History
In the early period of all systems of law the redress of wrongs takes precedence over the enforcement of rights, and a rough sense of justice demands the infliction of proportionate loss and pain on the aggressor as he has inflicted on his victim. Hence the prominence of the "lex talionis" in ancient law. The Bible is no exception: in its oldest form it too included the "lex talionis," the law of "measure for measure" (this is only the literal translation of middah ke-neged middah).
In the 19th century, philosopher Immanuel Kant argued in Metaphysics of Morals, ยง49 E., that the only legitimate form of punishment the court can prescribe must be based on retribution and no other principle. "Judicial punishment can never be used merely as a means to promote some other good for the criminal himself or for civil society, but instead it must in all cases be imposed on him only on the ground that he has committed a crime."
Kant regards punishment as a matter of justice, and it must be carried out by the state for the sake of the law, not for the sake of the criminal or the victim. He argues that if the guilty are not punished, justice is not done. Further, if justice is not done, then the idea of law itself is undermined.
Read more about this topic: Retributive Justice
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The myth of independence from the mother is abandoned in mid- life as women learn new routes around the mother—both the mother without and the mother within. A mid-life daughter may reengage with a mother or put new controls on care and set limits to love. But whatever she does, her child’s history is never finished.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)
“Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God’s property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Regarding History as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimized—the question involuntarily arises—to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)