Evil or Ill? - Justifying the Insanity Defence

In Evil or Ill?, Lawrie Reznek writes about excuses in general and the insanity defence in particular. Reznek aims to understand the concept of an excuse and explain why our moral and legal systems contain the excuses that they do. He draws from famous legal cases to explain that a person is not responsible if that person was not in control of his actions, or was ignorant of what he was doing.

Reznek shows us that these excuses derive from Aristotle’s excuses of ignorance and compulsion. Evil or Ill? argues that there is a third excuse ignored by Aristotle and subsequent philosophers —the excuse of character change. Reznek explains that the excuse of character change demonstrates that the idea of an "evil character" lies at the heart of our legal and moral systems, and that the notions of responsibility and excuses (as well as the whole institution of punishment) is based on the overall aim of punishing evil characters and excusing good ones.

Reznek, using careful and clear philosophical analysis, arrives at a fresh understanding of age-old notions and institutions, ranging from law to philosophy and psychiatry to criminology.

The Author

Lawrie Reznek is both a trained philosopher and psychiatrist. He teaches psychiatry at the University of Toronto. He is also the author of The Nature of Disease (Routledge, 1987), The Medicine Men (Collins, 1990), and The Philosophical Defence of Psychiatry (Routledge, 1991).