Absolute Theories of the Purpose of the Criminal Penalty

Abstract

The criminal penalty is historically unstable institute of a criminal law, its concept and understanding of its purpose corresponds to one or other social order, the fundamental political, legal opinion and the interests of the basic social groups of the society and also its ethical standards. Questions about the philosophical concepts of penalty, the priority of some of them have been throughout human history intensively discussed. At the end of the last century, there were 24 separate comprehensive philosophical systems and more than 100 legal concepts devoted to these issues. At present, their number has increased significantly. The aforementioned article will be devoted to the purpose of absolute theories of criminal penalty, the degree of their scientific processing, at the same time as to their types: theories of the material retribution, theories of dialectical retribution and theories of divine retribution and the specificity of each of them. I will try to explain the shortcomings of these theories and analyze the current state of their use in the legislation of the Slovak Republic and Ukraine.