Even if I am correct in my rejection of the extant justifications of punishment (in previous chapters), my view may perhaps be resisted. In this chapter I discuss some general presuppositions about the nature of moral philosophy which may explain this resistence. I explore the ways in which it has been assumed that moral philosophy is amenable to a mathematical model. I reject this assumption, and I combat it by mobilizing Bernard Williams's famous discussion of moral luck and his criticisms of the "morality system". I discuss the ways in which a pluralist justification of punishment can take into account a variety of factors regarding which traditional punishment theorists have had nothing to say, such as the fact that in the United States slavery is still legal (as a punishment).