Abstract

In his incisive and provocative analysis, ‘The place of punishment in Kant's Rechtslehre’, Paul Gorner discusses many aspects of Kant's position. I concentrate on his main contention:Kant's justification of judicial punishment simply does not fit the account of right he gives in the Rechtslehre. According to this account the only justification for coercion is that it constitutes a ‘hindering of a hindrance’ to freedom. But there is no way in which this requires punishment to be retributive