Punishment With and Without the State: Comments on Linda Radzik’s The Ethics of Social Punishment: The Enforcement of Morality in Everyday Life

Linda Radzick's new book, The Ethics of Social Punishment, contains an important discussion of punishment outside the context of the state. By way of celebrating this fine and welcome book, I try to probe some analytical contours concerning punishment seen from the general perspective on which Radzick and I agree. I suggest altogether abandoning the idea that (non-state) punishment needs to be inflicted by an authority. Furthermore, I insist on an account of retributivism that resists the usual accusations of barbarism and bloodthirstiness.