18
lacking longstanding authority over the person being punished is perfectly capable of
having the appropriate “content” – that is, of constituting the infliction of a proportional
punishment on someone deserving of punishment – it will nonetheless have the “form” of
a “subjective will”; that is, of an act of pure partiality. So while it may seem like
punishment proper to its agent, it will “exist[…] for the other party only as a particular
will” (i.e., as simply one interested agent’s aggressive act against another).
29
This, Hegel
argues, is what accounts for the often interminable character of feuding violence. The
fact that non-legal punishment tends to be socially indistinguishable from mere
aggression renders it a source of, rather than a way of authoritatively addressing, conflict.
Obviously, Hegel’s specific concern here is with pathologies associated with the
enforcement of justice in honor societies. But it is not hard to pull from his analysis a
thesis general enough to touch upon the issue that interests us. For our purposes, Hegel’s
general contention can be stated as follows: when two agents have a prior relationship as
independent adversaries, any attempt by one to punish the other is likely to be received as
nothing more than an act of hostile violence. This, of course, only tells us what Hegel’s
thesis is, not whether or not it is sound. What reasons do we actually have for thinking
this to be true? Why would it be necessary for an act of punishment to emanate from a
body in a position of settled authority over the punished party in order for that
punishment to be socially distinct from mere hostile violence?
Hegel does not, in fact, provide much of an explanation of this. But I think that it
can be made sense out of in the following way. One thing that distinguishes acts of
punishment from other social acts is their asymmetry. To punish someone is to inflict
29
Ibid, § 102, p. 130.
Convention