Abstract
Bennett focuses on four interconnected criticisms of consequentialist theories of punishment. The first criticism says that consequentialist theories wrongfully treat it as permissible to punish an innocent person if doing so will lead to optimal consequences. The second criticism says that consequentialist theories allow the treatment of offenders (and others) as mere means. The third criticism says that consequentialist theories fail to respect offenders as moral agents. The fourth criticism says that consequentialist theories recommend responses to wrongdoing that ignore or displace other valuable forms of human relation. Bennett argues that such criticisms are better thought of as criticisms of a specific form of consequentialism rather than consequentialism as such. The question of whether the whole consequentialist approach is problematic is much more complex. While Bennett does not try in this chapter to resolve that latter question, he looks at some of the considerations that bear on it.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
For a list of examples, see, e.g., Walen (2016).
- 3.
For the claim that consequentialism should adopt “satisficing” rather than maximizing, see Slote and Pettit (1984).
- 4.
I have also used such terminology in the past.
- 5.
For some discussion and reconstruction of this Strawsonian approach, see Bennett (2008, ch. 3).
- 6.
It is also possible that there are reactive attitudes directed to one’s own quality of will, or that of one’s past self.
- 7.
There are further moves in the debate, for instance, where the consequentialist may try to argue that even the idea of agent-relative constraints can be accommodated in a form of consequentialism. However, this may lead to the charge that the term “consequentialism” is no longer being used for a distinctive normative approach. For an attempt to define consequentialism in the face of this “consequentializing” move, see Brown (2011).
- 8.
For helpful comments on a previous version, I am grateful to Sebastian Pineda Herrera.
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Bennett, C. (2023). Rethinking Four Criticisms of Consequentialist Theories of Punishment. In: Altman, M.C. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook on the Philosophy of Punishment. Palgrave Handbooks in the Philosophy of Law. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11874-6_8
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