BY Albert Zhou

Motivations and Failures of Beauvoirian Punishment as Depicted in “An Eye for an Eye”

I. Introduction

In the aftermath of World War II, Robert Brasillach was tried by the French government for treason, punishable by execution, as the author of prominent fascist newspapers. When a petition for Brasillach’s pardon was brought before distinguished French academics, Simone De Beauvoir withheld her signature. Beauvoir’s “Eye for an Eye” is an explanatory piece detailing her refusal to sign the petition. Through a reflection on post-war France’s bitter zeitgeist, Beauvoir outlines the motivations for punishment and how punishment ultimately falls short of its goals.

This paper will begin with an analytical description of the motivations for two types of pre-defined punishment: revenge and judicial punishment. Revenge is a reactionary movement to reestablish a reciprocal relationship between the wrongdoer and the wronged; judicial punishment attempts to posit a society’s values when those values are threatened. After establishing the reasons for punishment, the paper will proceed to follow Beauvoir’s explanation for the failure of punishment. Though both revenge and judicial punishment are unable to accomplish their goals, Beauvoir still argues for acting with an intent to punish, as she believes punishment to be an indispensable tool to symbolically repudiate evil.

II. Motivations for Punishment: Revenge vs. Judicial Punishment

a. Motivations for Revenge

Beauvoir commences “Eye for an Eye” by defining revenge as one of two primary purposes of punishment. To understand Beauvoir’s revenge, one must first understand her conception of evil.

Evil occurs when one intentionally denies the existence of another’s humanity. Acts like torture, enslavement, and mutilation, men reduce their others to objects. This intent to degrade man is evil; it violates taboo. It incurs such a deep-seated hatred in man that his response is to call for the destruction of the atrocity’s source (for example, consider the murderous intent and death threats directed towards war criminals).[1] Eradication of evil requires the eradication of its creator.

Revenge arises as a response to a free individual’s choice to commit evil. Naturally, a definition of the evil man must be considered. One could believe, as Socrates did, that individuals who commit evil deeds do so under the impression that “these acts [were] seeking a certain good, at the very least his own good”.[2] Temptations, sociological conditions, and mistakes might all drive a man to believe that he serves some good in committing atrocities. Even so, this man does evil. He chooses to commit evil, and no self-defined “good” can serve as his scapegoat. Furthermore, while Socrates’ excuse might appease Beauvoir’s judgement for lesser crimes, it especially fails when the offender is dedicated to greater wrongs. When he believes his actions contain some good, it is all the more important that he be made to perceive himself and his baseness from the perspective of his victims.

Evil can also be described as a product of a man’s condition and not of his will. Because hatred and, by proxy, revenge are “aimed at the intention of an act”, violence seems to be an unjustifiable response.[3] However, when one’s actions incur evil, he intends to accomplish some project, even if it begets evil. For example, consider the father who flogs his son in hopes of toughening him. The evil is a necessary part of his intentions, even if evil is not his desired end.

Furthermore, an evil act does not represent a man holistically. A one-time evil-doer may be charitable and well-intentioned throughout the entire duration of his life. Yet, he may be convicted of a sin expressed only as a singularity in his lived experience. If revenge now seems unwarranted, pardoning may appeal. One might say that man is more than his crime, and punishment serves no material “good”. His horrors are a semi-deterministic outcome of his situation. Regardless of what man does, his evils may be pardoned so that he may achieve redemption.

However, as a framework, pardoning is unsatisfactory so long as humanity considers itself free. When a man chooses to dehumanize another, he does so of his own volition. Even if he may be pushed to do so, his condition does not inhibit freedom. And so long as man is a free being, his evil actions are rooted in himself. Man is only free in so far as he decides vis-a-vis his situation. He “must be held responsible for evil as well as for good” where “evil is that which one refuses in the name of the good, with no compromise possible.”[4] To give our existence meaning, we must assign meaning to our choices and be held accountable for them. Therefore, if we believe humanity to be meaningful, then the intentional rejection of good for evil is inexcusable. With these definitive claims regarding evil, what naturally follows is a condoned denouncement of such abominations. Revenge is permissible.

In violating another, the wrongdoer destroys the symmetrical interpersonal relation. No longer are they two humans, each coexisting as an ambiguous being of both subjectivity and objectivity. No longer do they recognize the same ambiguity within the other. Instead, the wrongdoer posits himself as wholly subject and denies this subjectivity to his victim. This unnatural subject-object dichotomy is what begs a re-establishment of reciprocity, the true aim of revenge. To right the wrongs, compensation is required. The wrongdoer must “pay.”

To return to the reciprocal dynamic, a reversal of states is required. One wants the other to understand his situation by undergoing it. Each tragedy and pain inflicted upon the victim must, in turn, be delivered by the victim onto the torturer.[5] The victim pronounces that he is not simply a thing to be abused without defiance; he, too, can inflict pain. The torturer learns that he is not sovereign; he can be made to feel like an object. This realization of one’s situation as reversible reinstates both parties in their ambiguity, and both are forced to recognize the other’s humanity.

Notably, though one can seek retribution on behalf of another, a true outsider can never pursue “revenge” in this sense, as they are detached from the original mutual dynamic.

b. Motivations for Judicial Punishment

The guilty interacts with the victim via crime, whereas the victim is unable to interact with the guilty in the same sense. After his life has been maimed or his dignity destroyed, the victim cannot directly influence the guilty’s life without also lawlessly committing evil; he may only direct hatred towards the offender. Therefore, in seeking vengeance, violence must be committed in response to violence to strive for reciprocity. Because hatred is what makes punishment reactionary, punishment devoid of hate terminates this violent cycle. Judicial punishment arises as an alternative mode of punishment that bypasses the propagation of evil. It does not attempt to establish a reciprocity that I will later show to be doomed to failure.[6] Crime is dissociated from man to serve a higher purpose.

As a state-sanctioned device, its ultimate function is to symbolically reject evil and put forth goodness. Judicial punishment is forward-looking. Rather than attempting to undo an already cemented past, judges aim to “restore a human community to its own idea of itself, to uphold the values the crime has negated.”[7] A crime and its individual impact cannot be erased. However, the evil represented by the crime can be expelled to champion a more virtuous society. Processes like imprisonment, banishment, and the revocation of citizenship all aim to purge society by casting out propagators of evil.

Judicial punishment does not consider man as his whole. Rather, man is stripped of his context and situation. He is considered only in his criminal acts and their relation to society’s penal code. A Nazi is tried as a war criminal and murderer, not the father, husband, and son that he may be. Any humanity is merely a “substrate…of certain evil acts.”[8] Because man is taken as a symbol for his crime, punishment is purely a rejection of the crime he represents.

Even the verdict is a symbol of man’s will to cast out evil. When the wrongs committed by an individual are severe, it is the duty of trial to denounce his actions. The death verdict serves as an example of this condemnation. Being the sentence “[endowed] with the greatest expressive power possible”, the death verdict reflects society’s contempt for certain perversions.[9]

What follows is the execution of the verdict, a witness to the verdict’s gravity. Though the verdict is the actual denunciation of a crime, the execution ensures that the verdict is taken seriously. In judicial punishment, it is not the actual killing or imprisonment of the accused that affirms man’s will. Hatred, revenge, and violence are excised from the punishment so that social justice may do the affirming.

III. Failures

Ultimately, Beauvoir moves to describe each mode of punishment as failing to reach its goal, both having their respective fallacies.

a. The Failure of Revenge

Recall that revenge is an act whose true purpose is to reinstate ambiguity between two parties. In attempting revenge, full reciprocity is never re-established. In situations where atrocities are committed, for a true reversal of roles, the guilty party needs to realize both his and his victim’s ambiguity involuntarily. That is, if the wrongdoer voluntarily admits his guilt, he is allowed to retain autonomy. To experience an authentic ambiguity, the guilty cannot remain under the illusion of pure subjectivity and cannot come about this remorse by his own choosing. However, when permitted, the guilty’s subjectivity might stray towards resignation, rejection, denial, anger, or a plethora of other emotions that allow a bypassing of reciprocity.[10] An insufficiently violent revenge fails if the target is not subjected to violence at the mercy of another to feel his object condition.

Alternatively, if the guilty is subjected to too much violence, ambiguity still is not felt. Excessive violence and inflicted pain leave the target “nothing more than panting flesh, which is unable to recognize its ruin and escapes into madness.”[11] The tortured man never feels remorse or ambiguity; he is too preoccupied and fixated on his pain to realize the delicacies of the reversal. Though the tortured man may feel like an object when abused, the seeker of revenge may desire that he remain conscious “to realize his ruin” and understand the situation when “congealed in despair.”[12] When torture is applied to the extremes, the target of revenge may “escape into madness” or find respite in unconsciousness.[13] By dying, he could terminate the process altogether before ever feeling the reciprocal nature of the revenge.

Even in situations where the seeker of revenge is able to control his victim, he must “reckon with the temporal dispersion that limits his hold on the other’s consciousness.”[14] Revenge is not indefinite. The victim’s feeling of despair and reciprocity can only satisfy one’s hatred in the moments of its existence. Unfortunately for the punisher, the existence of revenge is impossible to perpetuate beyond death. The punisher may opt to prolong an artificed state of reciprocity that is never truly fulfilled, or hope that, through death, “the abjection of those last instants will be eternalized.”[15] Even in the freest cases, true prolonged reciprocity is unachievable.

Vengeance also fails when vigilantes take on the mantle of justice. When an outsider inserts himself in revenge, he may only do so by proclaiming his participation as righteous. He posits his actions as rights, choosing to universalize the punishment as an individual. Not only is an outsider unable to partake in the re-establishing of reciprocity, but he also poses as a “sovereign consciousness” through his arrogance.[16] Even when vengeance is driven by authentic feelings, it is difficult to ensure that “the one seeking revenge has not been carried away by that will to power…”[17] If hate, zeal, and devotion are allowed to excuse acts of revenge, then violence will only beget violence, and revenge will only ever be a propagator of itself.

b. The Failures of Judicial Punishment

Judicial punishment also falls short of its goal. As a symbolic process, judicial punishment aims to expel symbols of evil from society. By promoting the individual to the evil he represents, the court makes a production of itself. Only through this promotion can the individual’s verdict signify a greater debasing of evil.

Because judicial punishment spotlights the accused, it requires the accused to play his part. Very often, this staged charade fails when the accused defies the public’s expectations. The criminal can appear disassociated from his crimes.[18] Given the temporal delay between the crime and trial, the criminal is not fresh in memory. The memories of his crimes grow stale; those impacted may begin to feel more distant and grow in apathy. In this new context where the criminal’s evil is diminished, he is presented as a victim rather than a victimizer. The accused’s appearance and his demeanor allow him to elude the symbol of evil that the trial requires him to be.

If the accused presents as dignified, society is forced to engage with him as a dignified and dying man. His humanity is returned to him, and he is no longer the symbol of evil that society wants to reject.[19] Consider, for example, John Wayne Gacy or Ted Bundy. Their charismatic demeanors in court allowed both serial killers to garner public sympathy. In situations like these, the accused ceases to be entirely inhumane, and society falters in its hatred. No longer is judicial punishment the resolute will of civilization to eliminate evil.

Alternatively, the criminal may take on a cowardly appearance. In recognizing his own weakness, he excuses himself, refuses his guilt, and evades accusations. Though this criminal is met with disgust and hatred, the hatred never strikes him in his heart. He shows that he is impervious to remorse but not to self-pity, thereby rendering his trial meaningless.

Regardless of where the accused identifies on the spectrum of cowardly to dignified, he must instantiate the evil that the trial targets. If he is dignified, judicial punishment becomes cruel. If he is cowardly, the spectacle of trial becomes meaningless and comical. For the criminal who behaves according to either of these extremities, judicial punishment never accomplishes its rejection of evil.

Furthermore, judicial punishment fails to ever champion ambiguity as a value (even for criminals who elude both cowardice and dignity). The institutionalization of justice sacrifices a connection to the violated. Even though the accused and the wronged are undeniably intertwined, it poses evil as an abstraction and negates it by an abstract process. Attempting to universalize the individual interpersonal experience of ambiguity cannot succeed without the concrete reciprocal relationship between the accused and the wronged. Therefore, judicial punishment fails in both rejecting evil and promoting humanity.

IV. Conclusions

Beauvoir defines the aim of revenge to be the establishment of reciprocity in which ambiguity is made aware to both parties. Unfortunately, revenge cannot fulfill its purpose because of this very ambiguity. Man’s two-way condition of subjectivity and objectivity prevents one party from truly striking at the heart of the other.[20] In revenge, man either resides in his sovereign consciousness by himself or is forced into dehumanization by another.

Whereas revenge cannot posit a set of values against the wrongdoers’ values because it is a private and illegitimate act, judicial punishment attempts to reach universality by representing society and societal values. The judicial system is a medium that reflects the will of society to handle the guilty.[21] However, it does not succeed in rejecting evil nor in promoting human ambiguity because the trial is too delicate of a performance, and it severs the criminal from the victim.

Even though Beauvoir establishes that punishment is doomed to failure, she vehemently repudiates inaction. That is, failure should not impede action. As beings of ambiguity, the subject-object duality prevents individual choices from being obvious. Humans must learn to make choices “in the very heart of [their] ambiguity.”[22] Both individuals and society may recognize that revenge cannot reasonably reinstate justice. Even so, punishment is a necessity. Only in punishment do we recognize both the good and the evil within each freedom. Man punishes so that he may exercise his freedom and strive for good.

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References

Beauvoir, S. de, Simons, M. A., Timmermann, M., & Mader, M. B. (2004). Philosophical Writings. University of Illinois Press.

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[1] Simone de Beauvoir, Philosophical Writings. (University of Illinois Press, 2004), p. 248.

[2] Beauvoir, Philosophical Writings, p. 255.

[3] Beauvoir, Philosophical Writings, p. 255.

[4] Beauvoir, Philosophical Writings, p. 257.

[5] Beauvoir, Philosophical Writings, p. 249.

[6] Beauvoir, Philosophical Writings, p. 251.

[7] Beauvoir, Philosophical Writings, p. 252.

[8] Beauvoir, Philosophical Writings, p. 252.

[9] Beauvoir, Philosophical Writings, p. 252.

[10] Beauvoir, Philosophical Writings, p. 250.

[11] Beauvoir, Philosophical Writings, p. 249.

[12] Beauvoir, Philosophical Writings, p. 250.

[13] Beauvoir, Philosophical Writings, p. 250.

[14] Beauvoir, Philosophical Writings, p. 250.

[15] Beauvoir, Philosophical Writings, p. 250.

[16] Beauvoir, Philosophical Writings, p. 251.

[17] Beauvoir, Philosophical Writings, p. 251.

[18] Beauvoir, Philosophical Writings, p. 253.

[19] Beauvoir, Philosophical Writings, p. 254.

[20] Beauvoir, Philosophical Writings, p. 258.

[21] Beauvoir, Philosophical Writings, p. 258.

[22] Beauvoir, Philosophical Writings, p. 259.