Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cc8bf7c57-qfg88 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-09T23:25:35.938Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

10 - Retributive hatred: an essay on criminal liability and the emotions

from Part IV - Punishment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2009

Get access

Summary

It's great to be back in Chicago where people still know how to hate.

Mike Royko, on returning home after covering the 1972 Democratic Convention in San Francisco

The critical legal studies movement has, in my judgment, raised at least one important issue for jurisprudence and moral philosophy. I am thinking of its claim that traditional moralistic jurisprudence errs in confining its inquiries to formal, abstract, and public doctrines and to the intellectual rationales for those doctrines. According to the “crits,” a full philosophical grasp of law and morality requires an examination of the underlying causal forces that in part generate both the doctrines and the intellectual rationales for them. The person who seeks total enlightenment about morality and the law is invited to look, not just to the ideological superstructure, but to the underlying substructure that gives the superstructure at least a part of its point. This seems to me an invitation that those of us who practice traditional jurisprudence should accept.

I am particularly interested in the degree to which certain moral and legal doctrines are rooted in specific passions (feelings, emotions) and the degree to which a philosophical examination of those passions will have a bearing on an understanding and evaluation of the doctrines that they in part generate and for which these doctrines in part serve as rationalizations. Although not currently at the center of philosophical fashion, this type of inquiry has, of course, a venerable philosophical history.

Type
Chapter
Information
Liability and Responsibility
Essays in Law and Morals
, pp. 351 - 376
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×