The Intrinsic Value of Retribution

Retributivist approaches to the philosophy of punishment are usually based on certain fundamental moral claims. One of these claims is also accepted, or at least treated sympathetically, by some consequentialists. It is this: -/- Intrinsic Value : The deserved suffering of morally guilty wrongdoers has intrinsic value. -/- IV is sometimes supported by the construction of examples similar to Kant’s ‘desert island’. These are meant to show that there is intrinsic value in the suffering of a wrongdoer, even if none of the familiar goals of punishment, such as deterrence, will be achieved. When suitable variants of such examples are presented, it is evident that there cannot be much intrinsic value in such suffering, relatively speaking, even if there is some. The same problem besets retributivist claims that guilty wrongdoers deserve to suffer, or that justice requires us to make the guilty suffer. Such claims are, at best, relatively weak normativel