McTaggart on the right to be punished

Abstract

J. M. E. McTaggart's interpretation of Hegel's theory of punishment has a strange double life. On the one hand it is considered important by philosophers of punishment for setting forth an novel and suggestive account of what we are, or ought to be, doing when we punish wrongdoers. What such writers are interested in is the prospect that a “right to be punished” gives of resuscitating retributivism, giving a non-consequentialist account of punishment which is not grounded in vengeance-seeking or an ineffable intuition of justice. McTaggart's view seems to hold out the promise of such a novel retributivism.On the other hand, Hegel scholars themselves seem to regard McTaggart's account as dead in the water as an interpretation of Hegel's remarks in the Philosophy of Right (from which his view is clearly drawn). At first sight, after all, there seems to be little textual evidence to support his reading. And two more recent accounts of Hegel's remarks on punishment have nothing to say about one of the central theses for which McTaggart argues, the one which I defend as an interpretation of Hegel here. The question for those sceptical of his reading remains how someone like McTaggart could have fallen prey to such a mis-interpretation; but perhaps it can just be explained as yet another case of a thinker reading his own views into Hegel rather than reading what is there. Perhaps McTaggart was over-zealous in putting forward his own thoughts and overlooked his scholarly duties.