JUSTIFICATION OF A PUNISHMENT FOR A CRIMINAL ACT FROM A DISCOURSE AND ETHICAL POINT OF VIEW

The author refers to the ethics of responsibility and the communicative approach to law and on that basis outlines a concept of a mixed punishment in which the basic element of punishment is the forfeiture by the criminal of a right to be recognised in a given society. A punishment is presented as a result of a consensus between an individual and the society. A penal measure invalidates a state of punishable lawlessness and therefore it restores social and legal relations of recognition between individuals, and rescinds the common validity of laws within a given society, thus making the state of being responsible for one's actions reasonable (sensible). In the author's opinion the aim of punishment is not only to make an individual to “pay off” for the crime, to restore the proportionality, and to serve as a deterrent preventing other members of the society from committing similar crimes, but its objective should also be to remove “disruptions of social interactions”. The author believes that in a liberal democracy each subject which decides to participate in an inter-subjective practice voluntarily submits to a normative system (including the penal system) which constitutes that practice