Philosophy Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for those interested in the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Obviously, punishment itself can have an extrinsic value: it may encourage fewer people to offend. But how has anyone argued for the intrinsic, rather than extrinsic, value of retributive justice?
I imagine that the idea is that some people have performed etc. so much evil that they forfeit the claim to freedom, happiness, etc.. But losing a right to something isn't the same thing as having that thing taken away.
Kant argues that retributive justice is intrinsically good, as it is a "categorical imperative", i.e. it constitutes a categorical obligation, discovered by pure reason, to punish a criminal. He rather says that punishment can be just only if it is retributive, and not because it serves some other sociopolitical ends.
Hence, as a categorical imperative, the society is ethically obliged to inflict punishment for a wrongdoing. Such a punishment is an end in itself.
However, since the categorical imperative opposes anything carried out through impulse or natural inclination, a punishment out of hatred or desire for revenge is immoral. It should be made as per the cold calculations of justice alone.
Retributive justice is rooted in the primitive concept of 'fairness.' Its intrinsic value is something that every school-kid knows instinctively: "If you punch me, I get to punch you, then we're even." Of course, there are tremendous issues with determining what's 'fair' in adult contexts, and in particular it is difficult to distinguish the desire for retribution from the desire for vengeance; vengeance always calls for disproportionate punishment, because that seems 'fair' to the victim.
We can only talk about retributive justice by itself as an abstract ideal, because in the real world the concept of 'fairness' is far too subjective to be operationalized uniformly. However, every form of systematic justice aims at fairness of one sort or another, so they all implicitly require retribution of one sort or another. Retributive justice is always blended into other conceptions (such as prevention and rehabilitation).
The long and the short of it is that retribution and restoration are both natural moral motives/purposes/what-have-you, so the issue is a priority problem like Kant's regarding happiness and virtue (as outlined in Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone) or Rawls' two principles of Justice. Sociopolitical systems founded on the priority of retribution gravitate towards authoritarianism (since you need an external authority to punish others but not to redeem oneself), which suggests that punishment is a less pressing concern, ideally/all things considered.
See also (though I myself have yet to actually read it) Foucault on discipline and punishment (I think).
