Category Archives: Retributive punishment

Punishment = Retribution

Moral harm, Moral philosophy, Retributive punishment

The purpose of this post is to provide bacground for fighting sins with suffering and the review of the moral harm concept.

Punishment is infliction of some mental or physical harm on someone who has broken a law legal or moral. The harm inflicted is activity that without the violation of the law, ought not be done. Infliction of harm requires justification. What is the justification? The justification is ” The violator ought to suffer harm because he violated the law.” Retribution is fullfillment of this obligation to inflict harm for the violation of the law. Retribution is punishment.

But what good is accomplished by taking retribution, viz., by punishing? Retribution (punishment) fulfils the obligation to inflict harm for violation of the law. We have here a condition in which two wrongs make a right. The wrong of inflicting harm in reaction to the wrong of violating the law sets things right. However, Doing what is right does not imply making things better. Morality or legality is satisfied by punishment even if no person is satisfied by improving their lives. So, punishment may not accomplish any good.

There is , however, a reluctance to recognize obligations whose fulfilment produces no improvement in human life. Merely satisfying morality or legality is easily regarded as too abstract to be relevant to improving human life. So various goals are proposed as something good for human affairs accomplished by punishment Indeed punishment frequently attains these goals. What are some?

Deterrence: Being aware of actual punishments may frighten people into obeying the law. In general, obeying laws is good for human flourishing.

Restraint: Some types of punishment such as imprisonment may prevent people from having any oportunity to violate the law.

Reform: Some type of punishment may train offenders to be obedient to the law. The re-education is infliction of a pain in so far as it is involuntary. Here is should be noted if the reform program is enjoyed by the law breaker, there is a sense that his punishment did not fit his crime. Think of a case in which an offender truly enjoys learning a trade in rison and after release becomes a good citizen practicing his trade. Punishment should not be a so-called win-win situation. In such a case, we might say “He wasn’t really punished, even if reformed”

Restitution: Some types of punishment may improve the lives of victions of violation of the law by requiring the offender to repair damage done by his violation.

It is to the credit of human intelligence that we have worked out ways to have obligations to do harm be fulfilled in ways which also produce good. But these ways of getting good from what is done in the punishing are not punishment itself.

Review of My Moral Harm Concept

Divine Command Morality, Moral Harm and Moral Worth, Moral philosophy, Retributive punishment

I develped a notion of moral harm to provide a rationale for retributive punishment. See my Moral Harm, Retributive Punishment, Punitive Harm and Contrition and Punishment = Retribution. For an essay along the lines of this post, see my Suicide is a Choice that People Ought to be Killed .

In this post, though, I emphasize the notion of defiance of The gist of this notion is that a free choice to disobey a moral law places within morality a specific, an ad hoc, rule that some frustration of human flourishing ought to be brought about. This frustration of human flourishing is infliction of physical or mental pain. This infliction is retributive punishment. The retributive punishment satisfies the ad hoc rule and thereby removes it from morality. Retributive punishment is a partial cleansing of morality: Partial because there are so many of these ad hoc harm requiring rules in the morality of our fallen species.

How does a choice to commit an act contrary to a moral law created a new specific moral rule requiring some harm be done? Consider Tyler Robinson’s choice to assassinate Charlie Kirk. This consideration is “done at a distance.” I take no account of his mental or emotional condition. For I am assuming that Tyler acted of his own freewill. Judgment of his freedom is my decision that what he did can be judged as morally right or morally wrong. The empirical facts for my judgment are the media reports on the assassination in Utah. Empirical facts that he suffered mental illness compelling his action could justify setting aside a judgment that he acted on his own freewill.

The significance of pointing out that recourse to actual facts about Tyler Robinson’s mental and emotional states is that a judgment about his acting freely attributes a rather complex thought pattern to him which most likely he did not actually think. Attribution of this thought pattern is the answer to a question: “What do I mean by saying that Tyler’s action was morally wrong?”

To interpet Tyler’s decision as worth moral evaluation, we have to interpret Tyler’s decision as bipartite. He was not only deciding how to carry out his inclincation to kill someone he hated. He was also deciding to disobey the moral law against killing. He chose to defy the moral law against killing people and let his inclination lead him to killing someone, viz. Charlie Kirk.

What is it to defy a moral law? To defy the moral law “Do not kill” requires more that holding “I may kill.” For merely thinking that “I may kill” is compatible with accepting “Do not kill” but believing that this case presents an exception. Thinking there is an exception is compatible with respecting the moral law but only being mistaken about exceptions to it. Attributing a mistake about the moral law to someone is to cease to blame that person of choosing immorally; stupid maybe, but not immoral. Genuine defiance in morality recognizes that the moral law says an act ought not be done but replies “I may do it” because what I have decided is “This is what I ought to do.” There is a clash on two claims of what ought to be done; not merely a denial of the “ought” of the moral law. For instance, I attribute to Tyler the thought “I ought to kill Charlie Kirk regardless of the moral prohibition of killing.”

This new thought that a killing ought to be is a new obligation put into morality -moral space. It is ad hoc because it was added for this occasion. In some ways it is like ad hoc moral rules put in place by promising. Promises create moral obligations which are removed from morality when the promise is kept. Similarly, ad hoc rules requiring harm are, let us hope, removed from morality when the harm is done. In the The Virtue of Taking Retribution I discuss problems of removing ad hoc rules that harm ought to be.

Why doesn’t the harm inflicted by the immoral act satisfy the ad hoc rule? For instance,, why doesn’t Tyler’s killing Charlie Kirk satisfy Tyler’s “Killing Kirk is what I ought to do?” The actual killing of Kirk is required for the rule justifying it becomes valid. Prior to the actual misdeed the rule is merely a thought of Tyler. Once the misdeed is performed, the perverted moral rule becomes valid and requires punishment to satisfy it.