In the new book, The Moral Punishment Instinct, psychologist Jan-Willem van Prooijen focuses his analysis of punishment on the desire to punish, proclaiming up front that this desire is “a basic human instinct” (p. 5), “hard-wired” as an innate response into the brain of every human being. No proof is offered to substantiate this grounding assumption, and indeed, like all such sweeping claims about human nature, no proof is possible.

Van Prooijen, arguing from the perspective of the “soft science” of psychology, resurrects afresh the language of basic human instincts and proceeds on the basis of this assumption to ask: how the punitive instinct to make offenders suffer relates to other instincts and desires, such as the desire to control and the desire to deter, and other basic human behaviors and motivations, such as the need to belong and the urge to cooperate. Most tellingly, van Prooijen wonders about the “evolutionary roots” of the punitive instinct. Drawing on George Herbert Mead’s work (1918), the author names the punitive instinct as one within the range of “hostile instincts” that are dark drives within a palette of basic instincts that influence each other to produce complex social acts. Van Prooijen admits that the instincts toward punishment, revenge and aggression have much in common, all being aspects of “deeply rooted hostile instincts” (p. 9).

 Indeed, one is surprised in the late year of 2018 to discover scholars taking up again the language of instincts, not only because the fallacious nature of all sweeping claims about “human nature” has been well exposed by philosophers over the past century, but because claims that instinctual drives toward punishment, aggression and conflict are encoded in human nature have historically been used to justify war and other violences. The fallacy of these claims was most clearly exposed by the prestigious group of psychologists, convened by the Spanish National Commission for UNESCO in Seville, Spain, in 1986, who were the architects of the “Seville Statement on Violence.” Scholarly works that argued for the existence of dark instincts in humans, like the important work on aggression by ethologist Konrad Lorenz, writing in the 1960s, came to be generally discredited as apologetics for Nazi (and other) atrocities. After all, if everyone shares these dark drives, then Hobbes was right about humans being ever engaged in a “war of all against all,” so even “pre-emptive” (first-strike) violences could be justified as wise strategy to avoid the inevitable attacks that everyone else is secretly plotting.

While this book could make for an interesting read for students and general readers, if only to stimulate renewed debate on the contentious ideas it rehashes, it is too elementary for scholars in the field and adds nothing new or innovative to the discussion about why societies and individuals desire to punish. It argues at one point for “healthy” punitive communities and gives brief coverage to those inspired restorative alternatives that are currently being explored in more progressive societies. Indeed Prooijen ends up recommending a third alternative model of justice that combines punishment with restorative approaches. Finally and most importantly, the language used throughout the book to lay out the “evolutionary reasons” underlying the punishment drive hearkens back to a tradition of thinking that has long been abandoned as illegitimate and indeed dangerous.

© 2018 Wendy C. Hamblet

Wendy C. Hamblet, Ph.D. (Philosophy), Professor, North Carolina A&T State University.