Interaction, emergency and perspective: The ontological and epistemological statutes of punishment

Abstract

The notions of interaction, emergence and perspective have been used in different fields of knowledge to better explain certain phenomena that are of interest to the social sciences. The purpose of this article is to discuss them in relation to punishment, seeking to demonstrate how these notions can help us to better understand their ontological and epistemological status. We will argue that these notions allow us to place the social sciences in continuity with the natural sciences, but without limiting them to their epistemological horizon, if we take into account an ontology of abstract and collective objects, such as punishment. In the end, we hope to clarify why it can be said that punishment emerges from interactions in a human perspective, which means that only those who share a culture can understand it specifically as a cultural emergent.