The Explanatory Example of Agent-Regret in Punishment as Symbolic Restoration

Abstract

In a recent article Arnold Burms, Stefaan E. Cuypers and Benjamin De Mesel [1] put forward their hypothesis of symbolic retribution to show that the practice of punishment could be considered as an instance of symbolic restoration-a thesis, however, already forwarded by Burms in 2005 [2] and 2011 [3]. While we are sympathetic to their hypothesis, this paper points to an important ambiguity within their explanatory account. The ambiguity shows when Burms is asked-as Vandendriessche [4] did in 2014 already-why remorseful offenders would still be punished in his interpretation. Burms' hypothesis would be perfectly able to explain this but, at the same time, there are also many passages that seem to blur the possible answer. In order to annul the ambiguity and to respond to the question why remorseful offenders are still punished in Burms' account, we will explain the hypothesis' explanatory consistency with the phenomenon of agent-regret and, in that way, indirectly contribute to the plausibility of the hypothesis to understand the practice of punishment as primarily a moral and symbolic response.