NCJ Number
175963
Date Published
1996
Length
307 pages
Annotation
This book looks at the changing historical landscape of human nature and legal conceptions of insanity from the preclassical Greek world to the present.
Abstract
Based on a review of written law, statements by legal commentators, crime summaries, and punishments, the author examines responsibility and competence. He reviews the Greek phrenesis, Roman notions of furiosus and non compos mentis, 17th century witch trials, and contemporary interpretations of mens rea. He then examines the intricate history of how the insanity defense has been construed as a meeting point of the law and professions which chart human behavior and conduct, namely, religion, medicine, and psychology. In particular, the author deals with ancient legal and customary understandings on which developed Roman law depended. The examination of laws pertaining to insanity in Homeric times and then in classical Greece and Rome reveals the willingness of jurists to consider the complexities of human motivation and the determinants of conduct while preserving the legally necessary presumption of agent- causation. The author also discusses the coherence between juridical and cultural dimensions of the ancient world, witch trials between 1400 and 1700, the move toward a secular and scientific conception of insanity, and the conflict resulting from efforts to import scientific conceptions of human nature into jural contexts. Notes