Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chronology
- Biographical glossary
- Note on the texts
- Bibliographical note
- On Crimes and Punishments
- Frontispiece
- To the Reader
- Introduction
- 1 The origin of punishment
- 2 The right to punish
- 3 Consequences
- 4 The interpretation of the laws
- 5 The obscurity of the laws
- 6 The proportion between crimes and punishments
- 7 Errors in the measuring of punishments
- 8 The classification of crimes
- 9 Of honour
- 10 Of duels
- 11 Public peace
- 12 The purpose of punishment
- 13 Of witnesses
- 14 Evidence and forms of judgement
- 15 Secret denunciations
- 16 Of torture
- 17 Of the exchequer
- 18 Of oaths
- 19 Of prompt punishments
- 20 Violent crimes
- 21 The punishment of the nobility
- 22 Theft
- 23 Public disgrace
- 24 Parasites
- 25 Banishment and confiscations
- 26 Family feeling
- 27 Lenience in punishing
- 28 The death penalty
- 29 Of detention awaiting trial
- 30 Trials and prescriptions
- 31 Crimes difficult to prove
- 32 Suicide
- 33 Smuggling
- 34 Of debtors
- 35 Asylums
- 36 On setting a price on men's heads
- 37 Attempted crimes, accomplices and immunity
- 38 Leading interrogations, depositions
- 39 Of a particular kind of crime
- 40 False ideas of utility
- 41 How to prevent crimes
- 42 The sciences
- 43 Magistrates
- 44 Public awards
- 45 Education
- 46 Pardons
- 47 Conclusion
- To Jean Baptiste d'Alembert
- To André Morellet
- Inaugural Lecture
- Reflections on the Barbarousness and the Civilisation of Nations and on the Savage State of Man
- Reflections on Manners and Customs
- On Luxury
- Index
- Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought
40 - False ideas of utility
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chronology
- Biographical glossary
- Note on the texts
- Bibliographical note
- On Crimes and Punishments
- Frontispiece
- To the Reader
- Introduction
- 1 The origin of punishment
- 2 The right to punish
- 3 Consequences
- 4 The interpretation of the laws
- 5 The obscurity of the laws
- 6 The proportion between crimes and punishments
- 7 Errors in the measuring of punishments
- 8 The classification of crimes
- 9 Of honour
- 10 Of duels
- 11 Public peace
- 12 The purpose of punishment
- 13 Of witnesses
- 14 Evidence and forms of judgement
- 15 Secret denunciations
- 16 Of torture
- 17 Of the exchequer
- 18 Of oaths
- 19 Of prompt punishments
- 20 Violent crimes
- 21 The punishment of the nobility
- 22 Theft
- 23 Public disgrace
- 24 Parasites
- 25 Banishment and confiscations
- 26 Family feeling
- 27 Lenience in punishing
- 28 The death penalty
- 29 Of detention awaiting trial
- 30 Trials and prescriptions
- 31 Crimes difficult to prove
- 32 Suicide
- 33 Smuggling
- 34 Of debtors
- 35 Asylums
- 36 On setting a price on men's heads
- 37 Attempted crimes, accomplices and immunity
- 38 Leading interrogations, depositions
- 39 Of a particular kind of crime
- 40 False ideas of utility
- 41 How to prevent crimes
- 42 The sciences
- 43 Magistrates
- 44 Public awards
- 45 Education
- 46 Pardons
- 47 Conclusion
- To Jean Baptiste d'Alembert
- To André Morellet
- Inaugural Lecture
- Reflections on the Barbarousness and the Civilisation of Nations and on the Savage State of Man
- Reflections on Manners and Customs
- On Luxury
- Index
- Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought
Summary
One source of errors and injustices is the false ideas of utility held by some lawgivers. It is a false idea of utility that gives higher importance to particular inconveniences than to the general inconvenience, that commands the feelings instead of exciting them, that commands logic to submit. It is a false idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for a single chimerical or unimportant disadvantage, that would deprive men of fire because it burns or water because it drowns, and can only remedy evils by destruction.
{{The laws which forbid men to bear arms are of this sort. They only disarm those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity and the most important in the civil code will respect the lesser and more arbitrary laws, which are easier and less risky to break, and which, if enforced, would take away the personal freedom – so dear to man and to the enlightened lawgiver – and subject the innocent man to all the annoyances which the guilty deserve? These laws make the victims of attack worse off and improve the position of the assailant. They do not reduce the murder rate but increase it, because an unarmed man can be attacked with more confidence than an armed man.
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- Information
- Beccaria: 'On Crimes and Punishments' and Other Writings , pp. 101 - 102Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995