“Mao asked his disciples, ‘How can you get a cat to bite down on a hot pepper by his own will?”

Liu Shao Chi said, “Grab the cat, force its mouth open, and put the pepper in. Then hold the mouth closed.”

Mao said, “You are using force, that is not the answer.”

Deng Xaioping said, “Hide the pepper in a meat patty, and when the cat bites into the patty it will bite the pepper.”

Mao said, “You are using trickery, that is not the answer either.”

When none of his disciples could think of an answer, they asked Mao.

Mao said, “It is simple. You stick the hot pepper up the cat’s ass. He will gladly bite the pepper to remove it.”

For Kant, (legal) punishment becomes necessary when I make a mistake, violating not simply “law” but “right” itself: I should have known better than do what I did. Now that I have performed a wrongful action in violation of right, I may not enjoy the sensation of being punished. Then again, “justice” is not determined by the joyful physical sensations I may or may not receive from choosing to act in a particular way. Instead, justice is served in my being punished. For Kant, arguably, I have every reason to wish justice upheld even if it is inconvenient for me at time x

Seeking out punishment as a way to atone for sin, and spare a lifetime of conscience and an eternity of punishment is a rational choice (well, it’s expressed rationally). Seeking to avoid exile, shunning, etc. is also a rationally-expressible motivation. But those are also compatible with a society that wants to punish wrongdoing. Now the folks from the previous paragraph are compatible with things like retribution, maybe therapy/behavior modification, but possibly not compatible with deterrence.

Don’t Roman Catholics seek out penance in order to feel relieved of their sins?

That is not the same thing as sinning in order to be punished, which I agree is perverse.

Masochist: Hit me!
Sadist: No!

BTW, the dismissive “only the Raskolnikovs” line is depressing. What must the novel, or nearly any novel, be like for such reader? “They struggle? What wierdos these human beings are!”

Does MacBeth desire to murder Duncan, or does he desire to be king and therefore must murder Duncan despite not desiring to murder him? What is his “preference” vis-a-vis murdering Duncan? In law, one might speak of volitional action, intent, purpose, foreseeable consequences, proximate cause, etc.

Civil disobedience was mentioned above as a case where one acts with the desire to be caught and punished to prove a political point; religious martyrdom is another. Presumably, what is desired here is for others to be aware of one’s punishment; if the punishment itself could be skipped while conveying to others that the punishment had actually occurred, surely this would be preferable to the martyr (unless other, masochistic urges are also implicated in his behavior).

cf Gary Glitter and the few newspaper columnists who’ve rightly pointed out society needs to decide whether to treat child abusers as ‘mad or bad’ (although maybe not the most philososphically sharp phrasing).

Hegel finds it easier than Kant to deal with contradictions the position seems to raise. I think Hegel’s version works pretty well in the context of developing his system (i.e. so long as you’ve bought into the whole dialectics / Idea of right as concept actualising itself through history thing).