It is no doubt a sign of the march of secularism that most men now believe that, if there were any justice in the world, they would be better rather than worse off. In their opinion it is not mercy that they need, but compensation. The world has done them wrong. What does an academic philosopher deserve who writes prose such as the following?

That buttress or maybe more integral part of the proposition of grievance desires needs to have added to it what can be distinguished from it, and was mentioned in passing a minute ago.

Certainly he needs the mercy of the critic; but, according to the author of those words, the distinguished philosopher Ted Honderich (the Grote Professor Emeritus of Philosophy of Mind and Logic at University College London), he cannot deserve anything. It is one of the burdens of his influential book Punishment: The Supposed Justifications, recently revised as Punishment: The Supposed Justifications Revisited, that desert as a justification for punishment is an incoherent concept.¹ And since almost all retributive theories of punishment ultimately depend upon desert as their justification, it follows that all such theories are mistaken.

The history of retributive punishment is replete with brutality and sadism.

Honderich’s book deals specifically with punishment by the state and not that by, say, parents, teachers, or employers. But his objections to the idea of desert, and hence retribution, as a justification for punishment would presumably apply