7 - The Contemporary Relevance of Hegel's Concept of Punishment

Summary

The numerous attempts that have been undertaken to reform the system of criminal law have been characterized, from the first, by a single theme: the need to bid “farewell to Kant and Hegel.” And this is because the Hegelian theory of punishment – for it is largely with Hegel that we shall be concerned here – is said to represent an “invalid and frankly unintelligent, and thus ultimately also inhumane, almost mechanistic metaphysics reminiscent of the old systems of celestial mechanics.” For the essential burden of this theory is “the idea of some remorselessly prevailing and mechanical justice that functions on its own and quite transcends the realm of human beings themselves, one that as it were automatically redresses the violation of the legal order by retaliating with like for like.” This kind of interpretation effectively reduced Hegel's theory to the formula of “the negation of the negation” and thus repudiated it as immoral or unchristian, as one that essentially violated the idea of human dignity. In short: “As far as the philosophy of punishment is concerned, Hegel has nothing or almost nothing to say to an age that wishes to reflect and to act in a more precise and sober fashion in such matters.” For what, after all, could our age have to learn from such “irrational and intellectually extravagant excesses and the dubious character of such epistemological, logical and moral conceptions?”