Punishment and Forgiveness

Among the different possible reactions to (perceived) 1 wrongdoing, two have monopolized philosophical attention: punishment and forgiveness. Reacting to wrongdoing with indifference, or with elation, may be interesting case-studies for psychologists, but not so much for philosophers. Punishment and forgiveness are, moreover, customarily taken to be mutually exclusive: you cannot punish and forgive simultaneously. It is quite possible to first punish someone, only to later forgive her. But it does seem difficult to argue that we can simultaneously punish and forgive the same person for the same action. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.