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Criminal justice is in crisis. Retributive blame and punishment lead only to more violence, wasted lives and an incessant 'crime problem'. Norrie shows how a moral psychology of guilt and forgiveness addresses violation in a fundamentally different way. A mature retributive theory is abolitionist in its implications.
List of contents
1. Criminal justice and the metaphysical animal; Part I. Two Routes Beyond Political Theory: 2. Political theory and young Hegel's critique of punishment; 3. Victims who victimise: guilt in political theory and moral psychology; Part II. Moral Psychology, Law and the Metaphysics of Forgiveness: 4. Love, guilt and forgiveness; 5. Law and the metaphysics of forgiveness; Part III. The Animal that Thinks and Loves: On Guilt: 6. 'Feeling rotten': beyond philosophy's limit; 7. Two accounts of guilt in Freud; 8. Primitive and mature guilt: taking retributivism seriously; Part IV. Three Case Studies: Denial, Mourning, Freedom, Reconciliation: 9. Denying guilt, taking responsibility: on Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing; 10.Violation, mourning and melancholia: on Patricio Guzmán's Nostalgia for The Light; 11. Guilt, freedom and reconciliation: on Jimmy Boyle's A Sense of Freedom; Part V. Mature Retributivism as Abolition: 12. Mature retributivism as abolition.
About the author
Alan Norrie is Professor of Law and former Head of Warwick Law School. He is Fellow of the British Academy and the author of Crime, Reason and History in the Cambridge Law in Context series, among many books and articles.
Summary
Criminal justice is in crisis. Retributive blame and punishment lead only to more violence, wasted lives and an incessant 'crime problem'. Norrie shows how a moral psychology of guilt and forgiveness addresses violation in a fundamentally different way. A mature retributive theory is abolitionist in its implications.
Foreword
Norrie develops a fundamentally different mature retributive theory that could solve the intractable problems of crime and punishment.
