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… so far as we know, no man is his own maker. I say so far as we know, for man has yet to catch a glimpse of the ultimate truth.1
Punishments have been known from the beginning of recorded history; such sanctions have been a constant part of the rules devised by men. They are part of familial, religious, social, and political organization. However, it was not until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when European intellectuals began to rethink the nature of man and his reason, that punishment and its justification were reappraised.
Beginning in the late seventeenth century, particularly with John Locke's attempt to determine the scope and boundaries of human knowledge, there was a renewed interest in questions of rights and their limitations. Such a reexamination was further elaborated during the Enlightenment by such thinkers as Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Beccaria. This elaboration led for a time to a pair of confusing principles regarding punishment. First, that wrongdoing should be punished; but second, that it was wrong to make another suffer pair or deprivation deliberately.