First-Party Punishment: Conscience and Guilt

Morris B. Hoffman

doi:10.1017/CBO9781139811873.004

3 - First-Party Punishment: Conscience and Guilt

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2014

Morris B. Hoffman

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Morris B. Hoffman: Affiliation:
University of Colorado Boulder

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Summary

The first and greatest punishment of the sinner is the conscience of sin.

Seneca

The Moral Animal

Konrad Lorenz, the famous Austrian zoologist, and someone who knew a thing or two about the dangers of anthropomorphism, once wrote about an incident that happened to his old French bulldog, Bully. When Lorenz came home one day with a new dog, Bully was racked with jealousy. The two dogs got into a bitter fight in Lorenz's bedroom, and as Lorenz was trying to separate them Bully bit Lorenz's finger. Lorenz, the trained observationalist, reports on Bully's behavior after the bite:

[H]e broke down completely and although I did not admonish him and indeed stroked and coaxed him, he lay on the carpet as though paralysed. A little bundle of unhappiness, unable to get up. He shivered as in a fever and every few seconds a great tremor ran through his body.…[F]rom time to time a deep sigh escaped his tortured breast, and large tears overflowed his eyes. As he was literally unable to rise, I had to carry him down on to the road several times a day; he then walked back himself…but he could only crawl upstairs with an effort.…It was several days before he could eat and even then he could only be cajoled into taking food from my hands. For several weeks he approached me in an attitude of humble supplication, in sad contrast to the normal behavior of the self-willed and anything but servile dog. His bad conscience affected me the more in that my own was anything but clear towards him. My acquisition of the new dog now seemed an almost unforgivable act.

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Type: Chapter
Information: The Punisher's Brain
The Evolution of Judge and Jury
, pp. 92 - 120

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139811873.004 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2014

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