We have evolved to want revenge. The desire to see those that have hurt us be hurt in kind feels not just natural but morally just. But philosopher Gregg D. Caruso argues that this strike-back instinct is built on a belief we can no longer defend — that people are the ultimate authors of their own actions, free from the luck of their genes, upbringing, and circumstance. Abandon that belief, and the justice system we've built around it starts to look less like justice and more like organised cruelty.

When someone wrongs us—cuts us off in traffic, betrays our trust, or harms someone we love—we feel a powerful urge to strike back. This impulse runs deep. It’s visceral, immediate, and feels entirely justified. We want the wrongdoer to suffer, to pay for what they’ve done. This strike-back emotion lies at the heart of our practices of moral blame and punishment. But what if this deeply ingrained response, however natural it feels, is based on a fundamental mistake about human agency and moral responsibility?

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The strike-back emotion feels so natural, so justified, that questioning it seems absurd or even dangerous.

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According to the work of free will skeptics like myself, the kind of free will required to justify our retributive practices—the backward-looking desire to make wrongdoers suffer because they deserve it—simply doesn’t exist. This doesn’t mean we cannot hold people responsible in other important senses, protect society, or maintain meaningful relationships. But it does mean we need to rethink some of our most cherished assumptions about blame, punishment, and what people truly deserve.

The stubborn system of desert

Our belief that individuals are morally responsible in the sense that would make them truly deserving of blame and punishment is remarkably stubborn. Despite philosophical arguments that challenge its foundations, despite scientific evidence about the causes of human behavior, and despite the manifest failures of our punitive criminal justice system, we cling tenaciously to the idea that wrongdoers deserve to suffer for their misdeeds. Why is this belief so persistent?

One major reason is the strike-back emotion itself. This powerful emotional response, which we share with other animals, creates a strong psychological need to believe in so-called basic desert moral responsibility: the idea that wrongdoers deserve to suffer for their misdeeds just because they have knowingly done wrong. When we’re wronged, we don’t just want the harmful behavior to stop or to prevent future harms. We want retribution. We want the wrongdoer to suffer because they deserve it. And to justify this desire, we need to believe that people are morally responsible in a “basic” sense—the sense that would justify blame and punishment on purely backward-looking grounds, without appealing to forward-looking considerations like deterrence, rehabilitation, or public safety. 

This emotional foundation makes basic desert moral responsibility seem obvious and unchallengeable. The strike-back emotion feels so natural, so justified, that questioning it seems absurd or even dangerous. We worry that without it, wrongdoers would get away with their crimes, that society would descend into chaos, that our relationships would lose their meaning. These fears, however understandable, prevent us from examining whether our retributive practices are actually justified.

The pervasive notion of just deserts