the rules." (ii) "But, the kind and degree of wrongness, and therefore blame, which attaches to infringements of … rules is very different, and usually much less significant, than the kind and degree attaching to moral wrongs." From these two premises, Levy concludes (iii) "their degree of responsibility is smaller, arguably much smaller, than it would be for a comparable harm committed by a normal agent" (2007, p. 132).As an aside, it is not obvious whether the distinction between moral and conventional rules is, in itself, of any great significance. Rather, moral rules generally cover more serious wrongs (malicious wounding is a more serious wrong than insulting one's aunt's...

"Contexts of Justice is a study that covers and definitely exhausts the whole range of ten years of one of the most important recent philosophical discussions, that between liberals and communitarians."--Jurgen Habermas, author of Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere "Forst addresses with great insight and acuity the debates over justice between liberals and communitarians that animated the late '80s and '90s...He uses no jargon, he reasons well, his arguments are strong, clear, and accesssible, and he avoids political correctness as well as its opposite."--Andrew Arato, author of Civil Society, Constitution, and Legitimacy.