The article examines penological pessimism as the dominant intellectual and practical logic governing contemporary social control in postmodern societies. Proceeding from a political science rather than a strictly legal perspective, the study challenges what the author terms penological over-optimism – the axiomatic faith, embedded in classical criminal law tradition, that the declared goals of punishment (deterrence, rehabilitation, correction, and general prevention) are both achievable and correctly formulated. Drawing on Nietzschean philosophy, Foucauldian genealogy, and the Marxist political economy of punishment developed by Rusche and Kirchheimer, the article argues that more than two and a half centuries of reformist ambition have failed to deliver ... Читати далі »