Retributive justice is condign punishment for crimes. Every era has some sort of governing theory of punishment-or several, that are applied. If people use their honest best theory in the era, it may be difficult to find fault with it. If obvious injustice in punishment or correction occurs such that people know it is wrong, then it is wrong. Plainly a continuing quest for improvement in corrections and response to criminal activity is in the best interest of society ( more of a utilitarian concern though).
Secular laws according to various theories of retributive or utilitarian punishment were formed to control non-conformists to legal parameters of social behavior. Some regard them as heartless and so retributive forms are morphed by reformers increasingly into empirical social contracts for progenitors of acceptable sin training for convicts to train them to support secular political powers. That is, they haven’t been designed by those with the laws of God written upon their hearts and minds. They have hearts of stone instead of flesh and minds that are not born of the spirit. I support a more modern synthetic approach to corrections for crimes than retribution. Simple retributive justice may be ineffective except in time of war or civil disorder when summary execution may be required for survival. There are too many people shot out of the canon of life that are incapable of understanding why they are in jail instead of at Harvard. Correction can inform them why, whereas retribution probably won't.
The roles of punishment are to prevent, deter, correct and/or cause suffering to perpetrators of crimes. Durkheim, besides writing the first study of suicide, regarded crime as having some positive value; largely that it supported social change. Yet not all social change is good, some is bad. If for example there were cannibals in Wisconsin that wanted to eat their neighbors , that would not be a positive social change for the good though it would be criminal. Criminal activity rather than reason and social advise and consent to change laws serves revolutionary ends regarding the established governing powers. It is consistent with fascist methods to get what is wanted.
When some laws are unjust or appear so to large numbers of people, that enfilades the nature of social power and control by the ruling sovereign power. Not all people were in agreement with those within ruling power in virtually every nation in the history of man.
In democracy people theoretically try to improve justice and the efficiency of government so that it may function well yet not impinge the personal rights of individuals. Different forms of government may have different theories of punishment, such as execution for anti-state activity.
Retributive theories of punishment originate with payment in kind for criminal offenses; Lex talionis. Because it is impossible to have perfect justice with perfect witness, flawless evaluation of the motive for the offense with mind-reading of perps and victims, there are implicit dangers in the principle of eye for an eye retribution.
The video on Lex Talionis related that it actually provided a measure response to crime that was fair and balanced more or less, rather than excessive.
One can imagine sentencing someone to a lifetime of torture for some minor offense in youth as an example of disproportionate retributive punishment. Yet there were moderate position in disproportionate punishment to that were cognizant of kinship relationship and the need to quell violence.
One made read Tacitus’ Germania for examples of Euro-justice in the1st century a.d.
quote from Germania-“Punishments. Administration of Justice. In their councils an accusation may be preferred or a capital crime prosecuted. Penalties are distinguished according to the offense. Traitors and deserters are hanged on trees; the coward, the unwarlike, the man stained with abominable vices, is plunged into the mire of the morass with a hurdle put over him. This distinction in punishment means that crime, they think, ought, in being punished, to be exposed, while infamy ought to be buried out of sight- Lighter offenses, too, have penalties proportioned to them; he who is convicted, is fined in a certain number of horses or of cattle. Half of the fine is paid to the king or to the state, half to the person whose wrongs are avenged and to his relatives. In these same councils they also elect the chief magistrates, who administer law in the cantons and the towns. Each of these has a hundred associates chosen from the people, who support him with their advice and influence.”
At any rate it is worth noting that much of western common law came not from the ancient Middle East or Greece but from Germania and Britain and their traditions of common law such as the Salic Law of King Clovis in the 6th century. Primogeniture shaped many levels of European society unto the late middle ages and beyond.
Quote concerning wounds from the Salic law… “Title XVII. Concerning Wounds.
1. If any one have wished to kill another person, and the blow have missed, he on whom it was proved shall be sentenced to 2500 denars, which make 63 shillings.
2. If any person have wished to strike another with a poisoned arrow, and the arrow have glanced aside, and it shall be proved on him; he shall be sentenced to 2500 denars, which make 63 shillings.
3. If any person strike another on the head so that the brain appears, and the three bones which lie above the brain shall project, he shall be sentenced to 1200 denars, which make 30 shillings.
4. But if it shall have been between the ribs or in the stomach, so that the wound appears and reaches to the entrails, he shall be sentenced to 1200 denars-which make 30 shillings-besides five shillings for the physician's pay.
5. If any one shall have struck a man so that blood falls to the floor, and it be proved on him, he shall be sentenced to 600 denars, which make 15 shillings.
6. But if a freeman strike a freeman with his fist so that blood does not flow, he shall be sentenced for each blow-up to 3 blows-to 120 denars, which make 3 shillings.
Title XVIII. Concerning him who, before the King, accuses an innocent Man.
If any one, before the king, accuse an innocent man who is absent, he shall be sentenced to 2500 denars, which make 63 shillings.”
Plainly Clovis and people of his day regarded monetary punishment significantly. In light of later material in the course concerning for-profit prisons, that money element is important since there were probably many that could not pay. One would need to do historical research to determine what happened to those without money that were convicted. Plainly the advantage for satisfying legal penalties for those convicted was with the aristocracy and nobles of means, rather than those without.
I wanted to write something about Dr. Knight’s video and comments about Genesis and Adam and Eve. There are numerous ways of shaping retributive justive and for thinking about the people deserving punishment or not, and if the punishment was or should be proportionate. Obviously when one does not comprehend what occurred it is difficult to form a kind of post hoc determination of a punishment being just, fair or whatever with any accuracy.
Dr, Knight’’s account of the fall from the Garden as “a tiny peccadillo” and just eating a fruit plainly was an interpretation of a man without faith in God. He regarded it as a small crime and the killing of Cain by Abel as a large one.
Adam and Eve in the Garden is one of the most interesting stories of the Bible. They incurred correction for the original sin of eating of the tree of knowledge. For those of actual faith in God that was a real fall from grace. The correction was addition of all the characteristics of becoming a biological being in a thermodynamic system with all of the drives inherent across the animal kingdom.
God was concerned that eating of the tree of knowledge had made the disobedient pair ‘as little gods’. He constrained their existence to the temporal Universe therefor before they could also eat of the tree of eternal life and become real problems. That criterion is quite different than the secular and even atheist paradigm that Dr. Knight put forward.
Dr. Knight also did not believe in the divine origin of the Decalogue. He did not regard it as being delivered unto Moses who prophesied essentially that a man of whom King David fit the role would dwell upon the writings day and night. Moses probably invented Hebrew writing and commissioned the writing of works that became the Pentateuch when assembled in the Court of Solomon or Rehoboam formally (and redacted latter).
