By locating its concern on the issues about morality and violence andexploring the limits of human cruelty Waiting for the Barbarians challenges humanityand imperialism in several ways. Presenting a psychoanalytic discussion of Waiting for the Barbarians this study focuses on the impact of fear in human psyche andimperialism’s self destructive power. How far fear and anxiety can go and how far members of society can follow a blind power is the main concern of this essay. AsCoetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians is an allegorical novel, this essay will try tointerpret the allegories created in relation to the tensions raised in the novel. The examination of the critiques raised in the book, may be broken down into thefollowing main components.
(Hedonism). We can divide his theory into three parts: His view on what drove human beings, and what goodness and badness was all about. ( The motivation of human beings) The principle of utility, which is his moral rule The hedonic calculus, which is his system for measuring how good or bad the consequence is. The motivation of human beings Bentham maintained that human beings were motivated by pleasure and pain, and so he can be called a hedonist. He said, in principles of morals and legislation, 'nature has placed mankind underthe governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure.
This is taking them out of society and reducing their ability to commit any other crimes. Rehabilitation is the philosophy that society is best served when wrongdoers are not simply punished but to also provide resources needed to eliminate criminal behavioral. These four philosophies provide us with a basic understanding of what the purpose is behind sentencing. Now that we have a basic understanding of what is behind sentencing let’s look at the structure of sentencing. Some of the things that determine sentencing are legislative sentencing authority, judicial sentencing, and administrative sentencing.
The Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution reflect the Classical movement, thus the law of today is classical in nature. Cesare Beccaria, believed crime could be linked to bad laws, not necessarily bad people. He thought that if a criminal justice system could be implemented to guarantee equal treatment of all before the law. His famous book, On Crimes and Punishment presented a new design for the criminal justice system that serviced all people, and dubbed him the father of modern criminology. The Positivist School of Criminology was developed by Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909).
This helps to define why some individuals with similar strains commit crimes and why others chose legal manners in which they deal with their strains and emotions. General Strain Theory can help to explain any act that is considered deviant by society, and carries with it some sort of punishment, either formally or informally (Agnew, 2006). Failure to achieve
( Exodus 21 23-5,Newburn 2007,p22).The approach is based on the fact that punishment such as Imprisonment had to be in proportion to the crime and no more than that. Cesare Beccaria a classical criminal theorist and author “On crimes and Punishment” who like all classical theorists supported the Rational Choice Theory that all individuals have freewill “At the heart of the classical school of criminological thought is the assumption that the criminal is someone exercising free will and rationality” (Newburn, 2007 pg 115.) Due to this that meant not only should the punishment be painful or costly it should mainly outweigh the pleasure of when the crime was initially committed. Like Beccaria, Jeremy Bentham’s writings where
Thoreau wrote the Essay on Civil Disobedience, in which he addressed the question, “when do larger moral imperatives justify violating a law supported by the majority”. His response was that when a law “… is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law’’. This follows from basic English Common Law, in which you can do something as long as it doesn’t hurt someone else. Thoreau’s philosophy is that you disobey a command (law) when it is hurting someone else. Another area of his thinking is that government is symbolic of a ‘machine’, and man should commit non-violent disobedience to ‘gain access to the machine’.
Edwin H. Sutherland, a renowned criminologist, developed the theory of differential association, where deviance is explained in terms of the individual’s social relationships. This theory differed drastically from the typical justification of crime relating to biological and psychological issues. Differential association states that an individual’s delinquency can be attributed to an excess of definitions favorable to the violation of laws versus definitions unfavorable to the violations of laws. Sutherland based his differential association theory on the basis of three lines of consideration: symbolic interactionism, cultural transmission and culture conflict (Brown 321, “Edward Sutherland”). Symbolic interactionism is a belief that as individuals and groups interact, peoples’ selves are formed as social products.
Crime is defined as “an act prohibited and punished by law” (Collins, 2006) but there has been much debate about what ‘crime’ is. Harm, social agreement and official societal response are the three key elements of determining crime. A relationship exists between the three key concepts that would determine whether or not an act is a crime. If an action caused harm then society would be outraged and would create a law to punish those responsible and prohibit further acts occurring. From this emerged the consensus position on crime which states that crimes are acts that produce intense moral outrage amongst society (Muncie & McLaughlin, 2003).
As Lord Acton said ‘Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely’. The principle of the separation of powers assumes that certain functions should be carried out by different institutions and that no one institution should trespass into the territory of another. Its origin date back to Aristotle, the father of Political Science. Although he did not discuss the issue in great detail, he analyzed the functions of the three branches without suggesting their separation. The separation of powers however, acquired greater significance when John Locke, an 18th century philosopher argued that the executive and legislative powers should be separate for the sake of liberty.