The concept of punishment represents one of the most difficult legal issues that are related to the concept of human freedom and responsibility. Since Antiquity, the brilliant minds of humanity contemplated about the sense of punishment and the function of this institution. Each epoch analyses this concept from different aspects and some of them are reflected in the actual legislation. The most important principles of contemporary criminal law were expounded by the Ancient, Modern and Contemporary philosophers. The field of research of this article is the philosophy of punishment of criminal law. In this study, we have applied the method of historical research of the proposed topic, which gives us the opportunity to analyze the development of criminal punishment and its goals from a historical perspective. In this paper, we aimed to determine the philosophical base of the legal punishment that legitimizes the application of sanctions to the person who committed the crime. We established the importance of the theories developed by brilliant thinkers for the contemporary concept of penal retribution and legal regulation of this institution. This theme generates several discussions that are formed in the process of comparison and debating of the ideas of influential philosophers regarding the purpose of criminal punishment. Therefore, we consider that the analysis of the theories of great thinkers gives us the possibility to understand the complexity of the phenomenon of criminal punishment, and leads to the more effective application of state constraint towards the offender.