herdofturtles | Entries tagged with lewis

The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment

In England we have lately had a controversy about Capital Punishment. I do not know whether a murderer is more likely to repent and make good on the gallows a few weeks after his trial or in the prison infirmary thirty years later. I do not know whether the fear of death is an indispensable deterrent. I need not, for the purpose of this article, decide whether it is a morally permissible deterrent. Those are questions which I propose to leave untouched. My subject is not Capital Punishment in particular, but that theory of punishment in general which the controversy showed to be called the Humanitarian theory. Those who hold it think that it is mild and merciful. In this I believe that they are seriously mistaken. I believe that the “Humanity” which it claims is a dangerous illusion and disguises the possibility of cruelty and injustice without end. I urge a return to the traditional or Retributive theory not solely, not even primarily, in the interests of society, but in the interests of the criminal.( Read more... )

On Criticism:

"It used to be supposed that one of the functions of a critic was to help authors to write better. His praise and censure were supposed to show them where and how they had succeeded or failed, so that next time, having profited by the diagnosis, they might cure their faults and increase their virtues. That was what Pope had in mind when he said, ‘Make use of every friend—and every foe.”

"I am going to contend that when your own work is being criticized you are, in one sense, in a specially advantageous position for detecting the goodness or badness of the critique."

"If by criticism, you mean solely valuation, no man can judge critiques of his own work."

"Now in so far as his reviewers do that, I contend that the author can see the ( Read more... )

In the sixteenth century when everyone was saying that poets (by which they meant all imaginative writers) ought to please and instruct, Tasso made a valuable distinction. He said that the poet, as poet, was concerned solely with pleasing. But then every poet was also a man and a citizen in that capacity he ought to, and would wish to, make his work edifying as well as pleasing.

Now I do not want to stick very close to the renaissance ideas of ‘pleasing’ and ‘instructing’. Before I could accept either term it might need so much redefining that what was left of it at the end would not be worth retaining. All I want to use is the distinction between the author as( Read more... )

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Turtles' Lair

quotes hoard from whatever I've recently read.

Entries tagged with lewis

Essay from C.S. Lewis's God in the Dock

The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment

Quotations from C.S. Lewis's Of Other Worlds

On Criticism:

Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What's to be Said | C.S. Lewis

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