Do we deserve our punishment?
On the axis: The meaning of punishment · the offender
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?
Justification
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
Justification
The third antinomy sets a seamless against the demand for a free causality, and both theses seem equally provable. Kant resolves it through the distinction: determinism governs the human being as phenomenon, yet nothing forbids thinking him a cause at the noumenal level. The moral law requires it: "you ought" implies "you can", so freedom is a fact of practical reason. Hence the explicit rejection of (a wretched subterfuge); but since freedom stays noumenal, never observed in the world, the score stops short of the extreme.
Critique of Pure Reason, Third Antinomy · Critique of Practical Reason
Anchors: Kant
leads to: Freedom of the will