o All punishment must promote obedience to the Law
• “All evill which is inflicted without intention, or possibility of disposing the Delinquent, or (by his example) other men, to obey the Lawes, is not Punishment; but an act of hostility; because without such an end, no hurt done is contained under that name” (Hobbes, Leviathan, II.xxviii). o Punishments must be both sufficient enough to deter crime and not excessive as to constitute an act of cruelty
• “If the harm inflicted be lesse than the benefit, or contentment that naturally followeth the crime committed, that harm is not within the definition; and is rather the Price, or Redemption, than the punishment of Crime: Because it is of the nature of Punishment, to have for end, the disposing …show more content…
➢ Challenges to the Utilitarian Deterrence Interpretation
• Alan Norrie (1984)→ Hobbes Is Actually a Strict Retributivist o “This account of Hobbes as anything but a retributivist rests upon a highly tendentious account of the nature of the retributive theory. It is true that Hobbes rejects revenge as a justification of punishment as the base emotion, but the classical retributivists did not found their theories upon revenge either” (Norrie 1984). o “It is because of Hobbes’s contractualist framework that his work exhibits a retributivist tendency. At the root of the idea of the social contract lies the classical retributivist idea of the individual qualifying for punishment through his prior legislative act” (Norrie 1984).
• Simon Know (2005)→ Hobbes’s Denial of Free-will seems to conflict with the idea of Punishment as a deterrence …show more content…
The pulpit and the lectuern, church and university, are for Hobbes the town instutions by means of which the sovereign must provide for the political education of its citizens and develop their political consciousness” (Hüning 219).
• “Teaching acts as a supplement to the ‘terror’ of punishments for Hobbes by constantly keeping men in mind of the terrible consequences (namely the state of nature) that must result form the neglect of their duty of obedience” (Bejan 2010) [Also seem Hobbes Ch. 6].
• “Punishment alone therefore cannot necessitate justice. Education is also required to form the wills of the people to justice, to cause the appetites of subjects to observe the law…Most people lack the literacy and leisure to study this doctrine. It would be most effective, then, to educate the people in church on Sundays” (Know 2005).
➢ “From defect in Reasoning, (that is to say, from Errour,) men are prone to violate the Lawes, three ways” (Hobbes, Leviathan, II.xxvii)
• False Principles of Right and Wrong→ They have observed that wright and wrong is determined by the victor of the