Gertrude Ezorsky

(1926 - 2019)

Retributivists who proclaim our moral obligation to punish criminals have displayed, on their own behalf, a type of argumant which I shall call Moral Balance. There are three versions of Moral Balance. According to Moral Balance I, retaliatory punishment restores the equality disturbed by the criminal. Moral Balance II philosophers admire the proportion between morality and welfare which punishment can yield. Those who hold with Moral Balance Ill are fascinated by the equilibrium of social benefits and burdens set by punishment. All three versions are flawed as follows: they imply that crime is morally justified.Moral Balance 1: EqualityHegel informs us that:his is the action of a rational being and this implies that it is something universal and that by doing it the criminal has laid down a law which he has explicitly recognized in his action and under which in consequence he should be brought as under his right.

“Punishment,” writes J. E. McTaggart, “ is pain and to inflict pain on any person obviously [requires] justification.” But if the need to justify punishment is obvious, the manner of doing so is not. Philosophers have developed an array of diverse, often conflicting arguments to justify punitive institutions. Gertrude Ezorsky introduces this source book of significant historical and contemporary philosophical writings on problems of punishment with her own article, “The Ethics of Punishment.” She brings together systematically the important papers and relevant studies from psychology, law, and literature, and organizes them under five subtopics: concepts of punishment, the justification of punishment, strict liability, the death penalty, and alternatives to punishment. Under these general headings forty-two papers are presented to give philosophical perspectives on punishment. Included are many not generally available. This book brings together in a single volume the views of such diverse writers as Plato, St. Thomas Aquinas, Samuel Butler, Karl Marx, and Lady Barbara Wooten. Others are J. Andenaes, K. G. Armstrong, John Austin, Kurt Baier, Jeremy Bentham, F. H. Bradley, Richard Brandt, Clarence Darrow, A. C. Ewing, Joel Feinberg, “The Hon. Mr. Gilpin,” H. L. A. Hart, G. W. F. Hegel, Thomas Hobbs, Immanuel Kant, J. D. Mabbott, H. J. McCloskey, J. E. McTaggart, R. Martinson, G. E. Moore, Herbert Morris, Anthony Quinton, D. Daiches Raphael, H. Rashdall, John Rawls, W. D. Ross, Royal Commission on Capital Punishment Report 1949–53, George Bernard Shaw, T. L. S. Sprigge, and R. Wasserstrom