Chapter 6 - Punishment and Protest

Summary

Ethicists often approach our task by thinking about the norms that apply to act types. We ask, for example, what it means to punish, to make amends, or to forgive, and what conditions govern the appropriate performance of actions that fall within these types. However, actions often do not fall neatly into only one action type. This chapter discusses two cases that can be interpreted both as acts of protest and as acts of what Linda Radzik calls “informal social punishment.” Since the norms that govern these two types diverge, the fact that a particular action can be interpreted in either of these ways poses a challenge for anyone who might be seeking moral guidance from the type to which the action belongs. The cases highlight a theoretical gap that needs to be filled not only by accounts of social punishment or protest but also by ethicists who would use this approach to think about actions of other overlapping types.