Retributivism
Past wrongdoing and proportionate desert can provide reasons for punishment.
What it claims
Retributivism looks to past wrongdoing rather than only future benefits. Positive versions hold that culpable wrongdoing supplies a reason to impose a proportionate punishment; limiting versions emphasize constraints against punishing the innocent or exceeding desert. Kant insists that a person must not be punished merely as a means to another benefit.
Nearby positions
Goes together with
Opposed to
Key thinkers
Immanuel Kant · Michael S. Moore · R. A. Duff · Herbert Morris · Jean Hampton