4 - Reply to Brook

Summary

Richard Brook raises three objections to my account of the right to punish. He first presents a supposed counterexample, the case of the special nuclear threat. He then argues that, despite my rejection of forfeiture, I actually presuppose that some people have and others have not forfeited a right not to be threatened. And finally he suggests that, while I reject any justification appealing to the use we can make of someone in punishing him, my own justification covertly appeals to the use we can make of someone in threatening him. Of these, the first is the most important. So let me start with it.

I claim that if someone has no good moral objection to our sincere threat to do something bad to him if some event occurs, then, ceteris paribus, he will have no good moral objection to our actually doing it if the event does occur. Conversely, if someone has a good moral objection to our carrying out a conditional threat against him, then he had, ceteris paribus, a good moral objection to the original threat. But I qualify or restrict these claims in three important ways. First, I use “threat” in a special sense that excludes bluffs. We threaten someone in this sense only if we create a real risk that we (or our agents) will carry out the threat. Second, by having a good objection to something, I mean having a moral right to be free from it.