Atonement Retributivism

Abstract

In this article I will illustrate how concepts such as wrongdoing, guilt, remorse, penance, atonement, reconciliation, forgiveness and punishment are interlinked in a pattern which is reminiscent of the way pieces in a jigsaw puzzle are interlinked with each other. I would like to label this conceptual “puzzle” atonement retributivism. Atonement retributivism should not be regarded as a theory, justifying punishment. Rather, it is an illustration of a vocabulary which illuminates how deeply rooted punishment is in our moral lives. This illustration shows that classical and modern theories on punishment have redefined punishment in a way which tears it apart from its conceptual roots. One practical consequence of this philosophical mistake is that the moral aspects of punishment are not recognized by our modern legal system. Hence, punishment no longer serves as penance and thus has lost its moral content.

Notes

1. Immanuel Kant, “The Right to Punish,” in Punishment and Rehabilitation (ed. Jeffrie G. Murphy; Belmont: Wadsworth, 1973), 35–36.

2. Ted Honderich, Punishment: The Supposed Justifications (Hutchinson: Harcourt Brace, 1969), gives a comprehensive critical analysis of the theories of punishment.

3. For more detailed information on this subject I can refer to Claes Levin, Uppfostringsanstalten – Om tvång i föräldrars ställe (Lund: Arkiv förlag, 1998), and Kerstin Svensson, Straff eller behandling?: om statens strategier mot gränsöverträdande ungdom under 1900-talet (Lund: Socialhögskolan, 1998).

4. The “sick old hag” in question is Aliona Ivanova, the pawnbroker whom Raskolnikov subsequently murders.

5. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment (New York: Penguin books, 1980), 72–73.

6. Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (London: The Athlone Press, 1970 (1789)), ch I, §10.

7. Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment, 399.

8. Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment, 407.

9. One is tempted to say here, that the devil must be utilitarian.

10. Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment, 408.

11. Raimond Gaita, Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1991), 56.

12. Raimond Gaita, Good and Evil, 34–35.

13. Raimond Gaita, Good and Evil, 48.

14. Gitta Sereny, Into the Darkness – from Mercy Killing to Mass Murder (London: Pimlico, 1995 (1974)), 129.

15. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (New York: Penguin books 1980), 283.

16. Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 286.

17. Simone Weil, First and Last Notebooks (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), 115–116. Quoted from Peter Winch, “Ethical Reward and Punishment,” in Ethics and Action (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972), 219. An example which comes to mind while reading this passage is that the daughter of Ratko Mladic (the general who ordered the genocide of about 8000 men and boys in Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in 1995) committed suicide when she learned what her father did. See Slavenka Drakulic, They Would Never Hurt a Fly: War Criminals on Trial in the Hague (London: Time Warner Books, 2004).

18. Winch, “Ethical Reward and Punishment,” 220.

19. Elizabeth Wolgast, The Grammar of Justice (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 181.

20. Wolgast, The Grammar of Justice, 182–183.

21. Gaita, Good and Evil, 56.

22. Peter A. French, The Virtues of Vengeance (Lawrence: U. P. of Kansas, 2001), 94.

23. Jeffrie Murphy, ”Two Cheers for Vindictiveness,” Punishment and Society 2 (2000).

24. French, The Virtues of Vengeance, 94.

25. French, The Virtues of Vengeance, 12.

26. French, The Virtues of Vengeance, 85.

27. Plato, Gorgias (London: Penguin books 1960), 53.

28. Gaita, Good and Evil, 61.

29. Simone Weil, The Need for Roots: Preludence to a Declaration of Duties towards Mankind (London: Routledge classics, 2002 (1949), 21.

30. Weil, The Need for Roots, 22.

31. For a comprehensive historical account of the changes described here, I would like to refer to my PhD thesis Straffets grammatik (Åbo: Åbo Akademi University Press, 2002). Roddy Nilsson, En välbyggd maskin, en mardröm för själen (Lund: Lund U. P., 1999), gives an excellent account of the development of the prison system in the 19th and 20th centuries.

32. Paul Leer-Salvesen, Att döda: samtal kring skuld och straff (Stockholm: Rabén & Sjögren, 1990), 108. My translation from Swedish.

33. Leer-Salvesen, Att döda, 129. My translation.

34. Leer-Salvesen, Att döda, 130. My translation.

35. Leer-Salvesen, Att döda, 132. My translation.

36. Leer-Salvesen, Att döda, 165–166. My translation.

37. Leer-Salvesen, Att döda, 185. My translation.

38. Leer-Salvesen, Att döda, 123–124.

39. Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 67.

40. Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 68.

41. Weil, The Need for Roots, 26–27.