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Punishment and Remorse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Jenny Teichman
Affiliation:
New Hall, Cambridge

Extract

Certain unwise, careless, or as we say, ‘self-destructive’ actions often bring in their train consequences unpleasant to the agent according to natural law. If an agent through folly or otherwise acts in a way which shows that he has ignored or forgotten predictable or possible consequences people will say ‘it serves him right’, meaning ‘he ought to have foreseen that’. Sometimes they will even say ‘he got what he deserved’. For these reasons such consequences can be called punishment, or a kind of punishment.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1973

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References

1 ‘On Punishment’, Analysis 14 (1954).Google Scholar

2 The Right and the Good, Appendix II.