The sense of atrocity and the passion for justice

Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 7 (2):145-159 (2004)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

A penal ethics for today examines the connections between affect and morality. It scrutinises closely the felt moralities within the apprehension of crime. These felt moralities underpin interventions that are seemingly mobilised by a passion for justice. A penal ethics questions whether these sensibilities really do move moral actors as just feelings. This proposition is readily defended by reference to the emotive moralism in some notable areas. These include legitimation of the death penalty as ‘closure’ for victims, and the emergent imperative to wage ‘virtuous’ wars. Developing an ethics that challenges the contemporary penal field requires a sophisticated theoretical elaboration. An approach of this kind entails the conceptual determination and phenomenological analysis of moral sensibilities. This essay accordingly explores the feeling of being moved by a sense of atrocity. It considers the feeling of being moved to respond justly to one globally noted death from crime. This was a death thought to have reinforced the West’s sense of moral purpose in the movement toward ‘virtuous war’ upon an Iraqi regime framed as ‘brutal’.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Child rape, moral outrage, and the death penalty.Susan A. Bandes - 2008 - Northwestern University Law Review Colloquy 103.
Virtue Ethics and Being Morally Moved.Qingjie Wang - 2010 - Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 9 (3):309-321.
From my Lai to abu ghraib: The moral psychology of atrocity.John M. Doris & Dominic Murphy - 2007 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 31 (1):25–55.
Two senses of justice: Confucianism, Rawls, and comparative political philosophy.Erin M. Cline - 2007 - Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 6 (4):361-381.
Kant on capital punishment and suicide.Attila Ataner - 2006 - Kant Studien 97 (4):452-482.
Ethical Externalism and the Moral Sense.Susan M. Purviance - 2002 - Journal of Philosophical Research 27:585-600.
Love, guilt, and the sense of justice.John Deigh - 1982 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 25 (4):391 – 416.

Analytics

Added to PP
2010-08-10

Downloads
6 (#1,269,502)

6 months
1 (#1,040,386)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references