{"id":19739,"date":"2020-02-23T23:06:57","date_gmt":"2020-02-23T23:06:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=19739"},"modified":"2020-02-25T15:19:41","modified_gmt":"2020-02-25T15:19:41","slug":"why-trumps-post-impeachment-actions-are-about-vengeance-not-retribution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/why-trumps-post-impeachment-actions-are-about-vengeance-not-retribution\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Trump’s post-impeachment actions are about vengeance, not retribution"},"content":{"rendered":"

Austin Sarat<\/a>, Amherst College<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Since the end of his Senate impeachment trial, President Donald Trump has carried out a concerted campaign<\/a> against his Democratic political opponents<\/a> as well as members of his administration<\/a> who cooperated with them.<\/p>\n

A White House statement<\/a> released immediately after the president\u2019s acquittal seemed to foretell this campaign when it ominously asked, \u201cWill there be no retribution?\u201d<\/p>\n

Reporters<\/a>, commentators<\/a> and Democratic politicians<\/a> have all been using the language of retribution to describe Trump\u2019s post-impeachment actions.<\/p>\n

On Feb. 8 Adam Schiff, one of the House of Representatives\u2019 impeachment managers, said, \u201cPresident Trump is exacting his retribution, removing those who complied with subpoenas, came forward and testified about his misconduct.\u201d<\/p>\n

I am a scholar who studies the meaning of retribution and its role in punishment<\/a>. and such descriptions do not seem quite right to me. President Trump\u2019s actions are vengeful, to be sure, but they are not truly retributive.<\/p>\n

What is retribution?<\/h2>\n

Many contemporary philosophers distinguish retribution from revenge and argue that retribution is the only legitimate basis of punishment<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To take one example, political philosopher Robert Nozick<\/a> explains the essential features of retribution and the way it differs from revenge in his 1983 book \u201cPhilosophical Explanations<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Retribution is not revenge.<\/span>
\ndizain\/Shutterstock.com<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In his view, retribution is a response to a \u201cwrong,\u201d while revenge \u201cmay be done for an injury or harm or slight and need not be for a wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

The wrong to which Nozick refers, like the murder of an innocent person, always involves an unjust or immoral action.<\/p>\n

Without such injustice or immorality, injuries, harms or slights cannot be called wrongs. The impeachment testimony of members of his administration might have injured the president, but injuries, harms or slights do not provide the basis for genuinely retributive punishment.<\/p>\n

Nozick additionally notes that while retribution \u201csets an internal limit to the amount of punishment, according to the seriousness of the wrong \u2026 revenge internally need set no limit to what is inflicted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Others, such as the legal theorist H.L.A Hart<\/a>, concur<\/a> that retributive punishment must be proportional to the wrong committed. In their view, retribution is inextricably bound up with the desire to do justice<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Retribution also must be done impersonally and rationally<\/a> with a guiding concern to give offenders what they deserve.<\/p>\n

Revenge, in contrast, is personal, passionate and often excessive. Because of these qualities, vengeance, as Nozick puts it, \u201cinvolves a particular tone, pleasure, in the suffering of another\u2026\u201d Likewise, political theorist Judith Shklar<\/a> contends<\/a> that revenge is \u201cuniquely subjective, not measurable, and probably an unquenchable urge of the provoked heart.\u201d She too argues that \u201cit is the very opposite of justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a study published in 2008, psychologist Kevin Carlsmith and his colleagues tried to explain<\/a> the excessive quality of revenge. They found that the pleasure in the suffering of another, about which Nozick writes, is ephemeral, leading to recurring efforts to derive satisfaction by ratcheting up the pain inflicted or making others suffer.<\/p>\n

The history of retribution theories<\/h2>\n

Efforts to distinguish retribution from revenge can be traced back to Greek philosophers<\/a>. Over time retribution became more popular, moving from a position of doubt among the ancients to full embrace by the end of the 18th century.<\/p>\n

Socrates<\/a> treated retribution as \u201cignoble and irrational: It piles harm upon harm without accomplishing anything good.\u201d Plato thought<\/a> retribution was too primitive a motive to justify punishment. Aristotle, in contrast, saw a place for it in a just society<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Just before the dawn of the Enlightenment, thinkers also embraced retribution as a form of justice that would civilize and tame the human quest for vengeance.<\/p>\n

The English philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon, writing in 1625, argued<\/a> that \u201cRevenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man\u2019s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.\u201d Bacon associated retribution with divine justice<\/a> and extolled its \u201cmagnificence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eighteenth-century philosophers Immanuel Kant and G.W.F. Hegel are well known for their embrace of retributive punishment and their critiques of vengeance<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnly the Law of retribution,\u201d Kant wrote<\/a>, \u201ccan determine exactly the kind and degree of punishment; it must be well understood, however, that this determination must be made in the chambers of a court of justice and not in your private judgment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s revenge<\/h2>\n

Distinguishing retribution from revenge helps clarify Trump\u2019s post-impeachment actions, such as abruptly ending the National Security Council<\/a> assignment of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and recalling<\/a> European Union Ambassador Gordon Sondland.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Since his impeachment acquittal, President Trump has been punishing many of those he perceives as foes.<\/span>
\nAP Photo\/Evan Vucci<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Trump is striking out at his perceived enemies because of their disloyalty to him<\/a>, not because they did anything unjust or immoral.<\/p>\n

Many condemn Trump\u2019s kind of politics<\/a> and bemoan the damage it does. But calling his actions retributive is not accurate. From my perspective, they are simply vengeful and should be described as such.<\/p>\n

[Insight, in your inbox each day.<\/em> You can get it with The Conversation\u2019s email newsletter<\/a>.]\"The<\/p>\n

Austin Sarat<\/a>, Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst College<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Austin Sarat, Amherst College Since the end of his Senate impeachment trial, President Donald Trump has carried out a concerted campaign against his Democratic political opponents as well as members of his administration who cooperated with them. A White House statement released immediately after the president\u2019s acquittal seemed to foretell this campaign when it ominously […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":19740,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2450],"tags":[771,479,1999,4923,1959,6610,770,1234,99],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19739"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19739"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19757,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19739\/revisions\/19757"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}