"-- M. J. Silverthorne,The Humanities Association Review Leo Strauss (1899-1973) was the Robert Maynard Hutchins Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of ...

The age-old debate about what constitutes just punishment has become deadlocked. Retributivists continue to privilege desert over all else, and consequentialists continue to privilege punishment's expected positive consequences, such as deterrence or rehabilitation, over all else. In this important intervention into the debate, Leo Zaibert argues that despite some obvious differences, these traditional positions are structurally very similar, and that the deadlock between them stems from the fact they both oversimplify the problem of punishment. Proponents of these positions pay insufficient (...) attention to the conflicts of values that punishment, even when justified, generates. Mobilizing recent developments in moral philosophy, Zaibert offers a properly pluralistic justification of punishment that is necessarily more complex than its traditional counterparts. An understanding of this complexity should promote a more cautious approach to inflicting punishment on individual wrongdoers and to developing punitive policies and institutions. (shrink)

Linda Radzick's new book, _The Ethics of Social Punishment_, contains an important discussion of punishment outside the context of the state. By way of celebrating this fine and welcome book, I try to probe some analytical contours concerning punishment seen from the general perspective on which Radzick and I agree. I suggest altogether abandoning the idea that (non-state) punishment needs to be inflicted by an authority. Furthermore, I insist on an account of retributivism that resists the usual accusations of barbarism (...) and bloodthirstiness. (shrink)

Philosophers often claim that forgiveness is a paradoxical phenomenon. I here examine two of the most widespread ways of dealing with the paradoxical nature of forgiveness. One of these ways, emblematized by Aurel Kolnai, seeks to resolve the paradox by appealing to the idea of repentance. Somehow, if a wrongdoer repents, then forgiving her is no longer paradoxical. I argue that this influential position faces more problems than it solves. The other way to approach the paradox, exemplified here by the (...) work of Jacques Derrida, is just too obscure to be by itself helpful. Yet, I argue that what I take to be its spirit is on the right track. I recommend distinguishing between the definition and the justification of forgiveness, and also between forgiveness understood as a mental phenomenon and an overt, communicative act. These distinctions are not given their due in the specialized literature, and I expose the nefarious consequences of this neglect. By focusing on forgiveness as a mental phenomenon I seek to analyze the root of the talk of paradoxes which surrounds the discussion of forgiveness. Finally, I present an analysis of forgiveness as a pure mental phenomenon, and argue that this analysis is the most important step in understanding forgiveness in any other sense. While my analysis reveals interesting aspects of forgiveness, it reveals, too, that forgiveness is not quite as paradoxical after all. (shrink)

Midway through How to Do Things With Words, J.L. Austin’s announces a “fresh start” in his efforts to characterize the ways in which speech is action, and introduces a new conceptual framework from the one he has been using up to that point. Against a common reading that portrays this move as simply abandoning the framework so far developed, Marina Sbisà contends that the text takes the argumentative form of a proof by contradiction, such that the initial framework plays an (...) instrumental role as part of a proof in favour of the subsequent one. Despite agreeing with Sbisà’s broad instrumentalist approach, we argue that her regimentation of Austin’s narrative into a proof by contradiction ultimately fails - both as a proof and as an interpretation of Austin. Instead, we suggest that a better way of interpreting the peculiar structure of How to Do Things With Words is as a pedagogical exercise whose point is to bring a concealed alternative into view in a manner that also explains its initial concealment, and that this approach provides richer resources for supporting Sbisà’s own conventionalist understanding of illocution than that afforded by reading the text as a proof by contradiction. (shrink)

This article criticizes the recent “aretaic-turn” in legal theory. Within Criminal law theory, the main concern of aretaic theorists is culpability, and their main source of inspiration is Aristotle’s virtue ethics. Too focused on Aristotle’s virtue ethics, however, aretaic theorists fail to consider Aristotle’s views on culpability proper. Aristotle himself did not turn to virtue ethics when he discussed culpability; and thus I suggest that Aristotle himself would have rejected the contemporary aretaic turn. Still, I believe that Aristotle’s work on (...) culpability is important insofar as it laid the foundations of subsequent theories of culpability in most of the non-English-speaking West. Through Aristotle, then, I seek to show the relevance of rich and venerable legal and philosophical traditions for the advancement of our understating of some thorny problems of contemporary criminal law. (shrink)

The topic of moral repair in the aftermath of breaches of trust and harmdoing has grown in importance within the past few years. In this paper, we present the results of a qualitative study that offers insight into a series of key issues related to offender efforts to repair interpersonal harm in the workplace: What factors motivate offenders to make amends with those they have harmed? In what ways do offenders attempt to make amends? What outcomes emerge from attempts to (...) make amends? Drawing from the findings, we build an inductive model intended to guide future business ethics and management inquiry and research in this area. (shrink)

Derek Parfit has recently defended the view that no one can ever deserve to suffer. Were this view correct, its implications for the thorny problem of the justification of punishment would be extraordinary: age-old debates between consequentialists and retributivists would simply vanish, as punishment would only—and simply—be justifiable along Benthamite utilitarian lines. I here suggest that Parfit’s view is linked to uncharacteristically weak arguments, and that it ought to be rejected.

In this classic analysis, Leo Strauss pinpoints what is original and innovative in the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes.

Ratio, Volume 34, Issue 4, Page 334-344, December 2021.

Maude's excellent translation of Tolstoy's treatise on the emotionalist theory of art was the first unexpurgated version of the work to appear in any language. More than ninety years later this work remains, as Vincent Tomas observed, "one of the most rigorous attacks on formalism and on the doctrine of art for art's sake ever written". Tomas' Introduction makes this the edition of choice for students of aesthetics and anyone with philosophical interests.

This book provides close examination of ontology and the work of Professor Barry Smith, one of the most prolific philosophers of the modern day. In this book numerous scholars who have collaborated with Smith explore the various disciplines in which the impact of his work has been felt over the breadth of his career, including biology, computer science and informatics, cognitive science, economics, genetics, geography, law, neurology, and philosophy itself. While offering in-depth perspectives on ontology, the book also expands upon (...) the breadth of Smith’s influence. With insights from renowned and influential scholars from many different countries, this book is an informative and enlightening celebration of all Smith has contributed to numerous academic schools of thought. (shrink)

Punishment is punishment even if it is not (perceived by the punisher to be) deserved. But punishment which is not (perceived by the punisher to be) fitting is not punishment. This paper explores the differences between desert and fittingness, and argues that incorporating fittingness into thedefinition of punishment is not problematic, whereas incorporating desert in such definition is, in contrast, infamously problematic. The main difference between these two notions turns on the interesting differences between two types of normativity. Fittingness is (...) exclusively concerned with aesthetic normativity, whereas desert is more directly concerned with moral normativity. When something is fitting, then it is, to an extent, intrinsically good, and, to an extent, it is also beautiful. The notion of fittingness has largely been ignored in discussions of punishment, yet it helps us better to understand the phenomenon of punishment, and in particular the thorny relationship between this phenomenon and desert. Key Words: beauty • desert • fittingness • normativity • punishment • retributivism. (shrink)