Retributive Punishment: Immanuel Kant And Thomas Aquinas

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“Retribution” or “Retributive justice” can be defined as “a theory of justice that considers punishment, if proportionate, to be the best response to crime.” (Wikipedia, 2016)
Peter Koritansky, philosopher and author made a distinction between two views on retributive punishment in his work entitled “Two theories of retributive punishment: Immanuel Kant and Thomas Aquinas” in 2005 in which he believed that the Thomistic understanding of retribution is superior to that of Kant and this write-up is going to outline the reasons as to why he think this is the case. To illustrate this, it is vital therefore that we understand the Kantian retributivism and Aquinas’s understanding of punishment.
Firstly the Kantian retributivism or the theory of retributive by Immanuel Kant suggests that punishment in the form of coercion of force is necessary to establish justice and to punish criminals, he emphasized that “Punishment by a court…can never be inflicted merely as a means to promote some other good for the criminal himself or for civil society, but that it must always be inflicted upon him for the fact that he has committed a crime” [Page 320].Kant describes this form of punishment as a “categorical imperative” meaning independent from any personal motives or desire. He insisted that “The will to punish, if moral, must be from nothing more than recognition of a criminal’s desert and must be motivated solely by the cold calculation of what justice requires.” [Page 322].By this

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