Welsh Journals

THE MORALITY OF PUNISHMENT DR. A. C. Ewing, of Swansea University College, is already well-known to students oi pnwosopny by his able work on Kant. In inis volume he deserves to win appreciation from a wider public. There is no one who has not been or may not become personally concerned in the question of Punishment, either as agent or patient; and the purpose and justification of its use in the home, in schools and in the wider arena of the state are topics in which even the least speculatively inclined are likely to find in- terest, and on which most of us have hazarded opinions, however, well or ill qualified we may have been to do so. Dr. Ewing's book, though in the best sense philosophical, has a real practi- cal value, as reviewing and discussing basic principles which must be taken into account if we are to have a chance of dealing adequately with any specific problem of Punishment. In a carefully argued discussion on the relation of theory to practice in conduct he pooh-poohs the idea that Ethics can give no help in making practical decisions; ethical principles are only true and are only worth framing because they apply to particular right acts. This considera- tion lies behind his own treatment of a special branch of Ethics surprisingly neglected by Eng- lish ethical writers since Bentham. That is not to say that we are to expect to find in this or any other philosophical treatise on Punishment "de- tailed" advice upon prison reform or the Borstal System, or solitary confinement. This would imply that Ethics is not one science among others but includes all sciences. What we should expect and what we do find in Dr. Ewing's book is a careful discussion of the principles underlying Punishment — of its possible aims, their value and the likelihood of their being achieved by differ- ent types and degrees of Punishment-without which all decisions on special points, however well-informed about matter of fact, may be hope- lessly ill-directed and in any case can have no certain foundation. Dr. Ewing does not dictate the answers to special problems (though he usually indicates the view to which he himself inclines), but leaves us well equipped to deal with them for ourselves. The practical value of ethi- cal reasoning, on Dr. Ewing's view, is to prepare the ground for non-inferential or "intuitional" decisions about what it is right and wrong to do; but the immediate judgment about the right course of conduct involves a knowledge of the special subject matter concerned, which must be supplied not by Ethics but by common-sense, or, where more accurate and thorough information By A. C. Ewing, M.A., D.Phil. Kegan Paul. 1929. 10s. 6d. net. is necessary, by one or other of the special sciences, which are themselves only further de- velopments of common-sense. It is this task of clearing the ground which Dr. Ewing performs for the problems of Punishment. By a most careful and thorough-going critical analysis of the main views which have been or can plausibly be held about the fundamental nature and pur- pose of punishment, he puts the reader in a position to see more clearly the real issue in- volved in any of the minor or major penal prob- lems on which he may be called to decide as a parent, a schoolmaster or a citizen, and there- fore to apply to them without waste or distortion his own moral judgment, supported by whatever special knowledge he may have, from his own experience or from study, of ways and means in dealing with offenders. The introductory chapter contains some re- marks about Ethics in general, which the author warns us are "rather dry, but none the less neces- sary." The lay reader (as opposed to the student of philosophy, who cannot fail to find it interest- ing) must not be frightened off by this-it ;s "only a little one"-and might do well to return to it when he has finished the book. The core of the book is contained in three chapters on Punishment as retributive, as deterrent (or, more generally, "useful") and as morally educa- tive; after an interlude on Reward there follows a chapter on the bearing of Moral Theory on Practice, which, though it is primarily concerned with Ethics as a whole rather than with Punish- ment in particular, is one of the best in the book, and gives the key to the method which the writer has adopted in dealing with his special subject. A brief concluding chapter deals with the meta- physical significance of Punishment (the author admits that the term Punishment is here used analogically), "the overcoming or checking of evil in general," in which he argues that it is in the very nature of evil to grow worse till it dissatisfies and leads to a reaction towards good, a tendency which, however, may be baulked by the opposing tendency of habit, and cannot there- fore be taken as universally predominant unless we postulate a future life. This chapter, though like the rest of the book, it contains shrewd ob- servation and criticism, is unsatisfactory for two reasons-first, that it does not really advance or illuminate the previous handling of the genuine problems of punishment, and secondly, that it raises problems which deserve fuller treatment than Dr. Ewing here gives them-they are worth more than an apparent afterthought. It is Dr. Ewing's view that a common mistake of ethical writers is to lay too great emphasis on one special aspect of actions as the sole source of their rightness, to the exclusion of others