> it's not a truth universally acknowledged. I don't see what good it does
It keeps people from taking the law into their own hands. We can debate the merits of retribution, but not that it’s a seemingly-innate part of human nature. (It’s an open question if we can condition it out of ourselves. But that’s pretty serious social engineering that, to my knowledge, no society has achieved. We aren’t bonobos.)
> If retribution only benefits the injured party and not the state, and if I'm the injured one and don't want it, can I opt out of it?
Our sense of retribution is more than transactional. There is a perception of collective harm that’s explicit in our system of public prosection—it’s the people versus a criminal, not the victim.
> It keeps people from taking the law into their own hands.
Definitely an upside, though the punishment of trial (and the victim being heard), conviction, repayment, etc. may be sufficient for that.
> We can debate the merits of retribution, but not that it’s a seemingly-innate part of human nature. (It’s an open question if we can condition it out of ourselves. But that’s pretty serious social engineering that, to my knowledge, no society has achieved.
Here I think you overstate it. I believe a large number of people, maybe the majority, do not choose retribution.
'Innate' has become a loaded word, and one used (not necessarily in this case) politically to make the speaker's argument into something inevitable. Stepping back from that:
Lots of things are 'innate'; people focus on the more harsh ones, but so are goodness, a desire for justice, fairness, love, hunger, laziness, sleepiness, etc. And innate drives are not all-powerful or determinative; some are barely noticeable and some powerful, often the same one varying greatly (consider sex drive, for example). And of course our actions depend, very much, on our will and reason and choice.
It keeps people from taking the law into their own hands. We can debate the merits of retribution, but not that it’s a seemingly-innate part of human nature. (It’s an open question if we can condition it out of ourselves. But that’s pretty serious social engineering that, to my knowledge, no society has achieved. We aren’t bonobos.)
> If retribution only benefits the injured party and not the state, and if I'm the injured one and don't want it, can I opt out of it?
Our sense of retribution is more than transactional. There is a perception of collective harm that’s explicit in our system of public prosection—it’s the people versus a criminal, not the victim.