Crimes and punishments: analysis and historical context

¶ … Beccaria and Enlightenment

Beccaria's text upon the subject on the most appropriate way to punish criminals and to adjudicate crimes epitomizes the Enlightenment project in two basic areas. Firstly, from the very beginning of his text, Beccaria upholds that all human beings, regardless of their state of birth, have a right to live in a just and fair society and to be judged upon the same principles as other member of that society. He writes, thus, against the tyranny of a mindless obedience to royalty and against to principles obeyed simply out of custom. "In every human society, there is an effort continually tending to confer on one part the height of power and happiness, and to reduce the other to the extreme of weakness and misery. The intent of good laws [is] to oppose this effort and to diffuse their influence universally and equally." (Chapter 1) Humanity's basest instincts, he suggests, must be warred against through legal means, despite historical tendencies to allow human beings to unequally prosper and dwell in misery, and to be judged for the same crimes differently -- in fact, what is criminal in a pauper is often considered commendable in a king.

Beccaria's stress upon the need for equality arises not out of Christian compassion, however, but upon the idea that humanity is ever-evolving to a state of more rational and intelligent progress. In fact, in Chapter 47, at the end of his work, he states: "severity of punishments ought to be in proportion to the state of the nation. Among a people hardly yet emerged from barbarity, they should be most severe, as strong impressions are required; but in proportion as the minds of men become softened by their intercourse in society, the severity of punishments should be diminished, if it be intended, that the necessary relation between the object and the sensation should be maintained." A state's relative progress may be judged in terms of the way it enforces its laws -- a standard that could be applied to nations today as well as to when Beccaria, wrote, one might add. The 17th century Enlightenment sentiment of rational progress towards one end, however, is very much of its time, as the author sees savageness upon a continuum, rather than something the same nations may express at different times in their history.