Society and Punishment. A contribution to the philosophical history of the concept of punishment

Abstract

This essay is aimed at resuming some theoretical perspectives introduced in recent years, which concerned ways of reconstructing the main periods of a philosophical history of the concept of punishment capable of effectively and incisively dialoguing with the theory of law and the current criminology. It is definitely a vast and complex field of research that aims at discovering and analyzing the key points of the debate of ideas about these topics, which are not always explored. The final aim is to develop and share with the international scientific community a research that is capable of asking new questions and identifying new problems, thus resisting the “temptation” of pointing to answers and solutions which are often hasty and ideologically oriented. Our essay is divided into two parts. The first part is basically dedicated to the issue of guilt, the “right to punish”, and criminal subjectivity through the analysis of texts and theories by Kafka, Beccaria, Lombroso, Kant, Hegel, among others. The guiding thread of the second part, in turn, is the issue of crimes against life and society from a biopolitical perspective, which are examined and discussed using authors such as Dostoevskij, Foucault, Esposito, and Nietzsche.