The World as Will and Idea, Vol. I — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp
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The translator’s English as printed (R. B. Haldane & J. Kemp). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
form a state, have renounced the doing of wrong, and assumed the task of maintaining the state. Thus the law and the fulfilment of it, the punishment, are essentially directed to the future, not to the 'past. This distinguishes punishment from revenge; for the motives which instigate the latter are solely concerned with what has happened, and thus with the past as such.
All req^uital of wrong hy the infliction of pain, without any aim for the future, is revenge, and can have no other end than consolation for the suffering one has home by the sight of the suffering one has inflicted upon another. This is wickedness and cruelty, and cannot be morally justified. Wrong which some one has inflicted upon me by no means entitles me to inflict wrong upon him.
The requital of evil with evil without further intention is neither morally nor otherwise through any rational ground to be justified, and the juvs talionis set up as the absolute, final principle of the right of punishment, is meaningless. Therefore Kant’s theory of punishment as mere requital for requital’s sake is a completely groundless and perverse view.
Yet it is always appearing in the writings of many jurists, under all kinds of lofty phrases, wliich amount to nothing but emj)ty words, as : Through the pimishment the crime is exi)iated or neutralised and abolished, and many such. But no man has the right to set himself up as a purely moral judge and requiter, and punish the misdeeds of another with pains which he inflicts upon him, and so to impose penance upon him for his sins.
Nay, this would rather be the most presumptuous arrogance ; and therefore the Bible says, “ Vengeance is mine ; I will repay, saith the Lord. But man has the right to care for the safety of society ; and this can only be done by interdicting all actions which are denoted by the word “ criminal,” in order to prevent them by means of coimter-motives, which are the threatened punishments. And this threat can only be made effective by carrying it out when a case occurs in spite of it Accordingly that the end of punishment, or more accurately of penal law, is the deterrence from crime, is a truth so generally recognised and indeed self-evident, that in England it is expressed in the very old form of indictment which is still served by the counsel for the Crown in criminal actions, for it concludes with the words, “ If this be proved, you, the said N.
N., ought to be punished with pains of law, to deter others from the like crimes in all time coming. If a prince desires to extend mercy to a criminal who has justly been condemned, his Ministers will represent to him that, if he does, this crime will soon be repeated. An end for the future distinguishes punishment from revenge, and punishment only has this end when it is inflicted in fulfilment of a law.
It thus announces itself as inevitable in every future case, and thus the law obtains the power to deter, in which its end really consists. Now here a Kantian would inevitably reply that certainly according to this view the punished criminal would be used “ merely as a means.
This proposition, so unweariedly repeated by all the Kantians, “ Man must always be treated as an end, never as a means,” certainly sounds significant, and is therefore a very suitable proposition for those who like to have a formula which saves them all further thought ; but looked at in the light, it is an exceedingly vague, indefinite assertion, which reaches its aim quite indirectly, requires to be explained, defined, and modified in every case of its application, and, if taken generally, is insufficient, meagre, and moreover problematical.
The murderer who has been condemned to the punishment of death according to law must now, at any rate, and with complete right, be used as a mere means. For public security, the chief end of the state, is disturbed by him ; indeed it is abolished if the law is not carried out. The murderer, his life, his person, must now be the means of fulfilling the law, and thereby of re-establishing the public security. And he is made such a means with perfect right,
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in fulfilment of the contract of the state, which was entered into by him because he was a citizen, and in accordance with which, in order to enjoy security for his life, freedom, and property, he has pledged his life, his freedom, and his property for the security of all, which pledge has now been forfeited.
This theory of punishment which we have established, the theory which is directly supported by sound reason, is certainly in the main no new thought ; but it is a thought which was almost supplanted by new errors, and therefore it was necessary to exhibit it as distinctly as possible. The same thing is in its essence contained in what Puffendorf says on the subject, "De Officio Hominis et Civis” (Bk. ii. chap. 12). Hobbes also agrees with it, “ Leviathan ” (chaps. 15-28). In our own day Peurbach is weU known to have maintained it. Indeed, it occurs even in the utterances of the ancient philosophers. Plato expresses it clearly in the “ Protagoras ” (p. 1 1 4, edit Bip.), also in the “ Gorgias” (p. 168), and lastly in the eleventh book of the “ Laws ” (p. 165). Seneca expresses Plato’s opinion and the theoiy of all punishment in the short sentence, “ Nemo 'prvdens punit, guia peccatum est ; sed ne peccetur ” (De Ira, L 1 6).
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