8: Beyond Sanction: Jean-Marie Guyau between Penal Abolition and Social Defence

Author:
Federico Testa
Publication Date:
19 Mar 2025
Pages:
146–168
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51952/9781529234800.ch008
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Jean-Marie Guyau (1854–1888) remains a forgotten figure in the history of legal thought. This chapter seeks to remedy this by proposing a reading of his seminal ‘Critique of the idea of sanction’ (1883), later published in his Sketch of Morality Independent of Obligation or Sanction (1885), revealing a pioneering contribution to the discussion of penal abolition. First, it shows how Guyau deconstructs the assumption that the moral merit of the will should entail happiness and pleasure, and its demerit pain and suffering. For Guyau, the tangible realm of the senses cannot be made accountable for the deliberations of the will. Thus, punishment should be considered to be both contradictory and immoral, never reaching its target while increasing the sum of evil in the world.

Second, this chapter shows how Guyau proposes an ethics based on secularised ideas of universal charity and grace, which undermine the normative foundations of punishment. It then goes on to show how Guyau’s position remains ambiguous: although founding an abolitionist ethics, he seeks to affirm the most progressive reformist position possible within the current development of society. The achievement of this social ‘evolution’ would be the elimination of prisons and a gradual disappearance of punishment.

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