Friedrich Nietzsche contra C. S. Lewis: A Nietzschean critique of Christianity and retributive punishment

Lewis’s critique of the Humanitarian theory

“According to the Humanitarian theory,” Lewis says,

to punish a man because he deserves it, and as much as he deserves, is mere revenge, and, therefore, barbarous and immoral. It is maintained that the only legitimate motives for punishing are the desire to deter others by example or to mend the criminal. ²

In other words, the Humanitarian theory maintains a criminal should not be punished by traditionally violent means, whether through punitive incarceration or death, but should be helped, cared for, or treated by professionals so the criminal may reenter and participate in society in healthy, productive ways. Lewis contends that this theory is frequently combined with the belief that “all crime is more or less pathological, the idea of mending tails off into that of healing or curing and punishment becomes therapeutic.” ³

The above passages reveal what the Humanitarian theory is against and what it supports. It is against retributive punishment. Retributive punishment, or “retributivism,” is the idea that someone should be punished if and only if the punished person is guilty of some moral wrongdoing. Furthermore, for the guilty person to be proportionately punished is good and to punish the innocent or to disproportionately punish the guilty is wrong. ⁴ An example: suppose running a red light is morally wrong. According to retributivism, a person running a red light is guilty of a moral wrongdoing. Being guilty of running the red light means that person deserves to be punished, and the punishment must be proportionate to the wrongdoing. That is why red light-runners receive a fine and not capital punishment; a fine is proportionate to the wrongdoing, but capital punishment is not proportionate. Furthermore, even if being punished for running the red light does not deter the person from running it again, and if it does not deter anyone else from running a red light in the future, the person still should be punished. Why? Because for the retributivist, the only thing that determines whether one is to be punished is guilt, not any sort of deterrence or positive outcome of the punishment. Retributivism is often conflated with lex talionis, known as the “eye for an eye” principle of retaliation.

The Humanitarian theory opposes this position. It, on the other hand, is only concerned with treating or deterring a criminal, not with punishment. The Humanitarian theory appears to be opposed to retributive punishment in every way. So, what is Lewis’s main problem with it? He states,

My contention is that this doctrine, merciful though it appears, really means that each one of us, from the moment he breaks the law, is deprived of the rights of a human being. My reason is this. The Humanitarian theory removes from punishment the concept of Desert. But the concept of Desert is the only connecting link between punishment and justice. It is only deserved or undeserved that a sentence can be just or unjust. ⁵

In Lewis’s fundamental opposition to the Humanitarian theory, one sees the connection between a trio of related values: rights, desert, and justice. This threefold connection creates a theory of punishment as purely retributive. Lewis then elaborates on his reasons for rejecting the Humanitarian theory.

First, Lewis claims that the principle of desert is absent from the Humanitarian theory, since the criminal does not get what they deserve—punishment—but what the humanitarian thinks they need—treatment. If a criminal receives treatment or care, then there is no question whether they deserve it; the only question is whether the treatment or care will work. Desert is replaced by effectiveness. But effectiveness is of no concern to retributive justice; retributive justice is only concerned with desert. In fact, the average citizen cannot criticize the Humanitarian’s treatment of the criminal on the grounds of justice, since what Lewis calls “penologists” will simply point to the data showing how effective their methods of treatment are. ⁶

People can, on the other hand, question a judge whose judgment is unjust. We can critique a judge because we share with the judge a sense of justice, rights, and desert. Fixing a sentence was, and should be, Lewis says, a “moral problem” ⁷ rather than a scientific (the “lab coat” variety) problem. The judge was “trained in jurisprudence; trained, that is, in a science which deals with rights and duties, and which, in origin at least, was consciously accepting guidance from the Law of Nature, and from Scripture.” ⁸ A judgment could be questioned by anyone, regardless of their expertise, “because he is simply a man, a rational animal enjoying the Natural Light.” ⁹ The Humanitarian theory drops the concept of desert, and so not even one who is a “jurist, a Christian, and a moral theologian” can question the scientific findings of the “penologists.” ¹⁰

Lewis is also concerned about the power these penologists would have. If a wrongdoer were punished according to the retributive theory, then their punishment would be definite. They would be fined, incarcerated for a set number of years, or perhaps executed. Regardless of the punishment, it comes to an end. But the Humanitarian theory, Lewis argues, would impose an indefinite sentence. The criminal’s sentence would only end when the penologist, whose expertise is beyond moral scrutiny, considers the criminal to be cured. At what point this cure would be reached is unknown. Lewis then remarks that this indefinite sentence is punishment, regardless of what the Humanitarian would say: “That it includes most of the elements for which any punishment is feared—shame, exile, bondage, and years eaten by the locust—is obvious.” ¹¹

Lewis shifts from the Humanitarian theory’s curative goal to its support of deterrence, or punishment meant to be an example to the punished or to others who might consider the same crime. Lewis’s problem with the deterrence aspect of the Humanitarian theory is twofold: first, the Humanitarian uses the criminal only as an object, or as a “mere means” in Kantian terminology; second, if deterrence and not desert is the reason for punishing someone, then the person being punished need not have done anything wrong.

Finally, Lewis’s critique of the Humanitarian theory adopts language from his Christian beliefs:

To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level with those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals. But to be punished, however severely, because we have deserved it, because we “ought to have known better,” is to be treated as a human person made in God’s image. ¹²

Lewis is worried that this “cure” would occur on a massive scale and would likely be inflicted on people by rulers who are not Christian, who are not perfect anyway, and who are likely “[not to be] even the best unbelievers,” ¹³ implying a moral hierarchical scale from best to worst: perfect Christian–imperfect Christian–best of unbelievers–not the best of unbelievers. These undesirable atheist rulers would, in accordance with “one school of psychology [that] regards religion as a neurosis” ¹⁴ (apparently referring to psychoanalysis, such as Freud’s The Future of an Illusion), seek to cure Christians of their Christianity:

Such “cure” will, of course, be compulsory; but under the Humanitarian theory it will not be called by the shocking name of Persecution. No one will blame us for being Christians, no one will hate us, no one will revile us. The new Nero will approach us with the silky manners of a doctor, and though all will be in fact as compulsory as the tunica molesta [a Roman tunic doused with flammable substances for burning criminals] or Smithfield or Tyburn [English sites of execution], all will go on within the unemotional therapeutic sphere where words like “right” and “wrong” or “freedom” and “slavery” are never heard. And thus when the command is given every prominent Christian in the land may vanish overnight into Institutions for the Treatment of the Ideologically Unsound, and it will rest with the expert gaolers to say when (if ever) they are to re-emerge. ¹⁵

Lewis is afraid of a new Nero, armed with modern therapeutic and rehabilitative techniques, who will wipe Christianity from the earth (or England) overnight.

Lewis’s Christian retributivism

Understanding Lewis’s issues with the Humanitarian theory leads me to construct what I call his Christian retributivism. A Nietzschean critique of Lewis would likely begin with pointing out Lewis’s presuppositions or prejudices. Thankfully, these presuppositions are not difficult to detect. Lewis’s fundamental presupposition is that humanity is fallen. Lewis pauses to say that “[he] will not pause to comment on the simple-minded view of fallen human nature [belief in the Humanitarian theory] implies.” ¹⁶ Later, Lewis remarks on how rulers of a society, the new Nero, would use the Humanitarian theory for their nefarious ends because they are “fallen men” and will likely be “unbelievers”; Lewis then turns to the problem of “Christian politics,” which is to live as “innocently” as possible with other unbelieving citizens and under unbelieving rulers. ¹⁷ Lewis’s fundamental presupposition, then, is that humanity is fallen, and, since most people are not Christian, most people have a greater propensity to do evil than good.

From fallenness is derived knowledge of free will, which is a precondition of fallenness. As John Milton says through the angel who speaks to Adam,

Thine and of all thy Sons

The weal or woe in thee is plac’t; beware.

I in thy persevering shall rejoyce,

And all the Blest: stand fast; to stand or fall

Free in thine own Arbitrement it lies. ¹⁸

“The weal or woe” in thee is placed; the disjunction, the or, indicates that the choice is Adam’s. Adam, like Lucifer, was “sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.” ¹⁹ Fallenness is only possible through free will, and the free choice of Adam to fall is the choice that haunts Lewis.

From free will comes the value most visibly active in Lewis’s critique of the Humanitarian theory and his own Christian retributivism: Desert. Only through free will can one deserve praise or blame, reward or punishment. Without desert, punishment is always unjust, since justice and punishment are only connected by the existence of desert. Lewis even makes the strong claim: “take away desert, and the whole morality of punishment disappears.” ²⁰

Finally, from desert comes the justification of retributive punishment. To punish with retribution is to acknowledge, Lewis says, that the punished person is made in God’s image. Thus the crowning glory of Lewis’s Christian retributivism is that the condemned is treated with love even while they are being punished, “however severely” ²¹ that might be. This association of violent punishment with Christian love is not unique to Lewis, however. Dante Alighieri and Martin Luther also draw explicit connections. Luther, in his work On Secular Authority, claims that in a war in which an innocent ally must be defended,

it is a Christian act and an act of love confidently to kill, rob, and pillage the enemy, and to do everything that can injure him until one has conquered him according to the methods of war. Only, one must beware of sin, not violate wives and virgins, and when victory comes, offer mercy and peace to those who surrender and humble themselves. ²²

Even older than Luther, Dante positively connects violent punishment with love in the lines he places above the gates of Hell:

Justice it was that moved my great creator;

Divine Omnipotence created me,

And highest wisdom joined with primal love. ²³

After reading the inscription, Dante turns to his guide Virgil and remarks on the lines’ cruelty. But according to all of these writers just punishment, no matter how violent, is not incompatible with Christian love; rather, it is sometimes precisely what Christian love requires.

Nietzsche’s critique of punishment

Having outlined the need for a Nietzschean critique of Christian retributivism, it is more readily seen at this point. Retributive punishment arises from a common Christian belief in the fallenness of humanity, or the inherent imperfection and imperfectability of humanity, an imperfection that arises from the freely willed choice to disobey God. A Nietzschean critique of this connection between fallenness, free will, desert, and retributive punishment will push the Christian reader to revise their current understanding of Christianity to a form of Christianity that more fully practices the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and love.

I focus on three of Nietzsche’s books: Daybreak (Morgenröte, 1881), On the Genealogy of Morality (Zur Genealogie der Moral, 1887), and Twilight of the Idols (Götzen-Dämmergung, 1888). While Nietzsche’s writings on punishment are generally scattered through his published corpus (1872–1888), this scattered, non-systematic style is distinctively Nietzschean. Each of these works will be referenced to comment on aspects of Christian retributivism, revealing both the problems with Christian retributivism and what is required to do away with it.

Daybreak and fallenness

A Nietzschean critique of Lewis would begin with Lewis’s foundation: fallenness. Section 13 of Daybreak, titled “Towards the re-education of the human race,” begins with “Men of application and goodwill assist in this one work: to take the concept of punishment which has overrun the whole world and root it out!” ²⁴ This statement is one of the few times in which attributing to Nietzsche an applied ethics of social reform would be plausible. Nietzsche leaves his frequently diagnostic tone and enters into a role of a more constructive physician or educator, seeking to root out this most “noxious weed.” ²⁵ Punishment, Nietzsche says, has robbed the world of its “chance character of events” ²⁶ since punishment is embedded into the very idea of an action’s consequences. Punishment even encroaches on everyday disciplinary and parental language. “There will be consequences if you disobey me,” an irritated parent might say. But punishment is interpreted as a consequence rather than anything accidental or unnecessary, much like the Newtonian law: for every action is an equal and opposite reaction.

The observation that consequence and punishment are identical is at the root of the retributivist philosophy of punishment: someone should be punished if and only if the punished person is guilty of some moral wrongdoing. This expression of retributivism may not immediately call to mind Nietzsche’s equivalence of consequence with punishment, but one need not look far to see how they are connected. If Bob freely commits some immoral or illegal action, then Bob deserves to be punished. Because Bob deserves to be punished, Bob is to be punished. This stance is generally the retributivist stance, though a retributivist may want to point out circumstances that would let Bob off the hook, if Bob’s action had been coerced, done in self-defense, and so on. For simplicity’s sake, however, assume Bob is guilty because of his freely chosen immoral or illegal action. Culpability, or blameworthiness, is a necessary and sufficient condition for an offender to deserve to be punished. Certain actions cause one to be culpable or blameworthy. Certain actions, therefore, have punishment as their consequence. Punishment is the consequence of a prior cause: the immoral action.

Because cause and effect have been reinterpreted as cause and punishment, one’s own existence is often conceived of as a punishment. This is the basic structure of original sin, or fallenness. Nietzsche likely does not only have Christianity in mind here, but also non-Christian philosophers, such as Arthur Schopenhauer, who influenced Nietzsche’s earlier writings. According to Schopenhauer, because the consequence of all existence is suffering, whether through natural causes or immoral actions, and because each individual human is nothing more than a single expression of the Will that is expressed through each person, an individual bears the weight of all suffering and sin. ²⁷ Yet again, guilt is the consequence of existence; indeed, “Punishment must be tied to the offense, to the point where the two become one.” ²⁸ Schopenhauer himself connects his own concept of “eternal justice” to the Christian dogma of original sin, illustrated by the poetic lines he quotes: “the greatest offense of man, / Is that he was born.” ²⁹ The punishment for existence and the punishment that is existence become indistinguishable for Schopenhauer and, Nietzsche claims, for many people as well. Thus, the belief in original sin, fallenness, and the basically sinful imperfection of humanity is ingrained not only in Christianity but also in secular metaphysics and moral philosophy as well.

Understanding how punishment connects Christian theology with Schopenhauerian metaphysics and ethics assists in understanding why Nietzsche calls the belief that existence is a punishment a result of how “the education of the human race [has] hitherto been directed by the fantasies of jailers and hangmen.” ³⁰ These images of the world are fantastical because nothing necessitates a connection between consequence and punishment. They are fantasies because they are expressions of the singular, non-rational, tyrannical drive of jailers and hangmen: to punish, and to punish harshly. Interestingly, a continuation of this image appears in one of Nietzsche’s last works, Twilight of the Idols, in which, again in the middle of a discussion of the fantastical belief in the causative powers of the free will, Nietzsche refers to the infection of the “innocence of becoming” with concepts, such as “‘punishment’ and ‘guilt.’” Nietzsche concludes this section with the claim that “Christianity is a hangman’s metaphysics.” ³¹

Nietzsche considered worldviews like Schopenhauer’s and Christianity’s, including that of Lewis, as “nihilistic.” Popular conceptions of nihilism may suggest someone lying on a pool, drink in hand, taking life easy not out of a higher desire for pleasure without conflict, but because simply no point exists in doing anything else. Or it may call to mind an angsty youth who simply rebels against parental authority. These images are not what Nietzsche has in mind when he uses the term, however. For Nietzsche, nihilism is a belief, conscious or unconscious, in the lack of this life’s value, that life has no value at all or that life is bad, unworthy, evil. Nihilism often manifests in ways of living that are harmful to oneself and others, such as certain forms of asceticism, focusing one’s attention on “the next life,” as well as complexes of metaphysical and moral beliefs like Lewis’s Christian retributivism. Many who Nietzsche considers “nihilists” would deny the charge, of course. The denial of nihilism, however, would accompany claims, such as: “I do believe in the value of life; life is valuable as a gift from God, or “life is valuable as a way to prove myself worthy of heaven.” These claims of the value of life, however, are exactly what Nietzsche means by nihilism. Lewis and many other Christians view life or “worldly” existence as a punishment for sin, a “vale of tears,” a passageway and testing ground, a pilgrim’s progress to the divine. What concerns Nietzsche is not so much the truth of whether these descriptions of life and life’s connection to an afterlife are accurate, but in how these nihilistic beliefs are formed, justified, and used in believers’ lives. In Daybreak 13, he claims that this web of beliefs comes from the “fantasies of jailers and hangmen.” Nietzsche, of course, employs strikingly punitive images of incarceration and execution for the “education of the human race” up until now.

The genealogy of punishment

Lewis and his defenders may argue that fallenness and the cosmic sense of punishment-as-existence may not be necessary, but this assertion is not a problem. As Lewis says, “The concept of Desert is the only connecting link between punishment and justice.” ³² Even without notions such as fallenness, it remains true that desert is the only connecting link between punishment and justice. However, Nietzsche argues forcefully against this essential connection between desert, punishment, and justice in his 1887 work, On the Genealogy of Morality. No essential connection exists, Nietzsche contends; in fact, this connection has not existed for much of human history.

In the three essays comprising the book On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche traces the “genealogy” of contemporary moral beliefs and moral philosophy from its Jewish and Christian origins up to the nineteenth century. The central essay of Genealogy is largely devoted to the genealogy of punishment and guilt. In this section, by understanding the genealogy of punishment, one can better comprehend the emergence and foundation of Christian retributivism.

In the second essay of Genealogy, Nietzsche argues:

That inescapable thought, which is now so cheap and apparently natural, and which has had to serve as an explanation of how the sense of justice came about at all on earth, “the criminal deserves to be punished because he could have acted otherwise,” is actually an extremely late and refined form of human judgment and inference; whoever thinks it dates back to the beginning is laying his coarse hands on the psychology of primitive man in the wrong way. Throughout most of human history, punishment has not been meted out because the miscreant was held responsible for his act, therefore it was not assumed that the guilty party alone should be punished:—but rather, as parents still punish their children, it was out of anger over some wrong that had been suffered, directed at the perpetrator,—but this anger was held in check and modified by the idea that every injury has its equivalent which can be paid in compensation, if only through the pain of the person who injures. And where did this primeval, deeply-rooted and perhaps now ineradicable idea gain its power, this idea of an equivalence between injury and pain? I have already let it out: in the contractual relationship between creditor and debtor, which is as old as the very conception of a “legal subject” and itself refers back to the basic forms of buying, selling, bartering, trade and traffic. ³³

This passage requires one to slow down and parse what Nietzsche is saying. First, the retributive principle, “the criminal deserves to be punished because he could have acted otherwise,” contains both of Lewis’s main principles within it: desert (“the criminal deserves to be punished”) and free will (“because he could have acted otherwise”). This principle, Nietzsche says, is added onto the process of punishment very late and does not exist at the root of the genealogy of punishment. Second, historical evidence exists for Nietzsche’s statement, “It was not assumed that the guilty party alone should be punished.” Consider laws 229 and 230 of Hammurabi’s code, which contains traces of this form of collective punishment:

[229] If a builder build a house for some one, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built fall in and kill its owner, then that builder shall be put to death. [230] If it kill the son of the owner the son of that builder shall be put to death. ³⁴

The son of the builder, in law 230, is not involved in the building’s fall but is to be punished nonetheless because the guilty party alone was not the only punishable party, as Nietzsche says. Like parents punishing their children, punishment comes from anger, resulting in a lashing out at a weaker party by a stronger, whether it be punishment by a monarch upon a citizen or a parent upon a child. This form of collective punishment evolves or is “refined” into punishment against only the guilty party because of their guilt. Punishment now is able to be inflicted like a system of an equivalent exchange: “every injury has its equivalent which can be paid in compensation, if only through the pain of the person who injures.” ³⁵ Consider the example above of the red light: the injury (the injustice) of running the red light merits an equivalent pain (punishment) as a consequence, which would be a fine; capital punishment, however, is not an equivalent form of pain to the injury of running a red light. A precise amount of pain is to be repaid to the victim or to the state, and punishment rests on the (further) presupposition that a precise amount of pain can at all be a repayment for an injury. Finally, Nietzsche traces this idea of punishment (precise amount of pain can be a repayment for an injury) to the relationship of the creditor and debtor.

The origin of punishment in the debtor/creditor relationship, as Nietzsche argues, is different from how some currently view punishment. Nietzsche is aware of this difference and the distinction between a practice’s origin and the practice’s purpose is important when analyzing that practice’s genealogical development. In GM II.12, Nietzsche points out that the distinction between origin and purpose is counterintuitive. Oftentimes, one assumes the purpose, or usefulness, of a cultural practice is the reason for that practice; in the case of punishment, punishment may be said to have originated because punishment deterred others from certain undesirable actions. According to this view, deterrence is the purpose and origin of punishment; there is no difference. But Nietzsche argues that deterrence is a latecomer to the history of the practice that emerged as punishment, and deterrence is only one of many such latecomers. Even further and more counterintuitively than this, in GM II.13, Nietzsche argues that punishment itself came about only after the social and cultural practice, or “procedure,” was established. Punishment was inserted into that procedure and then gave birth to even more meanings and purposes.

The original procedure involved the relationship between debtor and creditor, both as individuals and as individual and community. In GM II.9, Nietzsche describes lawbreaking in terms of a debtor and creditor, the debtor as the lawbreaker and the creditor as the community. The community/creditor provides many important benefits for the individual/debtor, and the debtor repays by following the law, working, and participating in the community. When the debtor breaks the law, however, the creditor and the law are at risk. The creditor must therefore hurt the debtor. Originally, this injury was through severe means, such as death, mutilation, and exile. One might call this practice punishment, but one would be incorrect, according to Nietzsche. Instead of “punishment,” this sort of procedure is simply a maintenance of balance and a primal expulsion of a harmful element. This procedure has nothing to do with justice, desert, deterrence, individual responsibility, or free will, even though one can easily see how all these later concepts may help to reinforce and justify the procedure of ousting a debtor.

As this procedure changes into punishment and as punishment produces the multitude of purposes, uses, and meanings that develop through history, these later purposes do not entirely replace previous meanings or the original debtor/creditor relationship. The debtor/creditor relationship is easy to see in Christianity and in modern expressions of criminality and incarceration. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus instructs his disciples to pray, “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (6:12). ³⁶ The text uses the word “debt” (opheilema) rather than “sin” (hamartia). The use of “debt” is maintained in the Latin debitum, but in Luther’s translation, one can see how the German word Schuld is more ambiguous. Schuld is the word for “debt” and also the word for “guilt.” In Schuld, the more secular “debt” morphs into a spiritual or moral “guilt.” In the genealogical fashion, a new meaning of the ancient procedure of dealing with debtors emerges as moral guilt only after a long history of that procedure. Even the word “forgive” (aphiēmi) has a literal origin that only remains in traces in the often moral and religious usage of the phrase. Homer uses a form of aphiēmi in Iliad 12.221, the translation of which is in italics: “[An eagle] skirted their front lines from right to left/Clutching in its talons a huge scarlet snake,/But then let it fall before reaching its nest.” ³⁷ To forgive debts is therefore to let the debt fall, implying a creditor’s prior grip on the debt. In other words, God is the creditor while humans are debtors, and the debt, incurred through Christ’s salvation, is far greater than humanity could possibly pay. Finally, language of “debt” persists in how criminals are said to need to “pay their debt to society,” which can be a euphemistic way of saying “criminals need to experience pain.”

One can see what is to be gained from a genealogy of punishment and how it functions as a critique of Lewis’s arguments. A genealogy of punishment shows two flaws in the justification of punishment. First, any particular justification for punishment—a justification that stems from one of the many purposes or meanings of punishment—does not exist in a historical–cultural vacuum. Second, any particular purpose of punishment does not exist as an eternal, moral principle. Lewis and many other modern philosophers who attempt to justify a particular rationale of punishment make both of the mistakes Nietzsche’s genealogical method aims to rectify.

Lewis’s argument contains the first flaw, the neglect of the historical and cultural foundation for the practice of punishment. Lewis’s acknowledgment of the history of punishment only considers how in the past the judge would use moral reasoning rooted in theology and natural law to make decisions, but the use of explicitly theological reasoning is beginning to disappear. This may be true, but the implication Lewis draws is that, before 1949, the only or primary justification for punishment was fundamentally theological. The genealogical method shows that a theological purpose for punishment, specifically a European Christian one that utilizes the theory of Natural Law, is not the only purpose of punishment that has existed and is not even the oldest or most widely believed purpose.

Lewis’s argument also contains the second flaw the genealogy of punishment is meant to reveal: a particular purpose of punishment does not exist as a universal moral truth. Lewis holds the trio of values, justice, desert, and punishment, to be absolutely morally dependent on one another. The genealogical method shows otherwise: punishment is dependent neither on justice nor on desert. The genealogical method goes even further in its critique. At the bottom of many of the loftiest, most highly praised values and virtues is a secular foundation of pain and blood:

Ah, reason, solemnity, mastering of emotions, this really dismal thing called reflection, all these privileges and splendors man has: what a price had to be paid for them! How much blood and horror lies at the basis of all “good things”! ³⁸

Genealogy does not only reveal the unsavory history and development of the ideals of modernity, but it also seeks to undermine those ideals by showing how they are frequently supported and justified by their opposites.

The effects of punishment

Nietzsche also discusses the psychological effects of punishment in his work, and contemporary psychology has done extensive work on the effects of punishment and incarceration. ³⁹ In this final section on Nietzsche, I sketch Nietzsche’s theory of what happens to the criminal when they are constantly punished or incarcerated.

Every justification for punishment, to be thorough in its argument, needs at least one intended effect of that punishment. For the deterrence justification, the intended effect is deterrence. By punishing, others will be deterred from committing the same crime as the punished. The retributive theorist might propose the effect is that of justice being served. The retributive theorist may also hope that criminals be treated in a way they deserve, as humans rather than animals, as those made in the image and likeness of God, rather than simply as bodies with a brain; a criminal is treated well precisely because the criminal is being punished. Lewis has both of these effects in mind when he writes, “Desert is the only connecting link between punishment and justice,” ⁴⁰ and “To be punished, however severely, because we have deserved it, because we ‘ought to have known better,’ is to be treated as a human person made in God’s image.” ⁴¹ Each statement, respectively, represents Lewis’s support of these two hoped-for retributive effects.

Unfortunately, the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen is not a sufficient justification for punishment. In On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche draws attention to the difference between the expected effects of punishment and the actual effects of punishment:

Punishment can clearly be seen to be richly laden with benefits of all kinds. This provides all the more justification for us to deduct one supposed benefit that counts as its most characteristic in popular perception,—faith in punishment, which is shaky today for several reasons, has its strongest support in precisely this. Punishment is supposed to have the value of arousing the feeling of guilt in the guilty party; in it, people look for the actual instrumentum of the mental reflex which we call “bad conscience” or “pang of conscience.” But by doing this, people are violating reality and psychology . . .On the whole, punishment makes men harder and colder, it concentrates, it sharpens the feeling of alienation; it strengthens the power to resist. ⁴²

Much like morality, which has its origins in its opposite, the “faith in punishment” produces effects that oppose the effects it is meant and believed to produce. According to Nietzsche, punishment is meant to produce repentance in the condemned. The ideal before the eyes of the governor, the jailer, and the executioner is the repentant criminal who has turned away from their life of repugnant crime to the life of goodness, righteousness, and, most importantly, being a productive citizen. Instead of the substantiation of this phantom image, which “violate[s] reality and psychology,” punishment “makes men harder and colder, it concentrates, it sharpens the feeling of alienation; it strengthens the power to resist.” ⁴³ Nietzsche’s claim that punishment sharpens alienation and strengthens the power to resist is confirmed by one of the most radical of US prisoners, George Jackson, who viewed himself and other prisoners as slaves: ⁴⁴ “As a slave, the social phenomenon that engages my whole consciousness is, of course, revolution.” ⁴⁵ The revolution that engages the slave’s and prisoner’s “whole consciousness” does not emerge from a vacuum but from the cells of punitive Justice, supported by Law, Desert, and, in Lewis’s view, the treatment of people made in God’s image and likeness.

Nietzsche looks into these cells in Twilight of the Idols and everywhere sees a process of sickening “domestication” at work. Domestication begins when the “priestly caste,” the religious leaders of a community, claim that humans have free will. Free will, Nietzsche argues, was invented by the priestly caste and religious authorities so those who break the laws, mores, and customs may be punished. Moreover, the priestly caste is granted the “right” to punish the wrongdoer. ⁴⁶ Ultimately, free will is invented to establish religious and punitive authority over a population. With this psychology of free will in mind Nietzsche looks to the domesticating effects of punishment.

Later in TI, Nietzsche compares modern punitive society to a zoo:

The project of domesticating the human beast as well as the project of breeding a certain species of human have both been called “improvements”: only by using these zoological terms can we begin to express the realities here—realities, of course, that the typical proponents of “improvement,” the priests, do not know anything about, do not want to know anything about. . . . To call the domestication of an animal an “improvement” almost sounds like a joke to us [Nietzsche and his intended audience]. Anyone who knows what goes on in a zoo will have doubts whether beasts are “improved” there. They become weak, they become less harmful, they are made ill through the use of pain, injury, hunger, and the depressive affect of fear. ⁴⁷

An animal outside of a zoo is free, healthy, joyful, and strong. Within the zoo, it is impossible to say the animal’s life has been improved through domestication and taming. Cameras watching animals in their enclosures see attempts to escape, constant wandering around in circles, and other activities (or inactivities), the result of torturous boredom in which human animals would engage if trapped in an artificial enclosure meant to mimic a human habitat. Incarceration is like putting a human in a zoo or circus, complete with the boring, abused life of a living commodity subjected to a law formed and ideologically justified by the faith in punishment and incarceration. Punishment improves the human just as zoos improve nonhuman animals. They improve by making the subject physically and mentally ill, all while fostering the single thought that overwhelms consciousness: revolution.

Nietzsche goes on to describe these effects on humans and how culturally and religiously engrained this system of domesticating incarceration is:

The same thing happens with domesticated people who have been “improved” by priests. In the early Middle Ages, when the church was basically a zoo, the choicest specimens of the “blond beast” [see GM I.8] were hunted down everywhere,—people like the Teuton nobles were subjected to “improvement.” But what did an “improved” Teuton look like after being seduced into a cloister? He looked like a caricature of a human being, like a miscarriage: he had turned into a “sinner”, he was stuck in a cage, locked up inside all sorts of horrible ideas . . . There he lay, sick, miserable, full of malice against himself, hating the drive for life, suspicious of everything that was still strong and happy. In short, a “Christian.” ⁴⁸

Nietzsche’s religious critique and his critique of culture support his view of domesticating incarceration, linked together by his critique of punishment. Nietzsche’s primary problem with Christianity, as mentioned above, is its nihilism, the nihilism Nietzsche sees in any ideology that diminishes human life or sees humankind as sick, evil, sinful. Nihilism appears in the words of the psalm, “But I am a worm, and not human; scorned by others, and despised by the people” (Ps 22:6), and the image of humans as worms reemerges in Isaac Watts’s “Would He devote that sacred head/For such a worm as I?” ⁴⁹ The diminution of humankind to worms and sinners, the equation of “worldly” and “the world” with “sinfulness,” ⁵⁰ is part of the ideological language of the forced, sickness-inducing domestication Nietzsche decries in Twilight of the Idols. This domestication brings about the widespread belief in life as punishment, which in turns justifies punishing and incarcerating certain members of society as natural and as inevitable as cause and effect.

Concluding remarks

Nietzsche’s critique of retributive punishment may be persuasive to some of his Christian readers. For segments of current US culture realizing that legal punishment is an industry, an industry meant to enslave people and exploit their lives and labor, this aspect of Nietzsche’s thought may be attractive. But Christian readers of Nietzsche are not just any readers of Nietzsche. They are readers who occupy a central position in Nietzsche’s critique of punishment. To come to terms with Nietzsche’s views on punishment, the Christian reader must come to terms with Nietzsche’s views on Christianity.

In his late autobiographical work, Ecce Homo, Nietzsche explains why he attacks, or “wages war” on his chosen targets. He gives four criteria:

[First,] I attack only a winner . . . [Second,] I only attack where I will not have any allies. [Third,] I never attack people,—I treat people as if they were high-intensity magnifying glasses that can illuminate a general, though insidious and barely noticeable, predicament . . . [Fourth,] I attack things where there is no question of personal differences, where there has not been a history of bad experiences . . . I have the right to wage war on Christianity because I have never been put out or harmed by it,—the most serious Christians have always been well disposed to me. ⁵¹

My article has taken up Nietzsche’s third criterion for war. In writing about C. S. Lewis’s theory of punishment, my goal has been to use Lewis as a “magnifying glass” through which to examine the ideology of retributive punishment and a distinctively Christian ground for supporting it. The goal of using such a magnifying glass is, as I mentioned above, to question the moral principles of Christianity with the aim of revealing what must be done to avoid the trap of retributive punishment.

Finally, but perhaps most crucially, what is the problem with the retributive theory of punishment and Christianity’s participation in this theory? What justifies retributivism and what retributivism is used in turn to justify constitute the problem? In our minds, retributive punishment is justified by emotions and values of very particular kinds, emotions of vengeance and revenge that require pain and suffering for their catharsis. These emotions may often feel perfectly reasonable and widely accepted. Normally, however, one’s personal justification for retributivism stops at that point. The feeling of strong emotions is sufficient justification. Retributivism and the belief that those who have gone through the justice system and who suffer therein deserve to be there and deserve to suffer ultimately justifies the continual production of enslaved people and the continual destruction of the lives of communities and individuals under violence’s protective (dis)guise of law and order.

The problem with Christianity’s contribution to the justification of retributivism should now be clear to “the most serious Christians.” Christianity should embrace its countercultural call for action in a culture now steeped in certain kinds of Christian values. Instead of condemning prisoners, Christians ought to remember the innocence inherent in every living creature. Instead of the instinct for revenge and punishment, they should foster the instinct to help and to heal. Instead of producing a labor force of enslaved people, labor should be performed creatively and freely for the sake of a flourishing community, as the human species requires. ⁵² Through rejecting beliefs in the sinfulness of humanity, the fallenness of the world, guilt, and even desert and individual freedom, Christianity may once again stand against the most powerful empire on this earth and its quest for violent mastery over the wretched of this earth. The Christian, like George Jackson, may allow their consciousness to be fully occupied by the phenomenon of revolution. Nietzsche himself saw some hope for Christianity’s participation in such a social revolution:

What a relief it would be for the general feeling of life if, together with the belief in guilt, one also got rid of the old instinct for revenge, and even regarded it as a piece of prudence for the promotion of happiness to join Christianity in blessing one’s enemies and to do good to those who have offended us! ⁵³

The point at which Christianity and Nietzsche, who has declared “war” against Christianity, can agree is worthy of both the Nietzschean’s and the Christian’s attention.