Causality and Retribution HANS KELSEN ANTRoDUCTION HI WE are to accept the results of modern physics }] and the significance ascribed to them by eminent determines all events has been shaken, and if this law is not to be entirely eliminated from scientific thinking, its formulation must at least be essentially modified. In the course of this controversy the question arises as to the source of the belief that events are determined by an absolute law, that is, the origin of the assump- tion, which we take for granted, that each event must be the necessary effect of a cause according to an inviolable law. We must try to show how the belief in causality has arisen in the evolution of human thought. We are here assuming that causality is not a form of thought with which human consciousness is endowed by natural necessity, what Kant calls an innate notion, but that there were periods in the history of human thought when men did not think causally. We are also assuming that the law of causality as a principle of scientific thought first appears at a relatively high level of mental development. Indeed, the conception of causality is thoroughly foreign to the thinking of contemporary primitive peoples who interpret nature according to social categories rather than caus- ality. For primitive man there is no such thing as “nature” in 33534 Causality and Retribution the sense of a connection of elements determined by causal Inws and distinct from society. What civilized man understands by nature is for primitive man, with his animistic, or more exactly with his personalistic way of thinking, only a part of society and is therefore governed by the same Inws. ‘The so-called “natural man,” who is really a social man in every respect, believes that the legal order of his community also governs nature. ‘Therefore he interprets nature by the same principles which determine his relationship to other members of his group. ‘The fundamental rule of the primitive social order, however, is the principle of retribution, which completely dominates the thoroughly social consciousness of primitive man. It is the principle according to which a man returns good for good, and evil for evil, and expects therefore to be punished for a wrong he or a member of his group commits, to be rewarded for his or his fellow’s merit. He ex- pects 10 be punished or rewarded not only for his good or bad behavior towards men but also for his behavior towards nature, For, in the opinion of primitive man, nature reacts to the behavior of men in the same way as men react to one another. The inter- pretation of nature according to the principle of retribution is ex- pressed in the actual attitude of primitive man towards animals, plants and lifeless objects, and especially in his religion and his myths. ‘We are assuming that the condition of contemporary primitive man is similar to the previous state of civilized man and thac in his development civilized man has passed through a primitive stage whose traces still subsist in certain customs, tales, religious ideas, etc. If this assumption is granted, we may suppose that scientific and especially causal thinking grows like the whole of civilization, out of primitive beginnings which can be recon- structed from given ethnographical materials. We are fortu- nately in a position to ascertain when and where the modern notion of causality took shape in the consciousness of man. This in the natural philosophy of the ancient Greeks. This phi- in mont cases designated by the term “reciprocity.” prefer the fag enter bern beter eh nal nd pty he elo rater ofthe principle in question.H. Kelsen 535 losophy, however, had its origin in mythical and religious concep- tions which fully correspond to what we know of the mentality of primitive man. In these conceptions the idea of retribution plays 2 decisive part. 1 Greek natural philosophy, the first great attempt at scientific ‘comprehension of reality, was still affected by the conception of values derived from the social sphere. The social categories were accepted without question and were considered to be such an in- contestable part of human knowledge that they were taken as a starting point for the first attempt to grasp reality. In early Greek philosophy as in the mythical thinking of primitive man, nature is explained by analogy to society. The authoritarian community, the State, furnished the pattern of the order accord- ing to which an attempt was made to comprehend the universe. Te was the Seate which furnished the original pattern for this first natural science. Since men had become accustomed to regard the State as order itself, and due to much older theological specu- lation, as an absolute value. But the analogy of nature and society constantly weakens as a result of progressive observations. The idea of a universal law of nature, at first only a projection of the law of the State into the cosmos, is visibly freed from its prototype and given a fully inde- pendent meaning. The law of the State, the norm, on one hand, and the law of nature, the law of causality, on the other, become two totally different principles. If Thales of Miletos, with whom Greek philosophy begins, and Anaximander and Anaximenes seek a fundamental principle, épxé, by which the universe may be explained in terms of unity, they are thinking of something which governs it monarchically. The law of the éoxé here establishes a porapxta,, and éoxs means not only “beginning” but also “government” or “rule.” It is surely no accident that the philosophy of nature flourished at a time when the influence of oriental despotism was gaining strength in Greece? Anaximander, as is well known, designates the &re- * Kal Jol, Geschichte der antken Philosophie. Vol. 1,192, . 269.