 Retributivists think that deserved suffering should be distinguished from non-deserved suffering. While the latter is inherently bad, the former, at least if inflicted by a proper punitive desert agent, is inherently good (Hegel 1821: §99; Zaibert 2018: chs. 2 &amp; 3; Alexander &amp; Ferzan 2018: 184–185). Just as grief is good and morally valuable when a loved one has died, so suffering might be good and morally valuable when experienced by a wrongdoer, especially if experienced in a way that is appropriately connected to having committed a particular wrong. Of course, it would be better if there were no occasion to inflict suffering, but given that a wrong has been committed, inflicting deserved suffering in response is better than not doing so. (For another example of something with a variable normative valence, see Kant's doctrine of the highest good: happiness in proportion to virtue. Kant 1788 [1956: 115].)