There is a widespread sentiment that violations of the moral law ought to be followed by some suffering. I believe that this retributive sentiment is more widespread than agreement on moral rules. This sentiment may be mocked as a superstition that there are gods of justice or furies who bring about such suffering. Or the sentiment may be despised as some hypocritical cloak of an inclination for revenge. My goal in all my posts on moral harm and retribution is to show that a belief that violations of the moral law ought to be followed by suffering can be expressed in the language of morality without reference to any non-human agents or sentiments for revenge. See Review of My Moral Harm Concept. This representation in the language of morality shows that the belief is rational. Rational does not imply correctness. But it shows that it must be countered with considerations from reason; not from mockery.

Here my goal is to sketch out how the notion of human dignity includes the notion of retribution.

A feature of moral thinking is that anyone can make a moral judgment. No social standing or power is needed to say “You are not entitled to do that to us.” If I may use the cliche “Speaking truth to power,” moral language is the language for speaking truth to power.” Whatever else is involved in human dignity, it includes this status, almost to speak as a god, of saying to everyone, everywhere and always “Thou shalt not !” “Thou shalt !” But such proclamations are empty complaints, whinning of the weak, if there are no consequences for defying them. Of course, cynics think that is all there is to moral protests from the weak. But cynics think there is no morality and the weak have no status, no dignity.

What have the weak to maintain there dignity? What force do their moral judgments have? The weak do not have the social and physical power to resist the stronger. Resistance involves at least the pain of thwarting the will of the aggressor. But the weak cannot inflict the pain of resistance in the physical world. They need to move to the moral order to maintain their dignity. The moral order contains what ought to be. In the moral order a violation of a moral rule creates a second moral rule that there ought to be pain for a violation of the first moral rule. This is the fundamental notion of retribution.