Kara, odpowiedzialność, wolność – refleksja nad "Freedom and Resentment"

The article aims to briefly present Peter Strawson’s view expressed in his seminal article Freedom and Resentment (1962). We start with certain remarks on the position of the article among other works by Strawson and on reasons of its vast popularity manifested by many modern authors interested in the issues of responsibility or free will. Next, we move on to the issue of interpretation of the central thought of Strawson’s work. To do this, we present the most common interpretation, which at the first glance seems to express the core of Strawson’s view in a fairly convincing way. Then we adopt a slightly different perspective on the main line of reasoning in the article in question and in this context we try to interpret its general message. We argue that the main topic of the article is the philosophical issue of punishment. For this is the problem which – if we are right – is the proper object of the debate between an optimist who is also a compatibilist and a pessimist who is also a libertarian