8/2/2019 Immanuel Kant and Justice
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Immanuel Kant & Justice 1
Aristotle, a philosopher, once said: At his best, man is the
noblest of all animals;
separated from law and justice he is the worst. Justice is a
term that is quite frequently used and
preached in the lives of humans as individuals and also as
societies and nations. But, it becomes
a cucumbersome process when it comes to actually defining what
this concept is all about.
Justice is an aggregate of those conditions under which the will
of one person is conjoined with
the will of another in accordance with a universal law of
freedom (Kant & Ladd, 1999)1.
Immanuel Kant, a Germen philosopher, dazzled the foundations of
western philosophy
by his ideals in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century.
Philosophy and anthropology were the
main areas of his research. His findings had worked and are
still working as a thoughtful insight
for the upcoming researchers. Kant has emphasized much on the
concept of justice. This paper
investigates the Kants concept of justice but with a different
angle. This writing will target
Kants theory of punishment which according to Kant serves as the
basics for a just society.
Justice means being fair or just. It is a concept of moral
righteousness based on the principles of
equality and ethics and is hooked with the term punishment, if
there is a breach of stated ethics.
Justice and punishment are interrelated. For justice to prevail
in a society punishment is an
essential concept for the violators of justice. Punishment is
the infliction or imposition of penaltyas retribution for an
offence.
According to Kant, retribution is the basis for punishment.
Retribution is the pay back or
more appropriately, it is a fairly deserved penalty. Kant is of
the view that wrong doers are not
just deserved to be punished, but they, in fact, must be
punished. One, who murders, deserves to
die. So, in simple words, death penalty is retribution. Kent has
stressed on the idea of justice
through the retributive theory of punishment. The simple logic
behind Kants idea is the fact that
it is unfair to punish people for utilitarian reasons. Now the
question is what are utilitarian
reasons? Utilitarian justice means looking at the overall
welfare of all the relevant individuals.
Punishment is a bad treatment but punishing for maximization of
welfare is a justified argument.
It is justified to punish in order to bring about a positive
change in society, regardless of the factwhether the severity of
punishment matches the crime or not. Sometimes a soft tilted
punishment
for a severe crime can bring welfare changes for whole society.
Kant opposes this idea and based
his concept of justice on retribution, pay back or in other
words he believes on the principle of an
eye for an eye. He regards punishment as a matter of justice. He
is of the view that if guilty is not
punished, justice is not done. Punishment must always be in
response to guilt and if the guilty is
not punished the two basics of law that is equality and justice
will not be entertained. Kants
theory of punishment focuses on the principle of equality that
is the pain inflicted on the
criminals should be equal to the pain inflicted on the victim.
He is of the view that if a criminal is
punished in order to protect the society or set an example
(utilitarian justice), it is wrong.
There are two ways of looking at this concept of Kant. One
school of thought of suggests
that it is appropriate and fair to adopt a retributive approach
in the society in order to prevail
justice because if there is no justice there is, in fact, no
society. But, there is another school of
thought related to this concept which supports the utilitarian
approach as opposed to Kants
approach. The ultimate goal of justice is to make a better
society. Sometimes punishment may
also create chaos and unrest in society, though justice is done.
Secondly, people need to clearly
1Kant, I., & Ladd, J. (1999).Metaphysical elements of
justice: part i of the metaphysics of
morals. (2, revised ed., p. 30). Hackett Publishing.
