Cesare Beccaria

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Cesare Beccaria, Italian legal philosopher.

Cesare Beccaria (eigtl. Bonesana; born March 15, 1738 in Milan ; † November 28, 1794 ibid) was an important Italian legal philosopher and criminal law reformer in the Age of Enlightenment . Because of his work “Dei delitti e delle pene” (German: “Of the crime and of the punishments” ), this enlightener is also considered to be the founder of the “Classical School of Criminology ”.

Main work

In 1758 he finished his law studies at the University of Pavia . He became famous for his book “Dei delitti e delle pene” (German: “Of crimes and punishments” ) , published in 1764 and translated into 22 languages . In this work, which was shaped by the ideas of the Enlightenment and utilitarian ethics, he advocated the thesis that the state should only impose the level of punishment that is necessary to maintain order. The principle of proportionality should be observed when determining the sentence . It is not the severity of the punishment that is decisive, but the consistent application of the criminal laws. Beccaria rejected torture and the death penalty .

The judicial murder committed against Jean Calas in Toulouse in 1762 is said to have prompted him to publish his book.

reception

The earliest German translations are by Albrecht Wittenberg (Hamburg 1766), by Jakob Schultes (Ulm 1767), by Philipp Jakob Flathe with comments by Karl Ferdinand Hommel (Breslau 1778; 2nd ed. 1788), by Johann Adam Bergk (Leipzig 1798, new edition 1817), more recent by Hermann Gareis (Leipzig 1841), Julius Glaser (Vienna 1851; 2nd edition 1876) and M. Waldeck (Berlin 1870). Among the first published commentaries, those by Voltaire ("Commentaire sur le livre des délits et des peines", 1766) and by Diderot (in the edition of Röderer) as well as by Schall ("Von Verbrechen und Strafen", Leipzig 1779) deserve to be mentioned become.

His work formed the basis for reforms of criminal law across Europe . However, this did not mean that his views immediately met with general approval. In German-speaking countries, for example, the first review of his main work, written by Albrecht von Haller in 1766, was a slavery in which the reviewer even spoke out in favor of adopting English criminal law, in which at that time even minor offenses could result in the death penalty. In the same year, Moses Mendelssohn was also critical of Beccaria, while many of his sympathizers (such as Karl Ferdinand Hommel ) supported Beccaria's principle of proportionality, but at the same time adhered to the death penalty as the ultima ratio of criminal proceedings against serious criminals.

Contemporary defenders of the death penalty included Immanuel Kant , Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Johann Gottlieb Fichte . They all took the view that the state, in the sense of retaliatory criminal law, must remain the ultimate means of responding to the most serious violations of the legal order.

The effect of Beccaria should therefore be assessed for the German-speaking countries less as a trigger for a process of rethinking and more as a source of ideas and argumentation aid in a later process (in the early 19th century) of different motives of the state gradually turning away from the death penalty and torture. The now increasingly numerous doubters of the meaning of the death penalty were able to strengthen and accelerate this departure with Beccaria's arguments.

Other works

Beccaria is one of the founders of modern political economy . From 1769 to 1771 he taught camera science at the Scuole Palatine in Milan. His lectures, the Elementi di economia pubblica , appeared posthumously in 1804.

Eponyms

Work edition

  • Edizione nazionale delle opere di Cesare Beccaria , diretta da Luigi Firpo e Gianni Francioni. 16 vols. Mediobanca, Milano 1984-2014.

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Cesare Beccaria  - Sources and full texts (Italian)
Commons : Cesare Beccaria  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Herder's Conversations Lexicon . 1st edition. Herder'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Freiburg im Breisgau 1854 ( zeno.org [accessed on April 27, 2020] Lexicon entry "Calas, Jean").
  2. ↑ Pierer's Universal Lexicon of the Past and Present . 4th edition. Publishing house by HA Pierer , Altenburg 1865 ( zeno.org [accessed on April 27, 2020] encyclopedia entry "Beccaria, 2) Cesare B. Bonesana").
  3. ^ Wolfgang Rother: La maggiore felicità possibile. Studies on the philosophy of the Enlightenment in northern and central Italy. Schwabe, Basel 2005, ISBN 978-3-7965-2106-5 , pp. 266-287 .
  4. ↑ See Wolfgang Rother: Torture and the death penalty. Cesare Beccaria and Pietro Verri in a European context . In: Frank Jung, Thomas Kroll (Ed.): Italy and Europe. The circulation of ideas in the Age of Enlightenment . Wilhelm Fink, Paderborn 2014, ISBN 978-3-7705-5087-6 , pp. 143-159 .
  5. ↑ See Wolfgang Rother: Discussions about criminal law reform in Leipzig. Karl Ferdinand Hommel "Germanorum Beccaria" . In: Hanspeter Marti, Detlef Döring (Ed.): The University of Leipzig and its learned environment, 1680-1780 . Schwabe, Basel, ISBN 978-3-7965-2013-6 , pp. 459-486 .
  6. ^ Wolfgang Rother: The Beginning of Higher Education in Political Economy in Milan and Modena. Cesare Beccaria, Alfonso Longo, Agostino Paradisi . In: History of Universities . No. 19/2 , 2004, pp. 119-158 .
  7. ↑ Minor Planet Circ. 40703
  8. ^ Beccaria qualification program for crime prevention. Retrieved July 27, 2020.
personal data
SURNAME Beccaria, Cesare
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian legal philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH March 15, 1738
PLACE OF BIRTH Milan
DATE OF DEATH November 28, 1794
Place of death Milan