This book presents the moral, political, and legal thought of Thomas Aquinas as capable of providing a justification for the institution of punishment. It does so, in particular, by presenting Aquinas’s theory as a legitimate alternative to the prevailing justifications for legal punishment in the modern era, namely, utilitarianism and modern retributivism.¹ As I will argue in the first two chapters, utilitarianism and modern retributivism have ultimately failed to provide a compelling basis for punishment. Whereas utilitarians fail to establish any meaningful link between punishment and justice, modern retributivists have never convincingly explained why punishment must be understood primarily in...

The most fundamental and enduring criticism of the utilitarian theory of punishment (hereafter, the UTP) is the claim that utilitarianism necessitates a disjunction between punishment and justice.¹ The basis for this criticism is the fact that utilitarians insist that the moral and political justification of punishment is exclusively derived from the beneficial consequences that punishment can promote, such as rehabilitation, deterrence, and the protection of society from a dangerous criminal. Conspicuously absent from the list of good consequences, however, is the reestablishment of the equality of justice, the rendering to the criminal of his just deserts, or, in a word,...

If, as the argument appealing to the possible punishment of the innocent seems to show, the UTP is ultimately untenable, and if Hart’s attempt to save the UTP from itself cannot be consistently maintained, it is necessary to examine whether modern retributivism can provide a basis for the institution and practice of punishment. As we have seen, the difficulty with Hart’s version of the UTP is that he attempts to introduce an element of retributivism without accepting the retributive theory as a whole. What this allows, however, is an acceptance of what the UTP (under Bentham) had traditionally excluded, namely,...

In the foregoing analyses of the utilitarian theory of punishment and modern retributivism, I have indicated that each school of thought arrives at its conclusions regarding punishment from broader understandings of morality and political society. To be sure, Bentham’s claim that punishments must be evaluated upon their beneficial consequences is immediately derived from his position that the morality of all actions must be so evaluated. Likewise, Kant’s insistence that punishments may never use the person of the criminal as a mere means to the ends of the state echoes the core of his moral teaching and is explicitly linked to...

Everything that Aquinas says about punishment in the political order must be understood in relation to his concept of punishment itself. Following a common patristic doctrine, Aquinas argues that punishment is a kind of evil.¹ In fact, all evils that pertain to rational creatures (human beings and angels) must fall into one of two categories: punishment (poena) or fault (culpa)). Aquinas’s argument for this is very straightforward. There are two kinds of evil regarding the rational creature because there are two kinds of corresponding goods, one that pertains to man’s actions and the other of which pertains to his “form...

As we observed in the last chapter, Aquinas’s argument for the “debt of punishment” (reatus poenae) rests upon his claim that man has a “natural inclination to repress those who rise up against him . . . which repression is punishment.” Whereas Aquinas’s appeal to natural inclination provides the crucial link in his argument between punishment and natural law, he makes equally important remarks in the same article relating to the agencies by which punishment is properly administered.

Now it is evident that all things contained in an order, are, in a manner, one, in relation to the principle of...

The purpose of the foregoing chapters has been to demonstrate the philosophical pitfalls of contemporary utilitarian and retributivist theories of punishment and to present accurately Thomas Aquinas’s theory of punishment as a legitimate alternative. Readers of Aquinas coming from the Catholic tradition will also find useful some discussion of what this presentation of Aquinas’s teaching means for his compatibility (or lack thereof) with the contemporary Catholic Church’s position on the death penalty, the most recent statement of which is found in Pope John Paul II’s encyclical letter, Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life).

Evangelium Vitae (hereafter EV), of course, is...

The foregoing presentation of Aquinas’s thought has been intended to suggest that the thirteenth-century theologian and philosopher might have something to contribute to the contemporary debate over the justification of legal punishment. To sum up the essential points necessary to confirm this thesis, we may now compare Aquinas’s penology with those presented in the first two chapters. We may begin by comparing Aquinas’s theory of punishment with the utilitarian approach of Jeremy Bentham. As we recall from chapter one, the central thesis of Bentham’s penology is that punishment is evil by definition and must therefore be justified by some good...