Abstract
Among the different possible reactions to (perceived)1 wrongdoing, two have monopolized philosophical attention: punishment and forgiveness. Reacting to wrongdoing with indifference, or with elation, may be interesting case-studies for psychologists, but not so much for philosophers. Punishment and forgiveness are, moreover, customarily taken to be mutually exclusive: you cannot punish and forgive simultaneously. It is quite possible to first punish someone, only to later forgive her. But it does seem difficult to argue that we can simultaneously punish and forgive the same person for the same action.
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Notes
See references in Leo Zaibert (2009), ‘The Paradox of Forgiveness’, Journal of Moral Philosophy 6.3, 365–93.
See, for example, John Kekes (2009), ‘Blame Versus Forgiveness’, The Monist 92.3: 488–505.
See Leo Zaibert (2006), Punishment and Retribution (Aldershot: Ashgate), 16 ff.
See, for example, John Cottingham (1979), ‘Varieties of Retribution’, Philosophical Quarterly 29, 238–46.
Serena Olsaretti (2003), ‘Introduction’, in her Desert and Justice (ed.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 8.
The focus classicus of this move is F. H. Bradley (1967), Ethical Studies, (Oxford: Clarendon Press), 26 ff.
For criticism of this position see Leo Zaibert (2006), Punishment and Retribution, 128 ff.
See Anthony Quinton (1954), ‘On Punishment’, Analysis 14, 133–42.
See Leo Zaibert (2006), ‘The Fitting, the Deserving, and the Beautiful’, Journal of Moral Philosophy 3.3, 331–50.
For the difference between intentions and desires see John R. Searle (1983), Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press);
Michael Bratman (1987), Intentions, Plans, and Practical Reason (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press);
and Leo Zaibert (2005), Five Ways Patricia can Kill her Husband: A Theory of Intentionality and Blame (Chicago: Open Court).
Joel Feinberg (1985), Offense to Others: The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law, (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 107 ff;
Peter Classen (1958), ‘“Charientic”’ Judgments’, Philosophy 125, 138–46.
Joel Feinberg, Offense to Others 1. See also Philippa Foot (1978), ‘Are Moral Considerations Overriding’, in her Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy (Berkeley: University of California Press), 181–8 where she admits that moral considerations need not be overriding.
Jacques Derrida (2001), On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness (London: Routledge), 33.
See Leo Zaibert (2006), Punishment and Retribution, 198 ff.
For a similar argument, see Jeffrey Reiman (1998), ‘Why the Death Penalty Should be Abolished in America’, in Louis J. Pojman and Jeffrey Reiman, The Death Penalty: For and Against (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield), 67 ff.
An exception to this thesis is Stephen Kershnar who is in favour of using torture as a punishment. See, for example, Stephen Kershnar (2001), Desert, Retribution and Forture, (Lanham: University Press of America), 169 ff., and passim.
See ‘Study Questions’, in Leo Katz, Michael Moore, and Stephen J. Morse (eds), (1999), Foundations of Criminal Law (New York: Foundation Press), 154.
See references in Leo Zaibert (2006), Punishment and Retribution, 153 ff.
For criticisms of the prima facie obligation strategy see John R. Searle (1969), Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 180 ff.
See, for example, Stuart Hampshire (ed.) (1978), Public and Private Morality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Michael Walzer (1973), ‘The Problem of Dirty Hands’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 2.2, 161
See, for a similar distancing from the exaggerated emphasis on the political, Michael Stocker (1990), ‘Dirty Hands and Ordinary Life’, in Paul Rynard and David P. Shugarman (eds), Cruelty and Deception: The Controversy over Dirty Hands in Politics (Toronto: Broadview Press), 27–41, particularly at 32 ff.
Aside from Michael Walzer, passim, see also Michael Stoker’s claim that the essence of dirty hands is that ‘what is right to do is also, somehow, immoral’ in Stocker (1990), Plural and Conflicting Values (Oxford: Clarendon Press), 54, and C. A.J. Coady’s entry on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (available at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dirty-hands/), where he asserts that the essence of dirty hands is that ‘it is sometimes right to do what is wrong’.
Bernard Williams (1981), ‘Politics and Moral Character’, in his Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers 1973–1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 62.
For some of these descriptions see Elaine Scarry (1987), The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 27 ff.
Seneca (2004), On Mercy (Cambridge, MA.: Loeb Classical Library), 318.
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© 2010 Leo Zaibert
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Zaibert, L. (2010). Punishment and Forgiveness. In: Ryberg, J., Corlett, J.A. (eds) Punishment and Ethics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230290624_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230290624_6
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