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The Ethics of Punishment
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2009
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The question of punishment is one which has always interested and usually puzzled moralists, and which forms a crucial example for the testing of moral theories. A utilitarian theory, whether of the hedonistic or of the ‘ ideal ’ kind, if it justifies punishment at all, is bound to justify it solely on the ground of the effects it produces. The suffering of pain by the person who is punished is thought to be in itself a bad thing, and the bringing of this bad thing into the world is held to need justification, and to receive it only from the fact that the effects are likely to be so much better than those that would follow from his non-punishment as to outweigh the evil of the pain.
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- Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1929
References
page 206 note 1 Ethical Studies 2, pp. 26–27.
page 206 note 2 Principia Ethica, p. 214.
page 211 note 1 Even in our present system of law there are certain forms of offence against property which (owing probably to the intluence of the propertied class in making and administering the law) are over-punished in comparison with certain offences against the person.
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