Tentative Answer: Locke and Retribution

Locke says that political power includes a right of making laws with penalties of death and the lesser penalties to regulate the people's rights to property and to defend the commonwealth. He defines natural state as the state of "perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man" (262). In terms of equality he says that no one has more than the other and everyone is equal - unless their general master declares one to be above the others by declaring this person sovereign. Since we are all equal, he says that we must love ourselves and each other, and though we are in a state of liberty that we can dispose of ourselves and our possessions (which includes slaves, I think? Since in the definition of natural state he terms it "their persons"), this does not give you licence to destroy yourself or creatures in your possession. This is the same point from the Bible and Augustine's points of suicide being unacceptable and sinful since it is also a murder.

It seems that everybody tends toward self-preservation, and even murder is acceptable in self-defense. It's alright to kill someone if they are going to kill you (since there is no compensation great enough for a murder), or if they are thieving from you. The justification is that this will deter others from doing the same to you; this reminds me of the Machiavellian idea of being harsh instead of excessively compassionate for the sake of the community's future, and also when we discussed why religion is important, when someone said that by having the same set of rules we trust each other to follow them and this strengthens the structure of community since we treat others the way we should also be treated. In these cases, the murderer/thief would be treated like a savage and irrational beast who doesn't live by everyone else's rules of reason and equity, since having them in society would jeopardise the security of the community. They are similar to what the Spaniards call Barbarian, or what Aristotle calls natural slaves.

Locke says that when the victim has the criminal in his hands, the victim is allowed to consider his "passionate heats" but also must use calm reason and conscience to punish the criminal (264). Though this sounds reasonable, I think it can be difficult to interpret since there are many crimes (like int he case of psychological or physical damages, such as rape/sexual assault and acid attacks) that cannot be repaid so simply with large sums of money or death sentences.

It is very difficult to determine what a "reasonable" punishment is and value a compensation (also because people involved would be more personal passionate feelings about the event than those working with the law). For example, something I learned about in Canadian high school (but this probably happened in America as well?) is how unfairly we treated the Native Americans. How can we repay them for taking their children and culture away through residential schools and forced assimilation? The answer wouldn't be just to allow them to do the same with another culture (an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind), nor can a large amount of money truly bring back what they've lost. This is why I feel that punishments and the definition of "reasonable" is a little blurry, because not every wrongdoing can be fixed by compensation/punishment. It's difficult to come up with a punishment or compensation that is enough to fix what the victim has been through and will be affected by forever.