I would never ever want a New Yorker profile written up about my personal life like that. I don't understand how these things work. You tell me how the inner machinations of elite liberal press work. For you to say that when I'm down here, I've been living in the south for essentially the last like 20 years. Well, this wasn't our opening segment. All right. What is our opening segment? It's been a while, but we have come back to one of these idiotic neuroscience articles with just the perfect title: Blame the brain, not Bolsonaro, for Brazil's riots.
Here’s an episode with something for both of us – a healthy serving of Kantian rationalism for David with a dollop of Marxist criminology for Tamler. We discuss and then argue about Jeffrie Murphy’s 1971 paper “Marxism and Retribution.” For Murphy, utilitarianism is non-starter as a theory of punishment because it can’t justify the right of the state to inflict suffering on criminals. Retributivism respects the autonomy of individuals so it can justify punishment in principle – but not in practice, at least not in a capitalist system. So it ends up offering a transcendental sanction of the status quo. We debate the merits of Murphy’s attack on Rawls and social contract theory under capitalism, along with the Marxist analysis of the roots of criminal behavior.
Plus – the headline says it all: Blame The Brain, Not Bolsonaro, For Brazil’s Riots.
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