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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 June 2015
J. M. E. McTaggart's interpretation of Hegel's theory of punishment has a strange double life. On the one hand it is considered important by philosophers of punishment for setting forth an novel and suggestive account of what we are, or ought to be, doing when we punish wrongdoers. What such writers are interested in is the prospect that a “right to be punished” gives of resuscitating retributivism, giving a non-consequentialist account of punishment which is not grounded in vengeance-seeking or an ineffable intuition of justice. McTaggart's view seems to hold out the promise of such a novel retributivism.
On the other hand, Hegel scholars themselves seem to regard McTaggart's account as dead in the water as an interpretation of Hegel's remarks in the Philosophy of Right (from which his view is clearly drawn). At first sight, after all, there seems to be little textual evidence to support his reading. And two more recent accounts of Hegel's remarks on punishment have nothing to say about one of the central theses for which McTaggart argues, the one which I defend as an interpretation of Hegel here. The question for those sceptical of his reading remains how someone like McTaggart could have fallen prey to such a mis-interpretation; but perhaps it can just be explained as yet another case of a thinker reading his own views into Hegel rather than reading what is there. Perhaps McTaggart was over-zealous in putting forward his own thoughts and overlooked his scholarly duties.
1 McTaggart, J. M. E., Studies in Hegelian Cosmology (1901)Google Scholar, Chapter V, “Punishment”.
2 Two recent writers who devote attention to McTaggart are Duff, R. A., in Trials and Punishments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; and Deigh, John, in “The Right to be Punished: Some Doubts”, reprinted in his Sources of Moral Agency (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 See Cooper, David E., “Hegel's Theory of Punishment” in Pelczynski, Z. (ed.), Hegel's Political Philosophy: Problems and Perspectives (London: Cambridge University Press: 1971)Google Scholar; and Wood, Allen, Hegel's Ethical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 McTaggart, p. 132.
5 McTaggart, p. 133.
6 McTaggart, p. 142.
7 Hegel, , Philosophy of Right, s. 220 Google Scholar.
8 Hegel, , Philosophy of Right, s. 99 Google Scholar.
9 Admittedly McTaggart himself provides insufficient argument for these claims, but see R. A. Duff, Trials and Punishments.
10 At Philosophy of Right, s. 100.
11 Hegel, , Philosophy of Right, s. 36 Google Scholar.
12 There is another kind of force that persons can understand: external compulsion. They can understand that they may be forced to carry out their part of the contract. But what they don't have is the kind of internal compulsion associated with morality and conscience. Yet it is precisely this kind of internal compulsion that Hegel is appealing to in his argument for the right to be punished. (My thanks to Stephen Houlgate for raising this point.)
13 Cooper, David E., “Hegel's theory of punishment” in Pelczynski, Z. (ed.), Hegel's Political Philosophy: Problems and Perspectives, pp. 155–6Google Scholar.
14 My thanks are due to Robert Stern and Stephen Houlgate for comments and conversations on this issue. All errors and lapses of understanding are, of course, entirely my own responsibility.
