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Full Idea
The distinction of punishment from revenge must be regarded as one of the most momentous of the conceptual discoveries ever made by humanity in the course of its slow, tortuous, precarious, emergence from barbaric tribalism. Protagoras originated it.
Gist of Idea
Protagoras seems to have made the huge move of separating punishment from revenge
Source
report of Protagoras (fragments/reports [c.441 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.187
Book Ref
Vlastos,Gregory: 'Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher' [CUP 1992], p.187
Related Ideas
Idea 7340 Mosaic law was the first to embody the rule of law, and equality before the law [Johnson,P]
Idea 7810 The 'Eumenides' of Aeschylus shows blood feuds replaced by law [Aeschylus, by Grayling]
| 1659 | Protagoras seems to have made the huge move of separating punishment from revenge [Protagoras, by Vlastos] |
| 1661 | Socrates was the first to grasp that a cruelty is not justified by another cruelty [Vlastos on Socrates] |
| 1755 | Errors result from external influence, and should be corrected, not hated [Aristippus elder, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 8241 | Only put someone to death if the whole population believes it is deserved [Mengzi (Mencius)] |
| 1660 | It is noble to avenge oneself on one's enemies, and not come to terms with them [Aristotle] |
| 19770 | Primitive people simply redressed the evil caused by violence, without thought of punishing [Rousseau] |
| 7673 | Retributive punishment is better than being sent to hospital for your crimes [Kant, by Berlin] |
| 21433 | Violation of rights deserves punishment, which is vengeance, rather than restitution [Kant] |
| 24118 | Do away with punishment. Counter-retribution is as bad as the crime [Nietzsche] |
| 18300 | Whenever we have seen suffering, we have wanted the revenge of punishment [Nietzsche] |
| 23527 | Moral wickedness of an offence is always relevant to the degree of punishment [Hart,HLA] |
| 1658 | In early Greece the word for punishment was also the word for vengeance [Vlastos] |
| 20617 | How should the punishment fit the crime (for stealing chickens?) [Tuckness/Wolf] |