Meditaciones postmodernas sobre el castigo: acerca de los límites de la razón y de las virtudes de la aleatoriedad (una polémica y un manifiesto para el siglo XXI)

Bernard E. Harcourt

doi:10.5354/rej.v0i15.29455

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Postmodern meditations on punishment: on the limits of reason and the virtues of Randomization (A Polemic and Manifesto for the Twenty-First Century)

Authors

Bernard E. Harcourt Catedrático Julius Kreeger de Derecho y Criminología. Director del Center for Studies in Criminal Justice. Universidad de Chicago

No. 15 (2011)

https://doi.org/10.5354/rej.v0i15.29455

Abstract

Since the modern era, the discourse of punishment has cycled through three sets of questions. The first, born of the Enlightenment itself, asked: On what ground does the sovereign have the right to punish? Nietzsche most forcefully, but others as well, argued that the question itself begged its own answer. With the birth of the social sciences, this skepticism gave rise to a second set of questions: What then is the true function of punishment? What is it that we do when we punish? A series of further critiques -of meta-narratives, of functionalism, of scientific objectivity- softened this second line of inquiry and helped shape a third set of questions: What does punishment tell us about ourselves and our culture? What happens now that we have seen what lies around the cultural bend? What question shall we -children of the 21st century- pose of our punishment practices and institutions? This essay argues that we should abandon the misguided project of modernity, recognize once and for all the limits of reason, and turn instead to randomization and chance. In all the modern texts, there always came this moment when the empirical facts ran out or the deductions of principle reached their limit-or both- and yet the reasoning continued. Rather than continue to take these leaps of faith, this essay argues that we should recognize the critical limits of reason and, whenever we reach them, rely instead on randomization. Where our facts run out, where our principles no longer guide us, we should leave the decision -making to the coin toss, the roll of the dice, the lottery draw- in sum, to chance. This essay begins to explore what that would mean in the field of crime and punishment.

Keywords:

punishment, punishment theory, randomization, chance, just punishment, moral luck, critical theory, cultural criticism, postmodernism, penal law, criminal justice

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Harcourt, B. E. (2011). Postmodern meditations on punishment: on the limits of reason and the virtues of Randomization (A Polemic and Manifesto for the Twenty-First Century). Revista De Estudios De La Justicia, (15), pp. 107–137. https://doi.org/10.5354/rej.v0i15.29455

Postmodern meditations on punishment: on the limits of reason and the virtues of Randomization (A Polemic and Manifesto for the Twenty-First Century)

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