structure for 'Social Practice'    |     alphabetical list of themes    |     unexpand these ideas

25. Social Practice / D. Justice / 3. Punishment / b. Retribution for crime

[punishment as giving offenders what they deserve]

12 ideas
Protagoras seems to have made the huge move of separating punishment from revenge [Protagoras, by Vlastos]
     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.
     From: report of Protagoras (fragments/reports [c.441 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.187
Socrates was the first to grasp that a cruelty is not justified by another cruelty [Vlastos on Socrates]
     Full Idea: Socrates was the first Greek to grasp the truth that if someone has done a nasty thing to me, this does not give the slightest moral justification for doing anything nasty to him.
     From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.190
Errors result from external influence, and should be corrected, not hated [Aristippus elder, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: Errors ought to meet with pardon, for a man does not err intentionally, but influenced by some external circumstances. We should not hate someone who has erred, but teach him better.
     From: report of Aristippus the elder (fragments/reports [c.395 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.9
Only put someone to death if the whole population believes it is deserved [Mengzi (Mencius)]
     Full Idea: When close attendants say a man deserves death, do not listen; when all the councillors say so, do not listen; when everyone says so, have the case investigated. If he is guilty, put him to death; he was put to death by the whole country.
     From: Mengzi (Mencius) (The Mengzi (Mencius) [c.332 BCE], 1.B.7)
     A reaction: The jury system is a gesture in this direction. Compare Idea 95. In Mencius's time, no doubt, everyone believed that capital punishment was sometimes right. Nowadays, when many people (e.g. me) reject it, the procedure won't work.
It is noble to avenge oneself on one's enemies, and not come to terms with them [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: It is noble to avenge oneself on one's enemies and not to come to terms with them.
     From: Aristotle (The Art of Rhetoric [c.350 BCE], 1367a19), quoted by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.189
Primitive people simply redressed the evil caused by violence, without thought of punishing [Rousseau]
     Full Idea: More primitive men regarded the acts of violence that could befall them as an easily redressed evil and not as an offence that must be punished; they did not even dream of vengeance, except as a knee-jerk response.
     From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin of Inequality [1754], Part I)
     A reaction: This may be Rousseau at his most optimistic, trying to deny a rather more aggressive streak in people, seen in children's playgrounds.
Retributive punishment is better than being sent to hospital for your crimes [Kant, by Berlin]
     Full Idea: Kant believed in retributive punishment, because he thought that a man would prefer being sent to prison to going to hospital.
     From: report of Immanuel Kant (Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals [1785]) by Isaiah Berlin - The Roots of Romanticism Ch.4
     A reaction: That is, even criminals welcome the dignity of being treated as if they are actually responsible for their deeds, and are not just victims of inner forces. Criminals demand free will! Truth is best, though; many of them are not responsible at all.
Violation of rights deserves punishment, which is vengeance, rather than restitution [Kant]
     Full Idea: Every deed that violates a man's right deserves punishment, the function of which is to avenge a crime on the one who committed it (not merely to make good the harm done). ...but no punishment may be inflicted out of hatred.
     From: Immanuel Kant (Metaphysics of Morals II:Doctrine of Virtue [1797], 460-1 I.II)
     A reaction: A fairly hideous idea, confirming the image of Kant as someone who coldly perfoms ruthless duties. I don't think Kant ever offers any clarity for the concepts of 'deserving' or of 'avenging'. What is the appropriate vengeance for theft?
Whenever we have seen suffering, we have wanted the revenge of punishment [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: The spirit of revenge: my friends, that, up to now, has been mankind's chief concern; and where there was suffering, there was always supposed to be punishment.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spake Zarathustra [1884], 2.20)
Moral wickedness of an offence is always relevant to the degree of punishment [Hart,HLA]
     Full Idea: Leslie Stephen argued that when the question is how severely an offender should be punished, an estimate of the degree of moral wickedness involved in the crime is always relevant.
     From: H.L.A. Hart (Law,Liberty and Morality [1963], II 'Moral')
     A reaction: [Stephen 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity' 1873] The degree of responsibility (after excuses etc.) is obviously also highly relevant. If vicious murder is punished more harshly, that seems to be an assessment of the character of the murderer.
In early Greece the word for punishment was also the word for vengeance [Vlastos]
     Full Idea: Down to the last third of the fifth century, 'timoria', whose original and always primary sense is "vengeance", is THE word for "punishment".
     From: Gregory Vlastos (Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher [1991], p.186)
How should the punishment fit the crime (for stealing chickens?) [Tuckness/Wolf]
     Full Idea: One criticism of the retributive theory of punishment is that it is hard to know how to fit the punishment to the crime. What punishment should correspond to stealing chickens?
     From: Tuckness,A/Wolf,C (This is Political Philosophy [2017], 7 'Rationales')
     A reaction: The ancient world was more keen on restitution for such crimes, which makes much better sense. Buy them some chickens, plus twenty percent.