A Review of The Ethics of Social Punishment

Linda Radzik observes that, while traditional punishment and the ethics of blame have been well-canvassed by philosophers, “almost no one” has offered sustained “reflection on permissible versus impermissible forms of railing and pouting and blustering and crying and condemning” – all mundane ways of enforcing morality in everyday life (15). Not content to rail or pout and bluster about this lacuna, Radzik’s The Ethics of Social Punishment fills it. But she does much more than that, offering readers a sophisticated analysis of social punishment, its justification, and its practice – topics that have only become more timely and central to our lives in the years since its publication.

The book is divided into three parts.

The first, consisting of three chapters, brings together Radzik’s Descartes Lectures.

Part One Chapter One, “Defining Social Punishment,” distinguishes between social punishment and the familiar notion of legal punishment. Whereas legal punishment is meted out by the state, social punishment is carried out by individuals, groups, organizations, and firms. Radzik then marks a difference (3) between formal social punishment (e.g., firings, groundings, suspensions, deplatformings), and informal social punishment (rebukes, naming, shaming, public acts of dissociation, and boycotts). While formal punishment often follows closely behind informal punishment campaigns (46), Radzik rightly observes that they deserve a separate treatment. Radzik accordingly sets aside formal social punishment to focus on the informal variety.

Radzik recognizes that, if talk of social punishment is to be more than metaphorical, it must share more than a name with its legal counterpart. In this spirit, she notices that the standard definition of punishment (authorized, intentional, reprobative, retributive harming) makes no formal reference to states (9-11). Wishing to reserve language of retribution for other purposes, Radzik substitutes the word reactive in its place. She then argues that rebukes and other social punishments can satisfy each condition. For example, suppose you notice a friend’s spouse, Ana, behaving flirtatiously behind his back. Knowing that it will end their relationship (harming Ana), you tell your friend over drinks what you’ve seen. Your status as a social equal authorizes you to do this. You do so intentionally, and in reaction to your perception that Ana has committed a wrong. Finally, your conversation expresses your disapproval for this wrongdoing, thereby counting as reprobative.

Part One Chapter Two asks: under what conditions is social punishment justified? Again, taking her lead from existing accounts of legal punishment, Radzik endorses a ‘mixed’ view, according to which justified social punishment must satisfy two conditions (26-28). The first is the desert condition which rules out that punishment can be justified on purely instrumental grounds. Targets of justified social punishment must have committed some wrong. The second is the instrumental condition which rules out the allegedly “blood-thirsty” possibility that harming others might be justified simply because they have committed wrongs. Radzik stipulates that, in addition to harming a wrongdoer, justified social punishment must stand to do some good. Against standard accounts, neither deterrence nor other kinds of benefits to victims is sufficient. Instead, justified social

punishment must mark an effort to coerce or pressure the wrongdoer to atone for her wrongdoing, aiming at her moral improvement (41-45).

Part One Chapter Three raises various in-practice problems with justifying social punishment. Not only will efforts to socially punish misfire when punishers are mistaken about whether a wrong has occurred, but the practice of social punishment is also characterized by some distinctive difficulties (52-58). Unlike its legal cousin, for example, targets of social punishment rarely enjoy due process. It is difficult to socially punish in public without creating a chain of events that will often violate the proportionality constraint. Social punishers can often have ulterior motives rendering their behavior problematic. Additionally, they often proceed in ways that are at odds with Radzik’s instrumental condition. For example, many practice social punishment through gossip. But since gossip does not confront the wrongdoer with her wrongdoing, it cannot press her in the direction of moral improvement. Finally, the practice of social punishment often foists costs on third parties. In spite of these challenges, Radzik argues plausibly that it is possible to practice social punishment well.

Part Two consists in chapter-length replies from Christopher Bennett (Chapter 4), George Sher (Chapter 5), and Glen Pettigrove (Chapter 6). Critics put pressure on Radzik’s definition of social punishment, its justificatory structure, and its implications when applied to real-world cases. Radzik’s replies constitute Part Three, a single chapter (7). Her replies, which range from concessive to non-concessive, represent so many illuminating displays of Radzik’s virtues as a philosophical interlocutor.

I agree with much of Radzik’s analysis (and have relied on her work extensively in my own work on social censorship). But I will close this review my marking two issues on which we disagree.

First, I am unsure about the authorization condition in Radzik’s definition. Radzik leverages this condition to explain why some people (e.g., hypocrites) are not in a position to punish. To illustrate, she has us imagine that you have a habitually late friend (19). Call her Susan. As you arrive late to an appointment, Susan upbraids you for failing to take her time seriously. “That’s rich,” you think: “Surely Susan is in no position to punish me, given how often she’s kept me waiting!”

That Susan is in “no place” to punish you is surely right. But this judgment is ambiguous between two interpretations. On the first, forced by Radzik’s definition, Susan’s hypocrisy means that her upbraiding is not punishment. On the second, however, Susan does punish, but her punishment is inappropriate. It seems right for you to complain that Susan has no right to punish you for her one-off tardiness in equal measure as it seems odd to deny that her upbraiding really is punishment. This goes too for the legal case: the unauthorized tyrant’s punishing the righteous dissident is an atrocity in equal measure as it is nevertheless clearly punishment.

Radzik might reply by invoking the distinction between attempted punishment and punishment. In failing to meet the authorization condition, Susan really cannot punish. But she can try! And this might be enough to do justice to our intuitions about the case. For the time being, it seems to me that Susan really does punish, rather than merely trying to.

Likewise, it seems to me sensible for parents to complain, in the midst of a nasty divorce, that their children are unjustifiably punishing them by behaving badly, despite the fact that, generally, children lack the authorization to punish their parents. Of course, Radzik simply inherits the authorization condition from existing accounts of punishment. But it might have paid, I think, to subject that analysis to scrutiny, rather than taking it on board wholesale. Doing so might have encouraged her to move the authorization condition from punishment’s definition to its justification-conditions or to weaken the condition that appears in the definition.

Second, and more significantly, Radzik says that, in order to punish justifiably, the punishment must be aimed at improving the moral situation of its targets. It is not enough that the punishment-target has committed a wrong, nor is it enough that punishing her would deter others, nor is it even enough that punishment would vindicate the wrongdoer’s victims, restoring her dignity. Justified punishment requires in addition that it aims at and is likely to result in moral improvement for the punished agent. While this insistence seems generous to wrongdoers, I worry that it doesn’t take victims’ interests sufficiently seriously.

Suppose I do you a severe wrong, but my constitution is such that nothing that you do to me is likely to push me to atone or morally improve. In cases like this, prospective punishers cannot rationally aim at my moral improvement. I am too morally stubborn for that. And yet it seems to me that, if my wrongdoing is serious enough, punishing me can be justified by invoking the severity of the wrong that I have committed, the importance of deterrence, and the importance of restoring your (the victim’s) status. To Radzik’s sensibilities, punishing me under these circumstances for these reasons instrumentalizes me for the sake of securing goods for others. To my own, failing to punish me instrumentalizes you to protect me when, by hypothesis, I have already failed to treat your interests appropriately seriously. While there is much to admire in Radzik’s caution about punishment, I worry that she is simply too cautious. It is one thing to insist on an instrumentalist condition to rule out that punishment can be justified when it harms a wrongdoer without doing any good (though I am not always sure about such conditions). It is another to insist that part of the good aimed at must be the wrongdoer’s own.

Such quibbles aside, Radzik’s latest book has started an important conversation. The Ethics of Social Punishment should be of interest not just to academics, but to anyone who has wondered about what we owe to each other in contexts of wrongdoing. Radzik’s accessible treatment of these issues displays wisdom, clear-thinking, and an admirable concern for both moral progress and the dignity of wrongdoers. Not only does Radzik’s book mark an important contribution to the scholarly literature, it also stands to help its readers live better by informing their practices of social punishment. I recommend it highly.

Thank you to J. P. Messina for sharing this beautifully articulated review!