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Punishment With and Without the State: Comments on Linda Radzik’s The Ethics of Social Punishment: The Enforcement of Morality in Everyday Life

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Abstract

Linda Radzick's new book, The Ethics of Social Punishment, contains an important discussion of punishment outside the context of the state. By way of celebrating this fine and welcome book, I try to probe some analytical contours concerning punishment seen from the general perspective on which Radzick and I agree. I suggest altogether abandoning the idea that (non-state) punishment needs to be inflicted by an authority. Furthermore, I insist on an account of retributivism that resists the usual accusations of barbarism and bloodthirstiness.

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Notes

  1. Linda Radzik, The Ethics of Social Punishment: The Enforcement of Morality in Everyday Life, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2020). Henceforth all references to this book will appear in the main text in parentheses.

  2. Leo Zaibert, Punishment and Retribution, Aldershot: Ashgate (2005), 1.

  3. See references in Zaibert (2005), op. cit., chapter one.

  4. John Gardner, “Introduction” in H.L.A. Hart, Punishment and Responsibility (2nd ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press (2008), xlix.

  5. Douglas Husak, “Retributivism and Over-Punishment”, Law and Philosophy (2021), available online: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10982-021-09422-w.

  6. Gardner, (2008), op. cit., l.

  7. I discuss the case of R.A. Duff’s influential views in Leo Zaibert, Rethinking Punishment, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2018), 126 ff. But the phenomenon extends beyond him.

  8. I choose an actual event because I will need to refer to the mental states of one of the participants (me), and it would be more contrived to do that with imaginary characters, and because I wish to highlight, too, how frequently we do encounter these situations in everyday, actual life.

  9. Zaibert (2005), op. cit., 31–37.

  10. Pettigrove wonders whether we are not better off conceptualizing what Radzik calls “punishments” as instead “protests”. Space constraints will force me to focus on Radzik’s own views rather than on the equally excellent commentaries. But I think that I can safely stipulate that my behavior in that dinner was not a protest.

  11. For the conceptual relevance of power differentials, see the very interesting exchange between Radzik and Pettigrove.

  12. Zaibert (2005), op. cit., 60 ff.

  13. Zaibert (2005), op. cit., 19.

  14. Not that I disagree with Bennett in that there are differences between rebukes and punishments.

  15. For deserved suffering’s contribution to making the world a better place, see Zaibert (2008), op. cit., 1–31; 209–242.

  16. I cannot help thinking that Radzik’s criticism of Duff for allegedly objecting, in chapter 2 of his Trials and Punishments, to the Strawsonian reactive attitudes account (33) is off-target. What Duff criticizes there is overly consequentialist approaches to blame – and that clearly is not Strawson’s. See R.A. Duff, Trials and Punishments, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1986), 39–73.

  17. I have criticized mixed justifications in Zaibert (2005), op. cit. and Zaibert (2018), op. cit. For a fuller and updated statement of my criticisms see my “Rethinking Mixed Justifications”, in The Palgrave Handbook on the Philosophy of Punishment (Matthew C. Altman, ed.), London: Palgrave (forthcoming, 2022).

  18. Some of my misgiving regarding Radzik’s treatment of retributivism are similar to some of Sher’s.

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  1. William D. Williams Professor of Philosophy, Law, and Humanities, Union College, Schenectady, USA

    Leo Zaibert

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Zaibert, L. Punishment With and Without the State: Comments on Linda Radzik’s The Ethics of Social Punishment: The Enforcement of Morality in Everyday Life. Criminal Law, Philosophy 17, 197–206 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11572-022-09633-9

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