Exemplary punishments are favored by some philosophers as the only moral form of punishment, because they think that retributive punishments do not work. Retribution on the other hand has Biblical warrant, famously 'an eye for an eye,' etc., so especially Christian philosophers have often suggested that it is moral to punish someone only for their own crimes/sins, and not for those of someone else -- especially crimes (or sins) that haven't even been committed yet, and may never be at all!
My favorite philosophical theory on retributive punishment -- not because I advocate for it, but because I love retelling it to see people's faces -- is Kant's theory. Kant especially loved capital punishment, which he advocated for a very great many things. One of those things was rebellion against your sovereign, as he was very much a law-and-order kind of guy. In the Metaphysics of Morals, he talks about two Jacobites who come to trial for their rebellion -- which sufficed, for him; the details didn't matter beyond that they were rebels. (For those of you who want to look it up, this is in Ak. 6:334).
Kant said that the judge ought to offer each of them the choice between death or lifelong slavery. He imagines that one chooses death and the other slavery. The one who chose death should receive his wish and be put to death, because he is "acquainted with something that he values more highly than life, namely honor, while the scoundrel considers it better to live in shame than not at all." The one who prefers slavery should be denied his will, because he has proven he is unworthy of the honor of having his will respected: he should also be put to death.
Hegel was also a retributionist; he thought that treating a man as a man by punishing him only for his own actions was just, whereas punishing a man to deter others was like "raising a stick at a dog," i.e., treating the other men as if they were animals to be intimidated rather than men to be respected. The use of the first man as a mere instrument rather than as an individual worth respect offended both.
Hobbes is mostly a retributionist, but he allows that a valid secondary choice is to correct others liable to the similar offense.
Those are all Modern thinkers, in the philosophical sense of the term -- Hobbes is really Early Modern. Among the Ancients, the exemplary punishment is the usual standard. Plato advocates for it the Protagoras as the only valid reason for imposing punishment.
If you will think, Socrates, of the nature of punishment, you will see at once that in the opinion of mankind virtue may be acquired; no one punishes the evil-doer under the notion, or for the reason, that he has done wrong, only the unreasonable fury of a beast acts in that manner. But he who desires to inflict rational punishment does not retaliate for a past wrong which cannot be undone; he has regard to the future, and is desirous that the man who is punished, and he who sees him punished, may be deterred from doing wrong again. He punishes for the sake of prevention...
Likewise in the Gorgias and the Laws, the latter of which we went through at length together once. The Stoic position is similar, advocated by Seneca in (De Ira 1.19). Aristotle's discussion in the EN, which we also went through together, spells out retributive punishment explicitly, but also allows for deterrence and for restorative punishment as alternative forms.
Not that it has only ancient advocates; deterrence/examples live also in J.S. Mill's utilitarianism, Bentham's as well (Rationale of Punishment).
I'll do a follow-up post later, I think, examining what I said about the issue in my commentaries on the Laws and the EN. For now, I just want to raise the matter for our discussion. What do you think about it?
5 comments:
I would raise the question of exactly what makes these punishments exemplary? I get they appear to be unusually long sentences but I would guess they abide by the sentencing guidelines in place, and the period of incarceration likely will be shortened at least somewhat by parole opportunities. The charges were also quite serious including a potentially lethal assault on a LEO. I would think that merely the publicity surrounding the convictions would be a sufficient warning regardless of the length of the sentences, though the sentence lengths appear to have added to the noteworthiness.
As I recall from my experience in Georgia some years ago, the usual penalty for even first degree attempted murder was half the penalty for murder; and since you can't half-kill someone nor determine half their lives, it was usually assumed a life sentence would be around 40 years, so half of that was 20 years. 100 years is quite a lot longer than 20.
However, I'm less interested in the facts of this case than in the philosophical question they raise. Some might prefer January 6th as an example, where offenses like 'parading' were turned into felonies, and things like trespassing were punished with extraordinary penalties; others regard that as non-exemplary because they feel it was really treason, and they should have all been shot.
Whatever the practical example, the question remains as to whether or not it is good to use punishment to create examples versus to create retribution or restitution for particular acts. That's what I am really after, more than I want to discuss whether this or that case is a good example of it.
Of course, you could also take the sentencing judge's word for it.
https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/antifa-prairieland-ice-protest-prison-sentences-b3001526.html
I think I get the philosophical argument of example versus retribution in an abstraction but I think I'm still hung up a bit on the distinction appearing to hinge on the severity of the sentence. Would a "star chamber" death sentence carried out in secret have any exemplary value versus a public hanging, even though the accused winds up dead either way? I don't doubt this judge, like the judges sentencing those convicted of J6 offenses, claimed the severity of the penalty was meant as a deterrent to others but given our justification of incarceration as rehabilitation I don't think any judge is going to say they are imposing a harsh sentence as retribution.
To your point about secret star chambers, recall that the Laws ends on the suggestion to establish a secret police and Nocturnal Council to spy on and punish any citizen not keeping the law. The entire idea there was to deter through the terror of secret punishments.
So it doesn’t have to be open, though it can. The division is just this: are we punishing just what he actually did, or are we punishing to send a message to others? In the latter case, we are punishing him for things NO ONE has done, indeed for things that haven’t been done. The justice of that is the question.
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