The Varieties of Retributive Experience

Christopher Bennett “The Varieties of Retributive Experience”

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The Varieties of Retributive Experience1

Published in Philosophical Quarterly vol. 52 no. 207 (2002), pp. 145-163.

ABSTRACT: Retribution is often dismissed as augmenting the initial harm done rather than

trying to ameliorate it. I argue that this criticism rests on a crude view of retribution. Looking

at our actual practice in informal situations – the workings of the reactive (properly called

retributive) sentiments – we see that retribution is true to the gravity of wrongdoing, but does

aim to ameliorate it. Through wrongdoing, the offender becomes alienated from the moral

community. They remain a member of that community but their action places their

commitment to its core values in doubt. We recognise this limbo status in blaming, which

takes the form of a withdrawal of civility and solidarity, symbolising the moral distance the

wrongdoer has put between us. Atonement is the means by which they make themselves “at

one” again with the community. Retribution is properly understood as a cycle which

recognises disruption and alienation but aims at reconciliation.

“Bryson pushed open the door to his office. It was half-past nine and, as usual, his six

colleagues were already at their desks, heads buried conscientiously in the day’s work. It was

a familiar scene. He’d grown to expect it over the couple of years he’d been working there.

What was slightly unusual today, though, was that no one looked up at his arrival. That was a

bit of a shame. It was always a positive start, something that he looked forward to amid the

early-morning drudgery, that moment of walking in and exchanging knowing smiles with his

1 I am very grateful for the comments of Robert Stern, Leif Wenar, Antony Duff, David Owens, Rae Langton,


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fellow-workers, that moment of silently saying to each other, “Well, here we are again, eh?”.

An expression of solidarity, he realised; but maybe they were all too busy today.

“Morning, everybody!” he called cheerfully across the office. For he would coax it out of

them yet, that little morning smile. But - it grew stranger - no one answered his hello. More

than that, someone seemed even to tut, as if he had done something inexpressibly stupid.

What was going on? And then - strangest of all - Julia, a colleague with whom he had always

thought he got on particularly well, looked up at him with a look of unmistakable scorn,

before turning with a shake of her head back to her work.

He had offended them. That much was rapidly becoming clear. But what was it he had done?

He tried to remember. Was there a new agreement to be silent when entering the office that

he’d forgotten about? No, it wasn’t that. He looked at the clock. Coming on for twenty-five

to. He was late. He was always late, come to think of it. The rest of them were always here

dead on time, or before, and had got well stuck in by the time he arrived. That was a bit stupid

on his part, he had to admit. There was no better way to cause resentment than to give the

impression you weren’t serious about your responsibilities. They were quite right to be a bit

angry. Especially when the enterprise depended on them all carrying their weight. All right,

all right. So that would have to change. And it wouldn’t take that much, even. It was a stupid

thing not to make the effort.

He made his way to his seat. But the continued silence was still unnerving him. Was it really

his being late that was bothering them? It was pretty serious treatment just for that. “Okay, so

Richard Holton and John Bishop, which have helped me in developing the ideas expressed in this paper.


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why the cold shoulder? What have I done then?” His voice rang out over the quiet. But still

nothing.

And then he got it. It was Carol. He had recently begun a relationship with this woman Carol:

he’d thought it was just what he needed. The only problem was, he was still seeing his long-

term partner, Kate, and she didn’t know anything about it. But he remembered Carol saying

that she knew Julia. And of course, Julia was friends with Kate. So that was it: Julia was

coming down on him for his two-timing. Maybe she had told the rest of the office. Maybe she

had even told Kate.

The possibilities closed in on Bryson, each one a dead end for him. That’s it, then. Good

while it lasted, but it would have to stop. A daft thing to do anyway. Kate would be so angry.

And she would be right to be too. It occurred to him that maybe she wouldn’t even let him

apologise. Maybe she would just be away. Maybe she’d gone already. He’d pushed it too far

this time. What had he been thinking of anyway, playing around like that? Gambling with

Kate’s feelings like that? Not caring a whit for her feelings, if it came to it. He deserved what

was coming to him. He deserved all their anger, their cold-shouldering. He wasn’t a good

person. He could see that.

He shifted in his chair and settled in for what promised to be a very unpleasant morning.”

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The point of this story is to draw our attention to some familiar facts. These are facts

about the moral psychology of wrongdoing, about how we feel moved to treat those who

have done wrong, and how we expect the wrongdoer to understand and respond to that

treatment. From these facts I believe that we can learn something important about the

virtues of retributivism. By examining the moral psychology that seems natural to us we

can understand more clearly our intuitive commitment to retribution. Indeed we can

understand more clearly what retribution is, and why it is morally acceptable, even

morally admirable.

I think that looking in the first instance at state punishment will make it unlikely that we

will be able to read the meaning of retribution directly from the workings of that process

(for instance because of the possibilities the institutions at present are inadequate to the

purposes of retributive punishment). My own view is that we would do better, if we seek

to understand and justify our approach to wrongdoing, first of all to be clear about our

reactions in informal, everyday situations.2 Once we are clearer about the meaning of

retributive action, we will then find, I believe, that we are in a better position to

understand what we are doing in state punishment and through what institutions it might

best be carried out. In this paper I will draw out the structure of retribution through a

close examination of the example given above, and I will indicate how on this account the

classic criticisms of retributivism miss the mark.

2 Other writers who share this concern are e.g., R. A. Duff, Trials and Punishments (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1985); and Michael S. Moore, “The Moral Worth of Retribution” in F. Schoeman (ed.),

Responsibility, Character and the Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 189-219.


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In this paper I will be looking at the “reactive attitudes,” sentiments such as resentment,

indignation, remorse and – more fundamentally, on my view – blame and guilt.3

However, I will not refer to these sentiments as the “reactive” attitudes. I will draw out

the often overlooked fact that by reactive attitudes, we really mean retributive attitudes.

In other words, I will show the extent to which our participation in the reactive attitudes

betrays a commitment to retribution, to the thought that it is non-contingently a good

thing that one who has done wrong should undergo certain forms of suffering. Theorists

who make use of the idea of reactive attitudes want to justify the stance of holding people

responsible with reference to our susceptibility to reactions of blame, resentment,

indignation, but they don’t want the success of their project to hang on there being a

justification for retribution.4 My analysis will suggest that this strategy is not viable, and

that a defence of a practice of responsibility that involves “reactive” attitudes ought to

have something to say about why it is all right that they are retributive.

It is probably no coincidence that the retributive element in our moral psychology has

been consistently under-stated. The idea of retribution is not a popular one in our

3 This phrase was coined by P. F. Strawson, “Freedom and Resentment” in G. Watson (ed.), Free Will (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 59-80. Note that I am using the narrow interpretation of the reactive

attitudes, i.e., that which focuses on the sentiments mentioned and does not include, for instance, gratitude,

forgiveness and love. On the wide and narrow interpretations, see R. Jay Wallace, Responsibility and the Moral

Sentiments (London: Harvard University Press, 1994), pp. 25-33.

4 Strawson himself seems to want to reduce the justification of retribution to a justification of the stance of

holding people responsible: “The making of the [moral] demand is the proneness to such [reactive] attitudes.” (p.

77) R. Jay Wallace takes a similar line, arguing that “In expressing these [reactive] emotions . . . we are

demonstrating our commitment to certain moral standards, as regulative of social life.” See his Responsibility

and the Moral Sentiments, p. 69. For Christine Korsgaard, although “it is a mistake to make these reactions

[blame, resentment, etc.] central,” it is “certainly a concomitant of holding someone responsible that you are

prepared for blame, resentment and the other reactive attitudes.” (See her “Creating the Kingdom of Ends:

Responsibility and Reciprocity in Personal Relations” in her Creating the Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 188-221, at p. 196.) With each of these writers, but particularly the first

two, there is an attempt to sneak in a justification of the retributive attitudes as a corollary of merely holding

each other responsible, or treating each other as persons. But this strategy is vulnerable to the objection – made

in Lawrence Stern, “Freedom, Blame and Moral Community,” Journal of Philosophy vol. 71 (1974), pp. 72-84 –


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theoretical culture. It is easy, after all, to reply to the claim that “they deserve to suffer”

with Bentham’s “all punishment is mischief; all punishment is in itself evil.”5 But the

apparent moral weakness, some would say repugnance, of retribution rests on a

misrepresentation, a crude picture of what retribution involves – or so I will argue.

Consider the following account:

“The primitive sense of the just – remarkably constant from several ancient

cultures to modern intuitions . . . – starts from the notion that a human life . . . is a

vulnerable thing, a thing that can be invaded, wounded, or violated by another’s

act in many ways. For this penetration, the only remedy that seems appropriate is a

counterinvasion, equally deliberate, equally grave.”6

Nussbaums’s use of the term “primitive” is telling. Retribution is sometimes thought of

as a dark force in our blood, a link with the more brutal and superstitious lives of our far

ancestors that, civilised though we present ourselves as being, we cannot fully overcome.

And indeed, if retribution was only the felt need to respond to harm with like harm that

Nussbaum describes, we would be rightly suspicious of it. Then the classic criticisms

would have real bite. For how does the second infringement “remedy” the first? Why

isn’t our response to wrongdoing simply a doubling of the first harm? It is said that

“justice requires” such suffering, but if this view of justice isn’t self-evident – and it isn’t

– why can’t anything philosophically satisfying be said in its favour?7 Given the proven

that a practice involving reactive or retributive attitudes could be replaced by one based on the rational criticism

of the offender’s actions, say in the form of counselling.

5 J. Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation in J. S. Mill and J. Bentham

Utilitarianism and Other Essays, A. Ryan (ed.) (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987), p. 97.

6 Martha C. Nussbaum, “Equity and Mercy” Philosophy and Public Affairs 22 (1992), pp. 83-125, p. 89.

7 Cf. T. Honderich, Punishment: The Supposed Justifications (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), Ch. 2.


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difficulty of articulating the point of seeking justice, on this view of it, the claim that the

retributive urge is our irrational, morally suspect but ineradicable birthright gains

credence. It might indeed be, as Nietzsche thought, a cruel streak in our comfortable

modern selves.

I hope to make it clear, however, that these criticisms rest on a superficial picture of our

retributive experience. The reason for the apparent moral weakness of retribution has

been the failure to understand, on a reflective level, the very specific sorts of suffering

that we expect wrongdoers to undergo, their meaning and moral significance. It sounds

cold-hearted to snarl, “They deserve to suffer” – and we imagine the sadistic

schoolmaster, or the fires of hell. But is it really this (physical) kind of suffering, or even

the “like for like” suffering imagined by Nussbaum, that is really involved in retribution?

By drawing attention to the moral psychology of this area, and to the specific varieties of

retributive experience, I hope to show that there is a strong case to be made in favour of

retribution, and that we need not be ashamed of our retributive attitudes.

1. Call . . .

Alienation

The first thing that I want to draw out of our story is the way Bryson’s colleagues treat

him. Their relations - which the story gives us every reason to believe have been normal

up until this point - are suddenly marked by a kind of withdrawal on the part of his

colleagues. They are cold to him; they refuse to be drawn into engaging with him. Bryson


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attempts to be friendly, but they refuse to respond in the usual way. They give him the

cold shoulder. They refuse to speak to him. They don’t give him the usual sorts of

friendly treatment or solidarity that he expects from them. They ignore him or treat him

with a kind of aversion. They withdraw from him.

This strategy of withdrawal is entirely familiar to us.8 It is our most natural expression of

moral disapproval.9 It isn’t specifically resentment, moral disapproval at one who has

done me harm.10

It is open to Bryson to interpret his colleagues’ behaviour as either

resentment at his laziness or as a more impersonal disapproval of his philandering. This

behaviour, which I will call blame, is directed at the wrongdoer as such rather than as

someone who has hurt me in particular (though there is an important question about when

– in relation to which sorts of wrongs, and assuming what sorts of prior relationship – it is

our business to blame a particular wrongdoer11

). If you consider that someone has acted

unspeakably, the first thing you are disposed to do is to stop speaking to them, and to stop

helping them. You stop offering them the basic goodwill that two human beings might

normally expect of each other. It is not quite that you ignore them; it is not as if they no

longer exist as far as you are concerned. If anything, they are likely to occupy your

attention more than usual. It’s not that you withdraw from them out of lack of interest;

rather you impose the strategy on them as a sign of your disapproval or outrage.

8 C.f. “we’re not on speaking terms” as an admission that you are engaged in a serious moral dispute, or that one

person has reason to blame the other. 9 See T. L. S. Sprigge, “Definition of a moral judgement” in G. Wallace and A. D. M. Walker (eds.), The

Definition of Morality (London: Methuen, 1970), pp. 119-145.

10 Strawson takes resentment as the fundamental reactive attitude. Indignation – the more impersonal reaction

that he discusses – is then treated as vicarious resentment. As will become clear, however, it is my view that it is

really the impersonal form – blame, as I will call it – that is central, as symbolising the wrongdoer’s alienation.

11 My thanks to Antony Duff for making me clearer about this point.


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That sounds slightly too deliberate (although as we will see below there is something that

we are “trying to achieve” in blaming). What I mean to draw attention to, in calling this

strategy of withdrawal an “expression” of moral disapproval, is that it is the outward face

of a particular emotional state (albeit one with strong cognitive elements), namely blame.

As such, it is not strictly to be understood as an action that we engage in in order to bring

about some further effect; rather we engage in it because of our emotional state.

(Compare Rosalind Hursthouse’s discussion of “arational actions,” such as jumping with

joy or tearing a lover’s clothes in jealousy, of which it is true to say: “(i) that the action is

intentional; (ii) that the agent did not do it for a reason in the sense that there is a true

description of the form “X did it in order to . . .” or “X was trying to . . .” which will . . .

involve, or imply, the ascription of a suitable belief; and (iii) that the agent would not

have done the action if she had not been in the grip of whatever emotion it was, and the

mere fact that she was in its grip explains the action as much as anything else does.” )12

Emotions issue in characteristic forms of behaviour – as John Skorupski observes, fear

disposes to flight, anger to attack, grief to mourning.13

This behaviour is not purposive in

the sense that we intend it for some further goal. In order to understand, explain or

rationalise it we need not ask for what end it is carried out. Rather it is appropriate as the

issue of the emotion itself. We do not regard the behaviour that mourning consists in to

be rationally suspect merely because it does not seem to be carried out for any further

purpose than that we are grieving and that this is what mourning consists in. The same

goes for the expression of blame.

12 See her “Arational Actions,” Journal of Philosophy 88, no.2 (1991), pp. 57-68, p. 59. My thanks to Rae

Langton for this reference.

13 J. Skorupski, “The Definition of Morality” in A. Phillips Griffiths (ed.), Ethics: Royal Institute of Philosophy

Supplement: 35 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 121-144, at p. 136.


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Now the form that this expression of moral disapproval takes is not accidental. We

withdraw from wrongdoers, cutting them off, no longer treating them as ones with whom

we share a community and to whom we have special ties and duties. On my view, the

behaviour characteristic of moral disapproval expresses the alienation of the offender

from our moral community.14

In wrongdoing, one acts against certain values that can be

understood as structuring the life of a moral community – whether it be a family, a group

of friends or workmates, an association, or a society. The wrongdoer fails to display the

commitment that we expect from a member of the community to the way of life that that

community embodies. The wrongdoer’s identity as one committed to certain values, and

to a mode of life and community structured by those values, is put into doubt. As a result,

the wrongdoer, though they may remain a community member, is in a peculiar position, a

limbo state neither fully inside nor fully outside the community. And it is this alienated

state that is expressed when we withdraw from wrongdoers the treatment that they would

expect qua members of our moral community. The emotion expressed can therefore be

seen as a complex of thought, perception, feeling and action, all of it centred on a

perception of the offender’s alienation from the values that structure the moral

community, the values to which they are, or ought to be, committed. When we withdraw

normal treatment from those we deem to have done wrong we are saying that they have

alienated themselves, that they have estranged themselves from our values and the life

structured by those values.

14 Cf. J. Skorupski, “The Definition of Morality”, esp. pp. 136-7; “Morality and Ethics” in E. Craig (ed.),

Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, vol. 6 (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 564-571; and “Freedom,

Morality and Recognition: Some Theses of Kant and Hegel” in his Ethical Explorations (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1999), pp. 160-189, esp. pp. 180-1.


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This leads us to our first variety of retributive suffering. Rather than simply demanding “an

eye for an eye,” retribution first of all requires the suffering that is imposed on the wrongdoer

by the withdrawal of the other members of the community. Social animals that we are, it can

be tremendously distressing when others act as if we are not there, refuse to speak to us, or act

only rudely towards us. We are deprived of (at least part of) our place in the social world, and

for the vast majority of us, that is something very important. This is a fact that is overlooked

by the rather anodyne phrase, “reactive attitude.” Once we understand what such attitudes

actually involve, the possibility of dissociating them from a justification of retribution begins

to look unlikely.

Blame or moral condemnation, as an emotional state, issues in behaviour that symbolises the

wrongdoer’s alienation from the community, family, group of friends, etc. But it would be

wrong to understand the expression of the emotion of blame as a mere release of pent-up

emotion, such as might be taken out on a punch-bag. For one thing, it is an emotion that

expresses itself in a very particular form of behaviour, which behaviour is directed at a very

particular object, namely, the offender. For another thing, blame is not the same as anger: it

issues in withdrawal rather than attack.

It would also be wrong, however, to think of this behaviour as showing that the offender has

been “cast out” of the community. The metaphor of alienation captures the fact that the

wrongdoer remains a member of the community, albeit one whose status has become

problematic. When we look at the mode of expression that blame takes, though, we find

withdrawal, but withdrawal that the wrongdoer is very much intended to recognise. Bryson’s

colleagues are not just ignoring him. Far from it: they want to make sure that he notices that

they aren’t speaking to him. Blame, like the idea of alienation, therefore has these two faces,


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recognition of membership at the same time as recognition of distance. It is no coincidence,

therefore, that blame is directed at the wrongdoer, and that we intend the wrongdoer to notice

what we are doing. Bryson very quickly realises that he has offended his colleagues, as most

of us would, were we unhappily placed in a position like his. The cold-shouldering he

receives is so obviously the expression of resentment or blame at a perceived wrongdoer that

it would take someone of very thick skin not to see it.

This suggests that the behaviour that expresses blame is, after all, an attempt to bring

something about, namely, that the offender recognise that we are disapproving of him. You

don’t just cut someone off: you want them to be aware that you are cutting them off.

Withdrawal is a tremendously powerful symbol of disapproval. It allows blame to take on, not

just an expressive, but a communicative role.15

It communicates moral condemnation - the

perception of offence - to the offender. And we all understand this symbolic, communicative

role. Bryson behaves as any of us would by making the inference from cold-shouldering to

disapproval.

In a complex way, then, blaming behaviour is both expressive and purposive. The reason that

you engage in the blaming behaviour – the withdrawal of solidarity, etc. – is that you are

experiencing the emotion of moral disapproval. But the behaviour that is the characteristic

expression of blame has a purposive as well as an expressive or symbolic side. On the one

hand it symbolises the wrongdoer’s alienation; on the other, it aims to communicate that

alienation to the wrongdoer.

15

Thomas Nagel makes this point in relation to the workings of aggression, though some of what he says

actually makes it sound as if he has blaming in mind: “If I am angry with someone, I want to make him feel it,

either to produce self-reproach by getting him to see himself through the eyes of my anger, and to dislike what he

sees – or else to produce reciprocal anger or fear, by getting him to perceive my anger as a threat or attack . . .


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This analysis of blame is immune to the traditional criticisms of accounts of blame, such as

the utilitarian one, that understand it as a technique we employ as a means to an end. For

instance, my account allows that blame is properly backward-looking, justified by a past

wrong and not simply by the likelihood of getting the wrongdoer to change her behaviour. It

also allows that you can blame someone “in your heart” and that blame is not just blaming;

my point is that insofar as blame is expressed, it issues in the behaviour I discuss, but this

doesn’t rule out the possibility that blame often remains unspoken. As a result, my account

has no problem accounting for the intentional content of self-blame, that is the judgement that

you yourself have done wrong (notoriously a problem if blame is a technique of behaviour

modification).16

But my account also evades traditional consequentialist criticisms of blame

as a social practice; for, as we will see in the following section, I stress that there is some

purpose to blame, some good that blame can be understood as an attempt to achieve.

We have already begun to see how blame aims at some result. Blame essentially involves the

attempt to bring the wrongdoer to share your disapproval. This last point is often overlooked.

As with sex, blaming is an activity that superficially appears to consist in one person doing

something to another – and indeed abortive or perverted forms of blame can be like this. On a

deeper understanding, though, they both involve something that can only properly be done

together.

This accomplishment constitutes the fulfilment of my emotion.” See “Sexual perversion” in his Mortal Questions

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 39-52, at p. 46.

16 For these criticisms of “forward-looking” accounts of the moral sentiments, see R. Jay Wallace, Responsibility

and the Moral Sentiments, pp. 54-8.


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Repentance

Not only do we try to communicate the fact of our disapproval; we aim to bring the

wrongdoer to share it. Bryson behaves as any of us would in trying to find out the reasons

for his being shunned. It would be very strange for him to realise that he had offended his

colleagues yet not to ask himself what he had done to cause offence. It is natural for us to

want to find out whether the harsh treatment is justified, for a start, so that we can defend

ourselves and clear our names. But it would also just be strange for someone to leave

such a momentous turn-around in their relations with others unexplained, or not even to

search for a reason. We don’t like the unexplained, and we don’t like to be in our fellows’

bad books; these two facts are enough to show why it should be natural to expect that

someone who is blamed should ask themselves why.

This questioning leads Bryson on to a further realisation. He not only comes to see that he

must have offended the others, or have done something to awaken their indignation, but, in

trying to find out what he has done, he begins to review his own conduct, to see it in a new

light. He asks himself how his colleagues must see him. He tries to find out what he has done

to provoke their reaction. He sees his behaviour “from the outside”; he imagines how it would

have appeared to someone else. In doing so, though, he comes to take their point of view

more seriously. He comes to imagine how his actions affect others. He comes to think about

his conduct from a perspective dislocated from his immediate aims and desires. And this

brings him to see that what he has done is something that he doesn’t really think that he ought

to have done. He sees his action as one that others could rightly blame him for. He comes to


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see that he has harmed other people, people he cares for. He accepts their blame. Accepting

blame represents a kind of moral progress.17

When he accepts that he is blameworthy, Bryson comes to see his action in a different light.

What light did he see it in before? Well, here we are hampered by not knowing very much

about Bryson. But let’s speculate. Although he’s obviously got some sensitivity, he’s also the

type who seems a bit carefree, a bit happy-go-lucky, who likes to be cheerful, to have a good

time, not to get bogged down in too many worries. One of his redeeming features seems to be

that he wants others to be as cheerful as himself, and that he is affected when they are not.

But his main motivation is a kind of laddish turn towards good times, fun and easy peace of

mind. Given these details of his character, we can say something about how he might have

seen his conduct beforehand. Okay, so he turned up late every morning for work; okay so he

was cheating on his partner. We can imagine him thinking of these misadventures as the kind

of thing that might cause people to shake their heads amusedly and say, “He’s a one, isn’t

he?” He might think of people secretly approving of him arriving late at work, and cheating

on Kate, because it shows that he has a bit of life in him and isn’t stifled by duty. He might

think of it as a virtue of youth. And he might think that those who disapprove are only the

straight-laced ones who have no fun in them.18

Blame changes all this. No doubt it is important in this case that Bryson is blamed by people

he respects, people whose good opinion he seeks, and whom he has independent reason to

“authorise”. Regardless of whether their disapproval was justified, if it weren’t people he

17

Cf. I. Dilman, Morality and the Inner Life (London: Macmillan, 1979), Ch. 5; and R. A. Duff, Trials and

Punishments, pp. 58-9. 18

For a vivid (and not judgemental) description of such a character, see Alan Sillitoe, Saturday Night and

Sunday Morning (London: W. H. Allen & Co., 1958).


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respects who were blaming him then he could too easily dismiss them as straight-laced

killjoys. But he can’t do this with his colleagues, who have been sympathetic to him before.

And this makes him reflect. He begins to see his conduct from a different perspective. He

begins to see it, not just as something that people might, if they were being unsympathetic to

him, say was wrong (whereas if they were “on his side”, they would see the funny side of it,

or see that he was just sowing his wild oats), but as something that he knows and feels to be

wrong himself. He becomes aware of the damage he might be doing to people’s feelings, to

his relationships with them, and starts to think about how he really ought to treat people, what

they have a right to expect of him. Rather than laughing off his responsibilities when they

clash with what he feels like doing, he comes to think that he ought to be taking them a bit

more seriously.

Once Bryson begins to accept blame there comes a change in the nature of his suffering.19

When Bryson’s state of mind is the realisation that he has offended the others, his suffering is

simply the cold-shouldering he receives. No one likes that; everyone wants to be on good

terms with their neighbours, especially with those they respect. But when Bryson comes to

see, not just that he has offended the others, but that he has done wrong, as well as the cold-

shouldering now is the painful feeling of guilt. Guilt is a kind of pain you impose on yourself;

you might say it involves giving yourself the cold shoulder. It is the pain that comes from

knowing that you have willingly violated something deeply important. Guilt is a kind of self-

alienation; it comes about when you withdraw from yourself in the way that the other

19

Cf. I. Dilman, Morality and the Inner Life, pp. 71-2, on the contrast between the internal and external relation

of pain to the experience of punishment.


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members of the moral community withdrew from you.20

It is the feeling that your self is

divided, that part of you is pulling away from what you really take to be important.

So far I have drawn attention to two specific varieties of suffering that are involved in

retributive experience, the suffering of lost solidarity and the suffering of guilt. Pointing out

how unsettling and painful it is to suffer this loss of solidarity, and how far the expression of

blame is bound up with making the offender notice it, moves us away from talking about

innocuous “reactive” attitudes and towards the recognition that these sentiments are fully

retributive. So too does pointing out that the expression of blame is fundamentally incomplete

unless it brings about guilt and repentance. It should be clear also that the view of our

retributive experience that is emerging shows the picture of retribution as like for like harm or

as indiscriminate suffering that wrongdoers deserve, to be woefully inadequate. Not only does

that picture fail to discriminate between varieties of suffering, it also fails to capture the

proper meaning of these elements, which have to do with their role as responses to the

wrongdoer’s alienation. What I want to do now is to look at a further element that is missing

on the crude picture. For there are further varieties of suffering involved in the retributive

experience; they have their place in another aspect that the crude picture has no room for,

namely the constructive or redemptive side of retribution.

2. . . . and response

When Bryson is treated as his colleagues treat him, it constitutes a rupture in their relations.

They have put their disapproval of him “on the record”:21

it can’t be ignored or left under the

20

See J. Skorupski, “The Definition of Morality”, p. 136. 21

Cf. J. Skorupski, “The Definition of Morality”, p. 137.


18

surface. It has to be confronted in some way. One option open to Bryson is to break off

definitively his relations with those who blame him. They have withdrawn from him, so he

can withdraw from them. But the awakening of feelings of guilt suggests that Bryson will not

find a more permanent distancing satisfactory. Guilt is like a persistent question: it nags; it

searches; it seeks some kind of resolution. As Bryson begins to feel guilt, he realises (for he’s

really quite a reflective sort) that he does actually care for the people he has hurt. He cares

about having hurt them. That is what makes him feel bad.

So it’s unlikely that he will be happy to acquiesce in a separation. (Which is not to say, of

course, that he won’t unhappily acquiesce in it, or that he won’t attempt to bury his guilt,

ignoring it. Unresolved, unacknowledged guilt is a common and destructive phenomenon in

human relationships. But let’s say for the sake of argument that Bryson doesn’t acquiesce in

separation.) His guilt suggests that he will move on to a stage that the story doesn’t consider

in any detail: how Bryson might get past the stage of feeling guilt and being treated with

aversion. Following the rupture he will seek reconciliation. How might he repair his

relationship with his colleagues? Or with Kate? How can he move from rupture to

reconciliation?

These questions suggest a more constructive view of guilt than is usual, at least on a

theoretical level, in our culture. As my headings suggest, I understand guilt to be part of

repentance (albeit a secular form), that is, a form of moral progress, a moral re-awakening.

One part of repentance is an imaginative shift: it is a recognition that your life is morally

divergent from the life to which you really aspire. But the other side of this is the formation of

an intention, or a determination, to do better in future, to resuscitate your commitment to the

mode of life you have failed to live up to – and, of course, action on that intention. For a start,


19

then, Bryson needs to revise his conduct, to refrain from any further indulgence in the wrong

he has done. He needs to break with Carol immediately; and he needs to start to pull his

weight in the office. He needs to start behaving as he ought to have in the first place.

It is a strange but persistent fact, however, that this determination to reform is not all that is

demanded of Bryson at this stage. Imagine that that is all he did by way of response to his

wrongdoing. Is it likely that the parties he has wronged would accept him as one they were

reconciled with? Would it be possible for him to feel reconciled with them? I think that we

would feel quite distant from someone who felt that all that was necessary, in the aftermath of

some wrong they had perpetrated, was for them to rectify their future conduct. To do that, we

would say, would be to behave as if nothing had happened. It would just be to do as he ought

to have in the first place. Even if his behaviour from that point on were impeccable, there

would be something missing. What would be missing would be an acknowledgement that he

had done something wrong. He wouldn’t have done anything to show that he was sorry for

what he had done.

I think that in this sort of case, in which someone simply reformed their conduct, and did

nothing further, nothing to make up for what they had done, we would think that they had

ignored the fact that it is incumbent upon them, as the wrongdoer, to do what they can to

remove the bad consequences of their action.22

It is up to them to do what they can to restore

the situation to the way it was before their wrongdoing, so far as that is possible. What are the

bad consequences of wrongdoing? Obviously it will depend on the crime, but it will usually

comprise at least the following. First of all, hurt feelings caused by the wrongdoer’s adoption

22 On the consequences of wrongdoing, and the process of atonement by which a wrongdoer attempts to remove

them, see R. Swinburne, Responsibility and Atonement (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989), Ch. 5.


20

and display of a hostile attitude towards the victim (and not just the victim but the victim’s

family and anyone else who might feel threatened by the crime). Secondly, the harm done to

persons and property. And thirdly – what is often overlooked – the wrongdoer’s alienation

from the community. It is this last point, indeed, that is central. For it is only as elements of

the wrongdoer’s attempt at reconciliation with the moral community, and hence only as

expressions of sincere repentance, that actions undertaken to remove the other consequences

of wrongdoing – namely, hurt feelings and harm to persons and property – have their true

significance.

Apology

What does Bryson need to do to show that he is sorry? One thing that the story does mention

is apology.23

Bryson worries that Kate might not even let him apologise. If he wants any kind

of reconciliation then he has to at least try to apologise. Similarly, he can apologise to his

work-mates for being late and abusing their trust. But is an apology enough? If he apologised

and rectified his future conduct, would that be sufficient to repair his relationships with Kate

and his colleagues? In our example, Bryson has two things to apologise for, his slackness at

work, and his betrayal of Kate. Let’s deal with these separately, for the course of action he has

to take to effect a reconciliation may be quite different in the two cases.

Bryson’s colleagues are fed up with his perpetual lateness and the extra burden this places on

them. In response, he starts arriving on time and taking his responsibilities more seriously. He

also stands up and apologises to his colleagues for his past conduct. Would that be enough?

23

Cf. Paul Griseri, “Punishment and Reparation”, Philosophical Quarterly vol. 35, no. 141, pp. 394-413, at pp.

403-5.


21

The crucial thing is that Bryson has to be sincere, he has to show an awareness of the

significance of what he has done (or left undone). His colleagues have each had to bear a

heavier burden due to his slackness; they have done work that it was his responsibility to do.

It would be natural to say that he owes them something for this work done on his behalf. He

has to recognise that they have been doing him a favour across the time that he has been

slacking. And his apology will be judged insincere if he doesn’t show that he recognises it.

Reparation

In a way, he has to express gratitude at the work they have done for him, and one good way of

expressing gratitude is to return the favour. In this example, it makes sense to think that he

has incurred a debt to them through his actions, and that he owes them some kind of

compensation. By his actions, he has treated them unfairly, and he owes them something to

restore the fair balance.24

He could make amends, for instance, by offering to do favours for

them, to cover for them while they have a break, and by going out of his way to help them

when he can. If he is sincerely sorry for his past conduct, and the inconvenience it has caused,

he will be expected to be sensitive to the need for compensation. The sincerity of his apology

will be judged by it.

Penance

24

This is the kind of case in which the “fair play” account of retribution put forward, e.g. by H. Morris in

“Persons and Punishment” (Monist 52 (1968), pp. 475-501) and J. G. Murphy in “Marxism and Retribution” (in

his Retribution, Justice and Therapy (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1979), pp. 93-115), does seem to be appropriate. But

note that compensation, or restoring the fair balance, as I understand it, is only one part of the process of

apology, a process which itself does its job properly only as a sincere expression of guilt.


22

If Bryson apologises without showing any sign that he realises that he owes his colleagues

something then they may well be justified in judging that he is not fully sincere, that his

remorse is all on the surface. On the other hand, if he shows willing to return what he owes

then that may well be the end of the matter. It is worth noting, however, that there is another

element in our retributive vocabulary which may or may not come into play in this case, but

which is likely to be involved in instances of more serious wrong. Bryson can make good on

the debt he has incurred, by doing for his colleagues as they did for him, but we might feel

that this isn’t enough. It is to restore things to the way they were in material terms, but does

nothing to recognise that his commitment to the group enterprise has been put in doubt by his

laziness.

Above and beyond merely making up for what he ought to have done in the first place, there

is the thought that he could do something purely to say sorry. For instance, he may bring in a

packet of biscuits, or a bunch of flowers for the office. This is nothing very serious, but then

again, all things considered, neither was his offence a very bad one. (If I stole your car then,

as well as returning it and compensating you for any damage I had done to it, I would

certainly be expected to do more than just verbally express how sorry I was.) The main point

is this: on top of repairing the damage he has caused, he might be expected to do something

more, something which involves some extra sacrifice to himself and benefit to the group,

however small.25

25

Richard Swinburne talks about the importance - in certain cases at least - of doing something extra,

“something more than mere compensation” as a “token of [your] sorrow”. He quotes St Anselm: “When anyone

pays what he has unjustly taken away, he ought to give something which could not have been demanded of him,

had he not stolen what belonged to another”. See Swinburne, Responsibility and Atonement pp. 83-4.


23

While compensation is quite clearly to restore the victim’s losses, the point of this extra

element doesn’t seem to be that. Its significance seems to be more expressive. It is an extra

benefit that might (but need not) be done to the victim (that is, the benefit could be to the

community more generally – especially in the case where the victim is no longer on the

scene). If it was left out, we wouldn’t complain that the victim had been inadequately

compensated, or that she had been denied something that was hers by right. Rather we would

take its omission to say something about the character of the offender: it would show, perhaps

(and especially if the wrong was more serious) that they were insufficiently sorry. The point

of this extra element is just the same as that of the apology - namely, to express the

wrongdoer’s dissociation from the wrong - but it does it in a deeper way.

So much for Bryson’s response to his offence against his work-mates. His offence against

Kate is a much bigger thing to repair. How can he “make it up to her”, as we say? It’s difficult

to know how to interpret this phrase. It’s not clear what there is for Bryson to “make up” to

Kate, that is, what he can be said to owe her. For although he has clearly caused Kate harm, it

seems inappropriate to treat this case as one of incurring a debt. There isn’t a clear sense in

which he can replace what she has lost, as he could if he had stolen her car, or smashed her

favourite vase. He can try to repair her hurt feelings, but apart from that it seems wrong to say

that he has to repair harm he has caused. Talk of “making it up to her” is opaquely

metaphorical if it makes us think of Bryson’s response along the lines of compensation or

reparation. What Bryson has to do is somehow to resuscitate the credibility of his

commitment to the relationship. This is done inadequately if it is conceived in terms of

restoring to Kate some lost benefit. A loving relationship is not like a contract, and it is


24

inappropriate to use concepts from contract or property dealings to capture the obligations it

involves us in.26

(The wrong doesn’t seem like an offence against the good of fairness.)

The feeling that Bryson has to “make it up” to Kate does show the need for him to do

something in response to his unfaithfulness, even if that something is not best characterised as

compensation. It is not my business here to go into the potentially embarrassing question of

exactly what kinds of things Bryson might do to repair the relationship. Some things are best

left to the couple themselves. What I am interested in, though, is in how whatever is done is

to be characterised. It seems to me that the best way to think about Bryson’s response in this

situation is, not in terms of compensation, but rather in terms of the purely expressive “extra

element” that I noted above. He has to do something that involves some sacrifice to himself,

and presumably some benefit to Kate, as a way of expressing his dissociation from the wrong

and demonstrating that he is sincerely sorry. This is exactly what Bryson has to do in this

case: what he needs to do is resuscitate the credibility of his commitment to her; he needs to

show something about himself, that he isn’t to be identified with the person who cheated on

her. He needs to show that he is truly sorry for what he did.

It is this that people in these situations try to express sometimes with flowers, meals out, and

so on - and they seem painfully inadequate. But maybe that’s because they involve fall short

of what is needed and therefore reek of insincerity. I suggested that Bryson might do

something like bring flowers to his office to apologise to his colleagues. But what is a

sufficient undertaking in one instance, when all you have done is inconvenienced your

26

Cf. Vincent Brümmer, “Atonement and Reconciliation”, Religious Studies 28 (1992), pp. 435-452, at pp. 439-

440.


25

colleagues, may not be sufficient for a more serious wrong. So perhaps flowers and meals out

won’t be enough for Bryson to restore his relationship with Kate.

In the cases I have discussed here, we have imagined the wrongdoer showing the victim that

he is sorry. It is important to realise, however, that these are not the only cases in which

showing that you are sorry can be relevant. For instance, imagine what a wrongdoer might do

if the victim is no longer on the scene. In our story, Kate may not accept Bryson’s apology.

She may not let him see her. His unfaithfulness may quite quickly lead to the break-up of

their relationship. In that case, Bryson has no way of restoring his commitment to her.

Nevertheless, if he is morally serious, his motivation to express his dissociation from the

wrong may well remain. For his relationship with Kate is not the only one damaged by his

action. For a start, there are his colleagues, who have withdrawn from him. He wants to

regain their goodwill. But there is also his relationship with himself, if I can put it that way.

He still feels guilt for what he has done.

This suggests that the reconciliation that he seeks is, not just with Kate, but with the moral

community more widely, or with his own self-respect as a moral agent. He needs to recover

his place in the moral community, from which his wrongdoing alienated him. To achieve this,

he may feel it necessary to do some good that he wouldn’t have done in the normal course of

things. If Kate is still around, then she will naturally form its focus, but if she is not, it may

still have to take place in her absence. But this suggests that the fundamental reconciliation is

with the moral community.

The same point is suggested by the following possibility. Let’s say Bryson sees Kate,

confesses all, apologises, and she, either because she is not particularly strong-willed, or


26

because she is particularly compassionate, forgives him immediately. She gives him her

goodwill without insisting on any further expressions of remorse. She promises to treat the

matter as if it hadn’t happened, to forget about it: she says she doesn’t want their relationship

to be soured by negative feelings. In that case he may have repaired that relationship, but what

of the others? We might still think that Bryson’s colleagues have reason to be suspicious of

him, or to continue their withdrawal. They might think that, although it is Kate’s right to

forgive him when she sees fit, nevertheless he has still to redeem himself in their eyes. He has

still to show that his change of heart is genuine. And similarly with his own self-respect: it

might be that, even having been forgiven by Kate, he would be wrong to forgive himself so

easily. Showing that he is truly sorry may remain necessary regardless of the victim’s

reaction.

In concluding this section, we can say that the process of reconciliation that we expect the

wrongdoer to undergo involves suffering in a number of ways. First of all, there is the loss of

face involved in apologising. Secondly, there is the need to restore to the victim what they

lost as a result of the crime, out of your own resources, which I called reparation. And thirdly,

there is the need to do something more, something beneficial which it costs you to bring

about, either to the victim, or the victim’s family, or to the community as a whole. I called

this penance. The willingness to undergo these forms of suffering is a sign of sincere

repentance. These forms of suffering are all part of the process that we call “making

amends.”27

27 The argument of this paper has much in common with that of John Skorupski on what he calls “the dialectic of

atonement” (see “Freedom, Morality and Recognition”, pp. 182-4). The structure of retribution is conceived of

as a cycle, moving from rupture to reconciliation, which is mirrored in the structure of the emotions of blame and

guilt. One issue on which the present paper goes further than Skorupski, I think, is in regard to his question of

whether we can justify the claim that reconciliation requires the suffering of the offender. Skorupski suggests (p.

184) that the search for justification comes to an end with the “structure of feeling which underlies the . . .

symbolism” of retribution. I agree, if “justification” means something foundational, directed at all-comers. But I


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3. Conclusion

What I have told is a story of alienation and return, alienation through wrongdoing and return

through a process that involves apology and often compensation, but may also require a

further undertaking to demonstrate one’s repudiation of the wrong. Telling this story has

allowed us to discriminate more finely between the varieties of suffering that justice demands

from a wrongdoer. But it also gives the lie to the view that the reactive attitudes are not bound

up intimately with retribution, or that the one could be justified without the other.

Alienation is the central point in the story. It is the one from which the other elements

emanate, like the spokes of a wheel. A wrongdoer has become alienated from those values

that ought to structure our lives, those values to which we ought to be committed. This

alienation from the moral community – the community whose mode of life is structured by

those values – is expressed in the withdrawal or cutting-off that constitutes blame. And this

was our first variety of retributive suffering. The wrongdoer’s own sense of alienation - of

bad self from good - that is felt as guilt, or self-blame. (Variety of suffering number two.)

And it is the desire to overcome this alienation, to achieve reconciliation, that issues in

attempts to make amends, all of which are painful or detrimental: they have to apologise,

compensate any victims, but then also go further, in order to demonstrate renewed

commitment (three, four, five?). Just as the withdrawal of support and recognition can be

think that one can do more to articulate the meaning of these emotions – and hence justify them, in some sense,

to those who have them – than Skorupski allows. This is done by pointing out that blame is directed at the

wrongdoer’s troubled commitment to moral values; and that atonement is an attempt to re-establish that

commitment. Thus it is not suffering as such that achieves reconciliation, but suffering that comes about from

undertaking to do some extra, unasked-for good, for it is this that re-establishes moral commitment. This is an

important point for thinking about the kinds of punishment through which reconciliation can be achieved.


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seen as the characteristic expression of blame, so this process of “making amends” can be

seen as the characteristic expression of guilt. It is this metaphor of isolation or alienation that

underpins the symbolism, and the strength, of retribution.

Now this paper is not the place to justify the metaphor of alienation. Such a justification

would be necessary in order to show that a retributive response to wrongdoing really is

necessary, and that we would not do better to re-make our practices in a more therapeutic

direction: I believe that it is to be found in the idea that blame and the expectation of

repentance are responses that are necessary if we are properly to recognise the offender as

“one of us”, a member of our moral community. But that is not my topic here. What I have

tried to do here is to suggest that we often operate with a simplistic picture of retribution,

according to which justice requires “an eye for an eye.” I argued that it is from this picture

that the usual criticisms of retribution stem. But if we look at these criticisms in the light of

the account of retribution we now have before us, we see that they lose their force.

Retribution no longer looks like a pointless piling of one harm on another. It is not mere

vindictiveness. Rather it is constructive and redemptive, allowing the wrongdoer to recover

her place in the moral community.

Christopher Bennett

University of Sheffield

[email protected]

The Varieties of Retributive Experience

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