Invention of punishment

[timelets]

Nietzsche brainstorming exercise:

At any rate, so as to give some idea of the uncertain, supplementary, and accidental nature of the meaning of punishment and of the manner in which one identical procedure can be employed and adapted for the most diametrically opposed objects, I will at this point give a scheme that has suggested itself to me, a scheme itself based on comparatively small and accidental material.
—Punishment, as rendering the criminal harmless and incapable of further injury.
—Punishment, as compensation for the injury sustained by the injured party, in any form whatsoever (including the form of sentimental compensation).
—Punishment, as an isolation of that which disturbs the equilibrium, so as to prevent the further spreading of the disturbance.
—Punishment as a means of inspiring fear of those who determine and execute the punishment.
—Punishment as a kind of compensation for advantages which the wrong-doer has up to that time enjoyed (for example, when he is utilised as a slave in the mines).
—Punishment, as the elimination of an element of decay (sometimes of a whole branch, as according to the Chinese laws, consequently as a means to the purification[Pg 95] of the race, or the preservation of a social type).
—-Punishment as a festival, as the violent oppression and humiliation of an enemy that has at last been subdued.
—Punishment as a mnemonic, whether for him who suffers the punishment—the so-called "correction," or for the witnesses of its administration.
---Punishment, as the payment of a fee stipulated for by the power which protects the evil-doer from the excesses of revenge.
—Punishment, as a compromise with the natural phenomenon of revenge, in so far as revenge is still maintained and claimed as a privilege by the stronger races.
—Punishment as a declaration and measure of war against an enemy of peace, of law, of order, of authority, who is fought by society with the weapons which war provides, as a spirit dangerous to the community, as a breaker of the contract on which the community is based, as a rebel, a traitor, and a breaker of the peace.

14.

This list is certainly not complete; it is obvious that punishment is overloaded with utilities of all kinds.

--- F. Nietzsche, Geneaology of Morals.

f: T × X -> Y

Comments

[chuka_lis]

о!.