The Ethics of Social Punishment: The Enforcement of Morality in Everyday Life

Description

How do we punish others socially, and should we do so? In her 2018 Descartes Lectures for Tilburg University, Linda Radzik explores the informal methods ordinary people use to enforce moral norms, such as telling people off, boycotting businesses, and publicly shaming wrongdoers on social media. Over three lectures, Radzik develops an account of what social punishment is, why it is sometimes permissible, and when it must be withheld. She argues that the proper aim of social punishment is to put moral pressure on wrongdoers to make amends. Yet the permissibility of applying such pressure turns on the tension between individual desert and social good, as well as the possession of an authority to punish. Responses from Christopher Bennett, George Sher and Glen Pettigrove challenge Radzik's account of social punishment while also offering alternative perspectives on the possible meanings of our responses to wrongdoing. Radzik replies in the closing essay.

Linda Radzik is Professor of Philosophy at Texas A&M University. She is the author of Making Amends: Atonement in Morality, Law and Politics (2009), as well as a series of articles on the normative issues that arise in the aftermath of wrongdoing. Christopher Bennett is a Professor in the Philosophy Department at the University of Sheffield. He is the author of The Apology Ritual: A Philosophical Theory of Punishment (Cambridge 2008), as well as numerous articles in moral, political and legal philosophy. Among other things, he is currently working on expressive action and normative powers. Glen Pettigrove holds the Chair in Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow. He is the author of Forgiveness and Love (2012) and numerous articles in academic journals, including Ethics, Nous, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, and the Australasian Journal of Philosophy. George Sher is the Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Philosophy at Rice University, where he has taught since 1991. Before coming to Rice, he taught first at Fairleigh Dickinson University and then at the University of Vermont. His research interests range over topics in ethics, political philosophy, and moral psychology. He has edited or co-edited a number of anthologies, and is the author of seven books, including Desert (1987), Beyond Neutrality: Perfectionism and Politics (1997), In Praise of Blame (2006), and Equality for Inegalitarians (Cambridge, 2014). His most recent project is a book on freedom of mind entitled A Wild West of the Mind.

'The Ethics of Social Punishment uses the philosophy of punishment to bring some conceptual clarity to aspects of social life that have long gone unnoticed by moral philosophers. It shows us how we make use of the power to punish in everyday life, and tries to determine when we are justified in doing so. This book will be instructive for both moral and political philosophers as well as for any social scientists interested in the conceptual basis of informal social control.' Jacob Abolafia, Tel Aviv University