Relation to others· Power and justice
Retributivism
Axis: The meaning of punishment — Why punish: to repay the wrong, to deter, or to rehabilitate?
We punish because a wrong has been committed, and the penalty must be proportionate to that wrong. Punishment does justice to the crime itself and respects the offender as a responsible being, regardless of any social utility.
Philosophers 2
Hegelexplicit
Crime negates right; punishment is the negation of that negation, which annuls the crime and restores right. Deterrence treats the criminal like a dog threatened with a stick; retributivism, by contrast, honors him as a rational being, for his punishment is contained in his very deed and constitutes his own right. The measure is not literal like-for-like, but the equivalence of value between crime and punishment.
Elements of the Philosophy of Right, §90-103 (§99 negation of the negation, §100 the criminal honored, §99 Add. the stick and the dog)
Kantexplicit
Punishment is demanded by justice itself, as retribution proportionate to the crime (juridical law of retaliation), never as a mere means of social utility: punishing someone to deter others would treat him as a means. This is classical retributivism.
Metaphysics of Morals, Doctrine of Right, §49 E
Characters 1
Odysseusexplicit
Home again, Odysseus seeks neither to correct nor to deter: he renders their due to those who have betrayed the house. The fault, for him, calls for a punishment to its measure, and his domestic justice is retributive: to restore the order that was wronged is to make the offense pay, at the risk of a harshness the poem lets one feel.
Odyssey, XXI-XXII (the return to the household and the confrontation with the suitors)
- PrescriptiveMoral Thought experimentPunishing an innocent to keep the peace?
If punishment is worth only its effects, sacrificing an innocent to avert a greater harm sometimes seems required: but is condemning one who did nothing still punishment, or the very negation of justice?
punishing an innocent - PrescriptiveMoralMaking an example of an offender
Punishing to deter is using one man to frighten others: does only the penalty deserved for what he did treat him as a responsible person, rather than as a means?
the offender - PrescriptiveMoralDo we deserve our punishment?
Punishing as deserved presupposes the offender could have acted otherwise; if their act flows from their causes, their nature and their circumstances, does the very idea of desert still hold?
the offender - PrescriptivePolitical & legalThe right measure of the penalty
Retributivism measures the penalty by the gravity of the wrong (eye for an eye), deterrence by what it takes to discourage: two measures that can demand far more, or far less, than each other.
the penalty - PrescriptiveMoralSettle the debt or mend the bond
Is the crime a debt to the order, settled by making the offender suffer, or a rupture between persons, repaired only by acknowledging the victim and restoring the bond? And how would added suffering pay for a wrong?
the crime - PrescriptivePolitical & legalPunishment or vengeance
Is the penalty handed down by the institution an impartial, measured justice, different in kind from revenge, or only revenge made public, orderly, and deferred?
penal justice - PrescriptivePolitical & legalThe death penalty
Is killing the criminal the only penalty matching the worst crimes (Kant), or a punishment that deters no better than another, forecloses any return, and lowers the society that inflicts it (Beccaria, Camus)?
capital punishment