Shylock's famous speech is music to the ears of modern liberals: Hath not a Jew eyes, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heated by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you pick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die?

The aim of this paper is to provide a broad sketch of the advantages of the debt/atonement approach to punishment. Such an approach is appealing for it can benefit both the victim and the remorseful victimizer. Compared to other theories, it gives a fuller and more unified account of our intuitions about paying debts, doing penance, alleviating guilt, granting forgiveness, and offsetting privileges, pleasures and burdens. The theory also allows us to avoid justifying punishment on the basis of using some (...) people to deter others. And it does all of this while channeling in a positive and productive way the deeply felt vindictive need to "get even." Thus, contrary to the traditional wisdom that justice and revenge are diametrically opposed, providing the former may actually depend upon allowing the latter. (shrink)