Compared to the chaotic irrationality of guilt, retribution aims to be reason itself, measure, order (cosmos). But - as I try to show in this paper - if retribution claims to be essenttaliy rational, it is not necessarily intelligent, and that for three reasons at least. First, because of the radical impossibility of measuring guilt. Second, because a sanction cannot restore the order cancelling the disorder produced by guilt. Third, because tbe other order of human relations paradoxically requires a certain disorder.