Is Hegel (1) a retributivist, (2) a consequentialist, (3) an expressivist, or (4) all of the above? The place of punishment in the _Philosophy of Right_

The literature on G. W. F. Hegel’s theory of punishment is marked by persistent scholarly disagreement. Instead of taking this interpretive diversity as a defect of the debate, we should think of it as a helpful piece of meta-exegetical evidence that points to a structural feature of Hegel’s account: there are multiple justifications of punishment that correspond to different spheres of right, such as the family, civil society, and the state. For Hegel, punishment is justified objectively when it coheres with the multifarious normative logic of Ethical Life. And it is justified subjectively when justice is seen to be done. Overall, Hegel does not offer us a conventional normative argument for when the state ought to punish wrongdoers. Rather, he is concerned with the question of how punishment fits into a rationally ordered social world.