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.

Epifania twarzy czy iluzja maski? O zmaganiu się człowieka w ujęciu filozofii dramatu Józefa Tischnera

The aim of the article is to present human issues in the context of the face and the mask as its negative. This is to bring us closer to a better diagnosis of the human condition today and the changes that can be articulated on its basis. Both the face and the mask are multi-context, and any attempt to define them encounters a number of difficulties. In Józef Tischner’s philosophy of drama, the face is a condition for the essence of the meeting. On the other hand, the mask, as an appearance and falsification of the truth of the face, is placed in the ambiguous perspective of hiding, concealing, mystifying or obscuring or obscuring the image of the face. Thanks to the face, man is somehow “at home”, and in the bonds of the mask he is somewhat “out of place”, he is lying. The face is relational and the mask is reactionary. Inquiries about whether the face brings closer and reveals the naked being of a human intensified questions about the nature of the face itself and whether it is possible to reach the pure phenomenon of the face as such. Both the face and the mask reveal important moments in the characteristics of a human being as a dramatic being, in which questions about meaning, identity, freedom and responsibility, as well as what is “between” I and You, gain in intensity and imply new attempts to reveal who is a human.

Freedom and Responsibility in Context

Freedom and Responsibility in Context argues for a contextualist account of freedom and moral responsibility. It aims to challenge the largely unarticulated orthodoxy of invariantism, by arguing that contextualism is crucial to an understanding of both freedom and moral responsibility. The argument for contextualism regarding freedom and moral responsibility focuses upon their respective control conditions. Abilities are argued to be central to an understanding of the control required for freedom and moral responsibility. A unified ability analysis of control is developed, which supports the thesis that attributions of freedom and moral responsibility are context dependent. The resulting contextualism offers a rapprochement of compatibilism and incompatibilism. By going beyond the false dichotomy of invariant compatibilism and invariant incompatibilism, it is argued that both positions can be given their due, since there is no ‘right’ answer to the question of whether or not determinism undermines freedom and moral responsibility.

Family in the context of relations between freedom and responsibility: crisis or evolution?

At the beginning of the twenty first century, Chantal Delsol wrote that the man of late modernity is characterized by his attempt to regress to a period in history before his attainment of autonomy and subjectivity, both of which Delsol associates, among other things, with the essential and formative role of the family. Turning to a society or a group with which he could identify, man – in her opinion – takes a step back towards a tribal form of existence, which deprives him of the right to self-government. Demographic data seem to confirm the tendencies which Delsol has described: the rising number of divorces, the dropping number of marriages, and the increasing presence of the welfare state in the life of an individual. We might tend to think that reality bears out the pessimistic vision of the man of late modernity Delsol puts forth. Yet it is the role of philosophy to call into doubt all that seems obvious and to ask questions where to all appearances there is no room for doubt. This article proposes this kind of undertaking as an attempt to examine Delsol’s diagnosis through the lens of Kołakowski’s philosophy. With the help of Kołakowski’s treatment of the relationship between freedom and responsibility, and by applying his thoughts on the irremovable tension between the individual and the collective man, a motif distinctly present in his considerations, this article poses anew the question of whether we indeed are facing a crisis or an evolution of the family. Are the changes which we are observing a threat to our culture and civilization, or evidence of progress?

Taking the Straight Path. P.F. Strawson's Later Work on Freedom and Responsibility

I highlight three features of P.F. Strawson’s later, neglected work on freedom and responsibility. First, in response to a criticism by Rajendra Prasad, Strawson explicitly rejects an argument put forward in ‘Freedom and Resentment’ against the relevance of determinism to moral responsibility. Second, his remarkable acceptance of Prasad’s criticism motivates him to take the ‘straight path’, that is, to be straightforward about the relation between determinism, freedom, the ability to do otherwise and the conditions of responsibility. He claims that the ability to do otherwise is a necessary condition of responsibility and provides a list of additional conditions, including a knowledge condition. Third, he clarifies the relation between responsibility, quality of will and the reactive attitudes. The latter do not figure essentially in his answer to the question, ‘What are the conditions of responsibility?’, but they do play an essential role in his answer to the question, ‘Why do we have the concept of responsibility?’ We have it, Strawson suggests, because of our natural concern about the quality of will with which people act, a concern expressed in our reactive attitudes. I argue that, although Strawson’s later work definitely involves a shift of emphasis when compared to ‘Freedom and Resentment’, his overall account of freedom and responsibility is coherent. The later work helps to better understand the nature and significance of Strawson’s contribution, and to identify problems with common interpretations of and objections to ‘Freedom and Resentment’. 

Rationalizing: Kant on Moral Self-Deception

Kant’s moral philosophy is challenged by the so-called “Socratic Paradox”: If free will and pure practical reason are to be identified, as Kant argues, then there seems to be no room for immoral actions that are to be imputed to our individual freedom. The paper argues that Kant’s conception of rationalizing (“Vernünfteln”) helps us to avoid the Socratic Paradox, and to understand how immoral actions can be imputed to our individual freedom and responsibility. In rationalizing, we misuse our capacity of reason in order to construct the illusion according to which we are not bound to the absolute demand of the moral law, but rather subject to exceptions and excuses. Finally, the paper interprets the three rules of “common sense” (sensus communis) in Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment in terms of an antidote to rationalizing.