The Philosophical Vision of Legal Punishment

The concept of punishment represents one of the most difficult legal issues that are related to the concept of human freedom and responsibility. Since Antiquity, the brilliant minds of humanity contemplated about the sense of punishment and the function of this institution. Each epoch analyses this concept from different aspects and some of them are reflected in the actual legislation. The most important principles of contemporary criminal law were expounded by the Ancient, Modern and Contemporary philosophers. The field of research of this article is the philosophy of punishment of criminal law. In this study, we have applied the method of historical research of the proposed topic, which gives us the opportunity to analyze the development of criminal punishment and its goals from a historical perspective. In this paper, we aimed to determine the philosophical base of the legal punishment that legitimizes the application of sanctions to the person who committed the crime. We established the importance of the theories developed by brilliant thinkers for the contemporary concept of penal retribution and legal regulation of this institution. This theme generates several discussions that are formed in the process of comparison and debating of the ideas of influential philosophers regarding the purpose of criminal punishment. Therefore, we consider that the analysis of the theories of great thinkers gives us the possibility to understand the complexity of the phenomenon of criminal punishment, and leads to the more effective application of state constraint towards the offender.

An Isle Near Terra Australis Incognita: Henry Neville’s Mental Experiment and Political Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes

The paper analyzes the ideas of H. Neville’s philosophical novel “The Isle of Pines”. The scope of the research is to make sense of its place within the context of Early Modern political philosophy, and especially its linkage with the Hobbesian theories of human nature, sovereignty and inevitable conflict engaging pre-political communities into bellum omnium contra omnes. Rethinking Hobbesian views on the natural state Neville replaces his mechanical interpretation of human’s passions and behavioral patterns with a historical perspective. Taking into his account contemporary ethnographical knowledge Neville set a mental experiment and found out that a Hobbesian trap before the emergence of a state was not inevitable as well as the lack of social norms. We argue that Neville’s novel was an attempt to escape Hobbesian pessimism and to describe the emergence of social and political structures as a historical and evolutionary proces

Latin American Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises: A Historical Perspective

This special issue seeks to appreciate the long-term study of SMEs as key players in the Latin American economies, with contributions on six countries: Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Chile. This is a representative sample of the Latin American subcontinent’s diversity when it comes to economy size, population, and inequality index. The articles presented spot key topics in the study of Latin American SMEs. This introduction focus on three central issues that arise from those articles: the role of public policies in SME emergence and development, the strategies pursued by these firms to adapt to environment changes, and the links between informality and SME creation.

Regimes of Resonance: Cosmos, Empire, and Changing Technologies of CCP Rule

This analysis aims to place certain key elements of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rule observed under Xi Jinping today into longer and fuller historical perspective. It highlights trademark CCP practices of ordering space, marking time, potent political messaging, and vigorous propaganda diffusion as these have evolved over many years up to the present, reconsidering these in light of early Chinese cosmological thought and later symbolic practices of empire.