C. S. Lewis - The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment

[@ferb1131]

"'Necessity' was always the tyrant's plea." We've certainly seen this demonstrated around the world over the last few years, along with the equivocation between disease and crime in many places.

[@jobobminer8843]

This is a concept that seems incredibly obvious looking back on it but few people truly understand. Justice is not about whether or not a criminal learns. Punishments are not about stopping crime. Punishments are about what you deserve. About setting things right. Mercy is about making room for the mess of life but it is built in and on Justice.

[@skadiwarrior2053]

Re-listening to this after becoming familiar with P Gottfried's book The Therapeutic State' (2004) A chilling playing out of Lewis's fears.

[@WadeWeigle]

It was good of the editor to give C.S.Lewis a chance to respond. It’s odd that he needed to clarify that there needs to first be an act of punishable violation before there is punishment. You’d think even the most delusional humanitarian would accept that as a given.

[@johnnotrealname8168]

If you are curing someone, surely you must cure them before the symptoms grow.

[@chriszablocki2460]

I've personally found that real sin is it's own punishment.

[@SinZlair]

It leaves scars aswell, and it could take very long time to heal from them, atleast from my own experience.

[@berniepenner6204]

and most severe of all consequences is Utter Isolation or simply "separation" C.S. had insight only a very few had....

[@chriszablocki2460]

@@berniepenner6204 it's why I try not to judge others too harshly for their sins. The wages they pay for their sin is always enough. And, I, like everybody else have my own burdens.

[@chriszablocki2460]

@@tim2muntu954 I think the wages of sin weigh on one's mind, soul, and even body at times. Even if it seems like they're not suffering from it.

[@lazgmr4746]

I've sinned and god came into my life and demanded quite the punishment of me, I can safely assume I won't be sent to hell when I die because he's apparently communicated to me that I've jumped through the necessary hoops to be truly repentant, once in a while he claims I'm worse than satan and scares the hell out of me, but most often he communicates that I'll live a decent life in the future and that the worst has passed

[@PicturingOurPast]

I needed this in a most unexpected way today. I’m glad for your content.

[@Athlon2736]

Thanks for posting them my dude.

[@DaboooogA]

Narrated by an Elder Scrolls voice actor, great!

[@mavisemberson8737]

That Hideous Strength a novel by C S Lewis describes N I C E an institution where this Theory is described. It is now found online as it is out of copyright

[@thebacons5943]

Reminds me (loosely) of Clockwork Orange

[@chromidius5339]

The main issue is remorse and being held accountable for ones crimes. How few people seem to ever feel it. If capital punishment helps people to feel remorse that is all the better. But even if it doesn't, people need to answer for such crimes in life.

[@slowfudgeballs9517]

I think they do feel remorse. It's just, they've become Cain... And once you become Cain, you can't go back psychologically without therapy. Through bad experiences, they start to believe their purpose in life is to destroy everyone who wronged them (the world and god himself). The people who become spiteful have destroyed their ability to interact with their remorse, but it's still there. This happens when you split into shadow and something else (you). Instead of being whole, that shadow lives another life unattended. Nurture over Nature is likely the more accurate model. - Carl Jung's view on psychology.

[@berniepenner6204]

@@slowfudgeballs9517 Jung was one sharp observer of broken humanity. He definitely surpassed Freud. In my studies it was Pavlov who upset any progress on real intervention where mankind could truly be a "neighbor" and thus aide each other in our fallen natures.

[@berniepenner6204]

@@slowfudgeballs9517 and a resounding YES on nurture over nature... most studies give nurture about 83% to 17% edge on the outcomes of any one human life.

[@chromidius5339]

@@slowfudgeballs9517 yeah the sin in men without remorse has conquered them. And what penance did Cain pay for murdering Abel?

[@slowfudgeballs9517]

@@chromidius5339 "Greater than I can bear" he said. So I suppose that is meant to imply all humans know they are doing wrong in the end (psychologically).

[@seanconnor271]

well.......not too many Christians here...... are there!

[@australiainfelix7307]

Timeless, and more prescient than 1984.

[@8jcm4]

This really needs to be heard today

[@johnmahaffey9578]

I think of A Clockwork Orange.

[@johnhinderer9561]

God has made a wonderful man, how much more wonderful must God be

[@denmarkball7728]

16:05 This is our current reality

[@6stringgroover]

I haven't listened to this in years, but doesn't this ignore restitution? Surely a justice system that incorporates the criminal making restitution to the aggrieved is correct, no?

[@Atreus21]

What happened to CS Lewis Doodle's video on this?

[@CSLewisessays]

Blackstone audio, the copyright holders of the audiobook have changed their policy on fair use, C. S. Lewis Doodle complied.

[@johnnotrealname8168]

@@CSLewisessays Are you able to get those videos and post them?

[@CSLewisessays]

No luck :/

[@christophersnedeker2065]

While I agree we need to keep fair retribution the point of our punishment one thing we also need to keep in mind is the fact we need to release criminals at some point, unless we intend to deal out life in prison or the death penalty for every minor offense, which would be unjust, and we owe it to society to leave them better then they found them lest they offend again.

[@johnnotrealname8168]

Incarceration was not conceived to prevent recidivism but for incapacitation.

[@michaelfetter5413]

"We owe it to society to leave them better than we found them" congratulations, you are exactly the torturer described. you are capable of approving unspeakable evil with a good conscience

[@jobobminer8843]

Sorry to bring up this old comment but there's a point in the video addressing your comment and I think it might be useful to anyone scrolling to hear it restated. Lewis addresses the idea of leaving people better than we found them and working to prevent re-offense. At 31:38 he says "I should be very glad if all punishments were also cures." In other words, the ideal punishment is also a cure when possible. He's saying that 1 - All punishments must first be just 2 - If you can choose between a just punishment which does not cure and another which does, you should choose the punishment which is both just and cures. 3 - The same goes for deterents. Justice which deters is better than justice which does not. However, deterents are inferior to justice. Justice must be established first or there is no moral ground on which to build deterents or cures.

[@Truth-Be-Told-USA]

God punishes daily

[@berniepenner6204]

as good as this commentary is it does not address the root impetus for Rule Breaking..

[@johnnotrealname8168]

It is an analysis of punishment not for the prevention of crime as such.

[@joshuasusanto4258]

13:37

[@rickshafer6688]

The Psalm 141:5 was wrong. It means the righteous shall reprove me, not the balms of a destroyer. Other than that quo I agree with everything Lewis says.

[@KaufmanNews]

The "I feeling poem" I look to my left and hear give up or play. I look to my right and see whips and chains. I look in front of me and obseve a drunken man acting insane. ~Troy Cooper~ 2016

[@twinsoultarot473]

A professor at NYU has first hand knowledge of a case that he himself was involved in of a man who raped a two-year-old child in who served a sentence for it and turned around. He was reformed and it was told that he was legitimately sorry for what he did.

[@peterdollins3610]

The years of imprisonment IS the punishment. Execution kills innocents. This man is talking garbage.

[@davidmorris2219]

He wasn't talking about capital punishment, but the difference between retributive and therapeutic approaches to punishment. Did you actually listen to this or are you just stupid?

[@killinbildvow80]

Unless another person is fatally wounded or along those lines, harm is caused, crippling, etc, no punishment should be years in prison.

[@johnnotrealname8168]

For starters, *SIGH* Lewis does not address the Death Penalty itself rather the theory of punishment that underlies it (You know what he writes at the start.) and secondly you can imprison innocents too, granted not kill them although they can die in prison too.

[@christophersnedeker]

This wasn't an essay on the death penalty.

[@sangralknight3031]

The death penalty kills the innocent. The prison sentence tortures, violates, rapes, demeans, deprives, and ultimately kills the innocent. If I should have the choice between the innocent dying, or the innocent being horribly, inhumane, and unjustly violated for decades by the worst criminals. Leaving them utterly broken and sodden Even if they survive and are exonerated, and be abandoned to years of self hatred, doubt, and depression to only end with them killing themselves. I'd rather the death penalty. Prison is the single most vile, wicked, and evil punishment practice ever invented by humanity. It reduces humans beings to animals in cages, and let's them prey on each other in secret out of sight places.

[@brindlebriar]

This is all wrong(at least the first 8 minutes, but they seem to be the axiomatic basis for what is to follow) because he conceptualizes only two possible motives for punishment: 1) Revenge, and 2) Deterrence. Neither of those is a legitimate or good motive for punishment. But indeed, there is a third, that is the correct motive, and that is the prevention of the criminal in question from repeating crime. It's not to deter _other people,_ but the same person. And it is prevention, not deterrence, as he simply _can not_ commit the crime again when in prison, or when dead. Nor does this constitute society's removing from him the right to justice. This is justice. Nor is it an undue removal of the criminal's freedom, for the _criminal chose_ a course of action that he was _made to know in advance_ would result in the involuntary forfeiture of his freedom if apprehended, so that it was a free, informed choice. To punish for social deterrence is self-evidently evil. It is to punish an individual for effects it might have on others. But the individual being punished is not responsible for the actions of others. The punishment can not possibly be expected to fit the crime, if that is the motive. It conceptualizes human beings not as human beings but as expendable pieces of the jigsaw puzzle of society, not having any rights, but only belonging to a society(a conceptual fiction) that has rights. And this is just pure evil, and untrue. But to imagine punishment as revenge is even worse. What kind of a Christian apologist could even utter such a thing? Is that what Jesus advocated? Revenge? Someone needs to re-read the New Testament. The subject of punishment is not very complicated, in my view. Everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt. Thus, the presumption of innocence. Once you have been convicted of a crime, the doubt is removed. Thus the benefit of it is removed. You have _demonstrated_ behavior that those punishing you are willing to incarcerate or kill you in order to prevent. And thus, you are incarcerated or killed. It is simple harm prevention. That's all. Self-defense/defense of others, against an observed predator. It is no different from killing or caging a man-eating tiger. We don't do that for revenge; nor is it to send a message to other tigers. It is neither revenge nor deterrence of observers. Nor would either of those latter two motivations, applied to humans, be in keeping with Christian morality, nor with any healthy secular morality.

[@lukeabbott3591]

No, no, Lewis was not advocating a model of punishment as revenge. What he said was this: The old idea of punishment proceeds along the lines of justice alone (i.e. giving each person the punishment they deserve-no more or less), whereas the new idea focuses more on reforming or "healing" the criminal, or else by punishing the for the sake of preventing others. Lewis is defending a justice-based model of punishment, not a revenge-based one.

[@brindlebriar]

@@lukeabbott3591 Hm, maybe you're right then. But I'm not sure I see a clear distinction. The idea of revenge seems to be that of justice, to me. You killed our dude, so we kill your dude. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. That's revenge and O.T. Justice. What Lewis is describing doesn't sound like "Turn the other cheek," so what rule of thumb determines what measure of punishment constitutes justice? It would need to distinguish justice from revenge. If he mentioned some idea for that, I didn't catch it, or I don't remember now.

[@sereneseal6883]

​@@brindlebriar The differences are twofold, I think: 1. That just punishment, in its purest essence, is not rooted in any vengeful feelings on the part of the victim. Let's assume a hypothetical: a man murders an isolated group of people such that not even the acquaintances of anyone in that group remain. So, no one is alive to feel vengeful about it. Then, he willingly and of his own accord signs a hypothetical magical contract which we KNOW, through some magical objective knowledge, means that he will live the entire rest of his life as a model citizen and never offend again, even in minor ways. He has not changed in any fundamental way, but his killing days are over. He has done all he wants to do, and he'd be perfectly happy to live the rest of his life as a normal man without any possibility of re-offending. He feels no remorse, but this in no way impacts the rest of how he lives his life. He is, I think, still deserving of justice, even if revenge in the traditional sense is not possible any longer (since no affected party remains) and no further crime is being prevented. 2. The punishment is not equivalent to the crime, but is merely fitting to it. If a murder takes someone's eye, we do not do the equivalent back to him (i.e. an eye for an eye). Rather, we think of something less severe that is still nonetheless a "fitting" punishment. For instance, a year or two in prison. Where we draw the lines for such things is unclear. Personally, I think that the vast majority of prison sentences (particularly for partially accidental / non-violent offences) are definitely too long. But once we've established that such a thing is deserved at all, we can then have a conversation about the degrees of deservedness. I do think that punishment can be too vengeful. Or, alternatively, too cold, arbitrary, and clinical. And I think that Lewis's perspective on it is a bit too rose-coloured. But I also don't think he's wrong to be concerned about abandonment of the idea of deservedness, since if taken to its natural logical end the implications are quite bad, I think. Christ Himself makes the distinction between justice and revenge clear in the contrast between Matthew 5:38-42 (the eye for an eye passage) and Luke 18:1-8. Just because we are meant to ignore retaliatory revenge does not mean that we should not seek justice. After all, how can Christ reject the idea of judgement, if he is to come and judge the whole world in the Last Judgement? Of course, God's judgement is different from our own. Deservedness and restorativeness are essentially perfectly unified (or rather, a person "deserves" that which will restore them), because the guilty, seeing Him not through a glass darkly but face to face (1 Corinthians 13:12) will experience hell as the disjunction between God's goodness revealed in Christ and our own sin, and will have to be salted with fire (Mark 9:49) in order that what is good in them (what can survive in the presence of God) can be saved (1 Corinthians 3:14-15). We are not objective, and there's always going to be a disjunction between punishment and restoration in our systems of justice. But we can do the best we can with what we have. Think back to the hypothetical mass-murderer who willingly signed a magic contract. While, if left to his own devices, that man would have lived a perfectly fine life, inside he would not be a moral person (after all, he was still the unrepentant mass murderer at heart, just one with no reason or cause to commit any more violence). However, this will not spare him judgement when he meets Christ, the one in whose image he was made, and for whom the disjunction between that purpose and how he turned out will be experienced as the Gehenna (Mark 9:43-49, Matthew 7:13-14, etc.). Now, I think that by now you've probably noticed that,I think that justice should, in its purest expression, punish in a way that is restorative. So I partially disagree with Lewis on that front. But I do think that there are two ways a person can mean "restorative." 1. Restorative in the sense that that person is "restored" to a state where they will no longer offend, and are therefore "cured" of whatever personal condition caused them to offend. In this respect, the mass murderer who willingly signed the magical contract is "restored," while a far more repentant murderer, with a higher probability of re-offence due to any number of personal idiosyncrasies of temperament and circumstance, may not be. 2. Restorative in the sense that cauterizing a wound or cutting out a cancer is restorative. Something that goes deeper, which is transformative in the purest sense. I think that Lewis is mostly railing against the first, more clinical kind of restorative justice (or perhaps he is conflating the two without realizing). Either way, I certainly think that punishment which exists for its own sake and for no other benefit, even the deeper restoration of the punished soul, is obviously unjust, arbitrary, and abominable. Which of course means that I think capital punishment is always bad: it is punishment which yields nothing. P.S. Context for some of the stuff about hell: I'm a purgatorial universalist who still thinks that hell is, actually, quite bad and serious.

[@brindlebriar]

​@@sereneseal6883 What a wonderful reply, and well worth a second read-through later. But I'm still stuck on this idea, regarding the man who signed the magical self-enforcing contract, that "He is[...] still deserving of justice." What do you mean, here, by justice? Assuming it means some kind of punishment, what is the rational for it? What good does it do to anyone, including God? And if it doesn't do good, why is it good to do? If the rationale is to restore the criminal to proper relationship to God's will, I would wonder, firstly, how likely is it that punishment will have the desired effect? But more fundamentally, to what degree are we our brothers' keepers? Clearly, to some degree, we are, but to what degree? It has to be limited, because, to the degree that we _force_ another to do what we think will save his soul, we move in violation of his Free Will. Yes, to abandon him to Hell without trying to save him seems less than ideal. But so does violating his Free Will, without being able to justifying it via the necessity to protect the innocent. What is the deliniation, then, between legitimate attempts to save another's soul, vs attempts that violate Free Will? It is the use of force. I've always been struck by the idea that God doesn't just snap his fingers and make us all instantly good(solving the problem of evil in the world), _because_ to do so would deprive us of Free Will, and all that, that entails. And if God won't do that to us, I think we should feel very uncomfortable with the idea that we should presume to do it to each other. Normally, the justification for removing the Free Will of the criminal is that we do so to protect the Free Will of his probable future victims. Thus it is a net protection of Free Will. But if we could know(magical contract) that he will have no future victims, then gone is the justification for interfering with his Free Will. To me, if God won't take man's Free Will away, how can I justify taking it _merely_ to force my judgement upon his personal relationship with God? Is that for me to judge? Is it for any of us? 'To save his soul,' would sound noble. But is that my place? Who do I think I am? Also, it sounds like a very slippery slope. What atrocities might we commit against each other in the name of saving each other's souls by force? The Spanish Inquisition comes to mind. Also the dashing out of the brains of Native infants while they are still young enough to get into heaven, lest they should grow up heathen, thereby earning Hell. In fact, the logical thing to do - if we presume the right to forcibly save each other - would be to kill ALL babies, thereby ensuring the saving of their souls by preventing them from ever sinning. So I think we need to have some humility when it comes to assuming what seems to me a right exclusive to the divine, to use _force_ in the saving of souls. Even Christ did not use force. He preached, in order to _persuade._ If I'm right, that removes any justification for any punishment of the man who is already prevented from future crimes. I think the instinct we all have, to not want a criminal to 'get away with it' without punishment is _exactly_ the desire for revenge that we must guard against. We are all family enough to feel it. We even feel it for animals.

[@sereneseal6883]

​@@brindlebriar Thanks for the reply! My follow-up response is . . . um, long (comically long, tbh, looking at it now in the KZbin comment box after I copied it over from another document) so I separated it into chunks, each of which tries to answer one of your points. I also had to separate it into 3 replies, which is evidence to me that this has gone beyond the generally accepted bounds of a KZbin comment section (I also ended up accidentally repeating myself a few times). Please don't feel the need to read all of it. Pt 1: - Why is the man who signed the contract worthy of punishment. For what rationale? If it doesn't do any good, why is it good to do? What good does it do God? God desires that all creatures take up their crosses and follow Him. Heaven isn't something he can just snap his fingers and accomplish, like you mentioned. Heaven (probably, if Christianity is both true and coherent) JUST IS union with God, and amongst other things, Christ became human to give us a model to follow. So, the good that it does God is that it makes people repent, which brings them closer to Him. After all, the first thing Jesus said during his ministry was "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand" (Matthew 4:17). But then this leads to your next question: - If the punishment is meant to restore the criminal's proper relationship with God's will, will this kind of punishment have the desired effect? Hopefully. This is a complicated issue and is probably going to take up a big chunk of my response. Basically, the fact that humans have the desire to repent for wrongs that they've done is one of the impetuses for creating a justice system, besides safety, at least in my opinion. After all, justice is often seen to be about determining what people "deserve," and the only way people can do this is through self-reflection. Basically, asking themselves, "what would I deserve if I did ___." Now, a lot of people can ignore the personal and societal circumstances of criminals and pretend that they personally would never do anything like that, and then make the sentences ridiculously long because their lack of empathy leads them to see any serious crime as not just evil, but inconceivably evil. And that's bad. But that's something that we have to try and control for, we have to do better. I think that having a notion of justice which, to paraphrase Lewis, "every person has the right to have an opinion on by virtue of simply being a person" is good for socially expressing this conscience, expressing a sense of moral value. So in a sense, the existence of some kind of punishment serves this broader purpose to the community, not merely being an expression of but also a reinforcement of the idea that certain things are wrong, and because they are wrong it is right to repent of them. Now, none of this is actually using any particular INDIVIDUALS as means to an end. There's a key difference there, I think. As a community, we've decided that something is not only wrong but deserving of a certain kind of punishment. Either the criminal agrees, and they repent willingly. Or they don't, and they're forced to do it anyway, and the more they come to accept their situation, the more (hopefully) they come to realize the fairness of their sentence (if, indeed, we've done a good job and the sentence is reasonable, which is often not the case at all). Now, prison systems and criminal justice are, as they exist (and probably, to an extent, will forever be) an imperfect expression of this principle, obviously. But I don't think that they're entirely off the mark. If people do something wrong, they can often be made to forget about that thing as long as life goes back to normal. Think of a minor interpersonal "crime," like insulting someone you care about and hurting their feelings. If they never mentioned it to you later, and everything proceeded as normal, you might forget about it and move on like nothing ever happened. This is just a flaw of human nature, we kind of suck sometimes. But if the next day the person you insulted goes up to you and gets angry about what you said, you're made to remember, and even though you didn't actively choose to have this conversation, being in a situation where you're forced to think about it and feel kind of bad not only encourages your empathy, but also makes you really reflect upon that action in a way you might not have. Just because someone's repentance was encouraged by outside circumstances doesn't necessarily make it worthless. Often, realizations like these can be far more genuine and affecting than those which people arrive at on their own, since you're not just realizing that you were in the wrong, but that you were so shitty you didn't even think you were. (This is, initially, how we teach people morality. If we react negatively and harshly to a little kid who does something really bad, it might make the kid upset in the short-term, but that enforces the idea that the thing is bad, helps give them a moral code). Criminal justice is (in theory) kind of like this but for more serious crimes and on a larger scale. We like to think that people will simply repent on their own, but I think we understand human nature enough to know that that doesn't always happen, and people can do shitty things and just not really care. So justice serves the dual function of keeping society safe from people and forcing them into a situation where they are more likely to be encouraged to repent. This also has the convenient by-product of acting as a deterrent for other peoples' crimes (though of course, if deterrent is your primary motivator, you've gone very, very wrong somewhere, and you're just using that person as a means to an end). Now, we are more likely to realize we were in the wrong if the person who snaps back at us is someone we trust, since that might shake us out of our selfish lack of reflection. Similarly, we need to do everything we can to improve the justice system and educate people about it, because it is something that everyone should have at least some TRUST in. So, this is all in theory. In practice, prison sentences are often so long and conditions so terrible that criminals are more likely to resent the system for being unfair than they are to actually take the time to repent. And telling someone to repeat that they were in the wrong over and over probably isn't a good way to convince them. But we need to have these negative stimuli in place in society so that people take crime seriously. Just punishing someone isn't good enough on it's own to convince someone that something is wrong, just that it's something they shouldn't do / shouldn't get caught doing. But again, the same is true with kids, but to a certain extent they do eventually learn (at least, most of them do). If anything's going to result in a "it's fine as long as I don't get caught" attitude, it's a total lack of concern for the inward repentance of criminals. A system structured solely around keeping people safe from offenders isn't necessarily a good idea either. Since repentance isn't a core concern anymore, safety for others becomes the only priority with nothing to balance it. I can easily imagine some Minority Report type future emerging from this ethos if employed by itself. The guilt of a person would still be important, but no longer necessarily ESSENTIAL to justify imprisonment. If all that matters is the public good and the maximizing of freedom for as many people as possible, we can imprison people who just meet certain preconditions common to criminals and start developing a fucked system. If we had some way of determining how likely certain people were to commit crimes, and then arrest them, the remainder would be free to walk the streets without a care in the world. But of course, that would be unjust. If another cornerstone of our philosophy of justice, which must apply in all circumstances to a degree, is the goal of restoration/repentance, then this is no longer justifiable because someone has to actually be guilt of something to repent for it. All of this is why prisons should be more oriented not just to blind punishment, but to encouraging repentance on the part of those who might be so morally compromised that they may not achieve that state on their own. Or at the very least, it should be encouraged. And for those who are genuinely repentant, they'll probably accept the sentence and just bear it anyway because they think they deserve it (after all, many prisoners are criminals who turn themselves in because of the guilt). Of course, fairer sentences and better living conditions are essential for this to be remotely plausible or common. People can willingly go through a lot to repent, but most of them won't give up massive swaths of their lives for it.