ABSTRACT
This account seems to me philosophically myopic since it incorporates into itself, as conditions of punishment, what properly belong only to one form of it - legal punishment. More importantly, in so doing it has confused punishment with penalisation. What distinguishes penalisation as a form of imposition is that the person penalised has broken a rule (irrespective of whether this also involves moral failure). Hockey players and pupils no less than legal offenders can be penalised. But such penalisations can qualify as punishments (whether or not deserved) only if the ground for penalisation is considered to involve moral failure. Penalties for being off-side or for adding up incorrectly do not normally constitute punishments (though they can, albeit undeserved). The legal paradigm also leads to confusion over the distinction between punishment and revenge. On that account, revenge is understood as an unauthorised imposition. 6 However, what distinguishes revenge is that the revenger has been hurt in some way (irrespective of whether this expresses or is believed to express moral failure) , and wishes 'to get his/her own back'. You could take revenge on a teacher who was recognised to have justly punished a delinquent student, but you could hardly punish the teacher. It is motive rather than status which distinguishes revenge from punishment. Given the psychological complexity of human beings, a particular imposition might be describable both as punishment and as revenge.
