The Mechanics of Temptation. Crime, Guilt and Punishment from Cesare Beccaria

Abstract

Beccaria represents a fundamental anti-metaphysic turn in the development of modern criminal law and its normativist and guaranteeing approach. He allows for the perfecting of a penalization system based on factual and reasoned evidence of the responsibility of the accused individual instead of relying on a forced confession or on the sinful essence of a person. With this, the inquisitorial method (based on revenge and retribution) becomes primitive. Likewise, criminalization becomes part of the scientific rationality of the time and its positivist and pragmatic nature. This way of thinking does not seek to erase human passions (temptations, interests); it rather aims to regulate them for the sake of having an effective public administration of punishment that also provides citizens with a legal and exemplifying education. However, the genealogy of Beccarian achievements shows that they entail the seed of the obsession with security inscribed in the desire for defense, control, and social order (which is also an economic and biased desire) that we currently experience, often in dramatic and non-legal manners.