This paper offers a response retributive theory of punishment, taking the role of the punisher as well as the relations between the parties to punishment to be central to retributive justification. It proposes that punishment is justified in terms of the ethics of appropriate response, and more precisely, in terms of the duty agents have to dissociate from the devaluation inherent in the culpable wrongdoing of others. The paper demonstrates that on such account, while the harm and suffering involved in punishment are rightly imposed, they are not good, grounding a further duty to mitigate our retributive practices. The result is a moderate vision of retributive justification, which has the resources to justify, not only criminal punishment, but punishment as imposed across a wide variety of relations: private, institutional and political.

本文提出了惩罚的回应报应理论，将惩罚者的角色以及惩罚各方之间的关系作为报应辩护的核心。它提出，就适当反应的伦理而言，惩罚是合理的，更准确地说，就责任代理人必须与他人有罪不罚所固有的贬值相分离而言。该文件表明，因此，虽然惩罚所涉及的伤害和痛苦是正确施加的，但它们并不好，从而为减轻我们的报复行为奠定了进一步的责任。结果是对报复性正当化的温和愿景，它有资源来证明不仅是刑事处罚，而且是在各种关系中施加的惩罚：私人、制度和政治。