Review of Adam Kolber’s Punishment for the Greater Good

framework and verdicts and rough explanations in particular cases. Kolber thus argues that, even as consequentialists diverge as to which consequences matter, we can productively rely on those points of convergence. Moreover, Kolber denies that these theoretical problems give retributivism any advantage. While there are plenty of consequentialist puzzles about value, standard retributivists acknowledge that consequences can sometimes matter. Thus, the standard retributivist is seem - ingly on the hook for whatever challenges the pure consequentialist faces here. How- ever, Kolber argues that “there is at least one form of intrinsic value—the delivery of deserved punishment—that retributivists must describe and account for that pure consequentialists need not” (50). Then, in Chapter 3, Kolber addresses a practical problem for pure consequentialism: there are so many potential and actual conse - quences, extending infinitely in space and time, and so pure consequentialism might be practically impossible to apply. In the here and now, however, Kolber argues that the pure consequentialist may happily rely on the principles of ordinary morality as useful shortcuts. Even if our ordinary moral principles are not consequentialist on the surface, we may have some reasonable confidence that they are good and useful shortcuts for promoting the consequentialist good. Even if consequentialism is practically manageable, we might favor retributivism if it better explains our deep intuitions. However, in Chapters 4 and 5, Kolber denies that standard retributivism provides superior explanations of our commitments to culpability and to proportionality. In Chapter 4, he argues that consequentialist short- cuts can explain why we should not punish the innocent. Punishing the innocent wastes resources, and it may encourage lawlessness. Kolber argues that this shortcut limitation is both practically sturdier and more coherent than the standard retributiv- ist’s ostensibly rigid deontology, which faces threshold problems when the stakes get high. In Chapter 5, Kolber turns to concerns with proportional punishment. Although proportionality is central to standard retributivism, the retr