How not to Define Punishment

Abstract

First paragraph: Brooks offers a critical survey of different normative theories of punishment, finding serious problems with them all, and argues that we should adopt ‘the unified theory of punishment’ that he draws from Hegel and the English Idealists. I had intended to focus this paper on ‘the unified theory’, to ask whether it is indeed both genuinely unified and plausible; but I was so taken aback by what Brooks says about the definition of punishment in the early pages of the Introduction that I have focused instead on that. It might seem misguided to devote so much attention to these first few pages: but if one is going to engage in definitional discussion, it is important to get it right.