May 31, 2008
If utilitarianism is our public philosophy as it were, then the significance of 'harm', is the key concept for utilitarians to judge what is good and bad in terms of consequences.
Of course, many law and order conservatives reject utiltiarianism in favour of desert. Retributivism offers a model that is not about consequences at all. Instead, retributivism is about punishing offenders because they deserve punishment. Deserve punishment means to be morally blameworthy. The retributivist thus believes that the sole just end of punishment is to make the morally blameworthy suffer the sanctions we call punishment.
Thus Bill Henson, for Betty Johnston, deserved punishment. The guilty deserve punishment; punishment is their just desert. Punishment is proportional to guilt. People are punished because they are guilty, and for no other reason. Henson was guilty for Johnson. For her it is wrong not to punish the guilty. For her the consequences of punishment are irrelevant to determining when and how much to punish.
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