English, asked by amamuna517, 5 months ago

what penalties or punishments may get,if you do not carry out your responsibilities

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Answered by Anonymous
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Answer:

PUNISHMENT AND MORAL RESPONSIBILITY 205

had done for the law of crime. Everybody knows the attempt made in

1910 to impose a measure of judicial control upon the activities of the

unions, and the legislative event to which it led in 1913. That, at one time,

this “controlling” policy was even extended to the domestic affairs of the

unions, is not often emphasised. No intervention of Parliament was

necessary to scotch this tendency, because the Courts themselves, in the

Russell case, took the steps which were required to restore the situation.

But the three decisicins analysed above have never been overruled. One

day they may be brought to light, and it will then be a question of judicial

policy rather than of law whether their “controlling” tendency will find

favour in the eyes of the Courts.

0. KAHN-FREUND.

PUNISHMENT AND MORAL

RESPONSIBILITY

UR national reluctance to discuss abstract principles did compara-

tively little harm when there was a certain instinctive unanimity

about sound fundamentals ; in such circumstances a healthy moral

instinct yields better results than an inadequate abstract theory. The man

who merely knows that chicken is wholesome, as Aristotle remarks, is

more likely to restore you to health than the man who knows that light

meat is easily digested but does not know what kinds of meat are light. At

present, however, when instinctive unanimity has disappeared, it becomes

imperative to reflect upon abstract principles if we are not to submit to

the casual influence of gusts of emotion. You can muddle through mly

with the aid of sound instincts; without them you make the muddle but

you do not get through.

At present, then, the moral philosopher cannot but be concerned with

the growing lack of recognition of moral responsibility and with the effects

of this neglect upon the conception of punishment. If moral responsibility

is a fact, it is a very important fact for those to consider who deal with

the making and administration of the laws. Hence a moralist may be

permitted to bring the abstract principles which it is his function to discuss

to the attention of those who are concerned with their concrete application.

The plain man, if asked how punishment is justified, would reply that

it is deserved, that a guilty act demands punishment. In other words,

the theory of punishment which is assumed prior to reflection is a retribu-

tive theory. Nevertheless it must be admitted that there are considerable

difficulties to be overcome before the retributive view of punishment

justifies itself to reflection. To inflict suffering on an offender seems merely

to be adding the evil of suffering to the evil of the offence, unless there

be some ground other than the offence itsel€ to make this reasonable. That,

as we all know, is why many people have given up trying to find the

-ethical basis of punishment in its reference to the wrong act which is past,

and seek it instead in the future effects of reformation and deterrence. A

purely reformative theory, seeming at first sight much kinder than the old

retributive view, commends itself easily to a vague moral idealism, and is

perhaps now the predominant opinion among those who are halfway

between the spontaneous reaction of the piain inan and the analytic

reflection of the moral philosopher.

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