Punishment and Revenge (original) (raw)
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Private Revenge and its Relation to Punishment
In contrast to the vast literature on retributive theories of punishment, discussions of private revenge are rare in moral philosophy. This article reviews some examples, from both classical and recent writers, finding uncertainty and equivocation over the ethical significance of acts of revenge, and in particular over their possible resemblances, in motive, purpose or justification, to acts of lawful punishment. A key problem for the coherence of our ethical conception of revenge is the consideration that certain acts of revenge may be just (at least in the minimal sense that the victim of revenge has no grounds for complaint against the revenger) and yet be generally agreed to be morally wrong. The challenge of explaining adequately why private revenge is morally wrong poses particular difficulty for purely retributive theories of punishment, since without invoking consequentialist reasons it does not seem possible adequately to motivate an objection to just and proportionate acts of revenge.
On Revenge and Punishment Arguments for a Crucial Distinction
In this chapter, the author proposes a psychoanalytic distinction between revenge and punishment. Punishment is conceptualized as a form of violence exerted by an authority-holder against a subordinate, due to the latter's not having complied with a command of the former. Instead, revenge is conceptualized as a form of violence exerted by an individual against another due to the latter's having frustrated a jural expectation of the former other than the jural expectations ascribed to authority-holders in authority relationships. After conceptualizing punishment and revenge the author shows that: (1) the same act may be caused by both an urge for punishment and one for revenge; (2) composition is possible only in the case of an urge for revenge; (3) a form of composition can be the establishment of a new authority relationship (composition-by-submission); (4)expiation, or atonement, cannot be regarded as a form of composition; (5) guilt always involves-at least at an unconscious level-the establishment of a new authority relationship; (6) the term "authorized revenge" may be referred to quite heterogenous phenomena.
The paradoxical consequences of revenge
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2008
People expect to reap hedonic rewards when they punish an offender, but in at least some instances, revenge has hedonic consequences that are precisely the opposite of what people expect. Three studies showed that (a) one reason for this is that people who punish continue to ruminate about the offender, whereas those who do not punish "move on" and think less about the offender, and (b) people fail to appreciate the different affective consequences of witnessing and instigating punishment.
Exploring the Facets of Revenge
Revenge is a complex notion with many facets and not an easy subject to discuss. However, investigating and understanding this challenging topic may prove to be an important endeavor. This book contains the proceedings from a conference on revenge, covering themes that vary from revenge in history and society, to philosophies of revenge, to revenge in literature and many subjects in between. Each one of the authors contributes ideas to the study of revenge, its meaning and its motivations. The papers on the philosophy cover thoughts from Bacon, Nietzsche and Bataille on the concepts of revenge. The papers on the history of revenge showcase prominent wars and legal systems that formed ideas of revenge on a national level. The papers on revenge in society examine how revenge creates social norms, and therefore, influences peoples' behaviour. Finally, the papers on revenge in literature discuss how prominent authors write about revenge, partially as a reflection of their times, and partially as a reaction against their times. Though this study is by no means complete, it forms a solid foundation upon which more research into the topic of revenge may rest.
The Moral Psychology of Revenge
Journal of Human Values, 2005
The tendency and ability to take adequate revenge for an insult or injury inflicted in the past have been often glorified as part of a ‘just and honourable’ individual or communal character. This article argues against this old—and currently popular—belief that the act of revenge is justified and reasonable. The central flaw in the idea of revenge is that it is a futile attempt to remedy past suffering. The article shows how revenge cannot be defended as ‘teaching the aggressor a lesson’ or as ‘getting even with the aggressor’ or as ‘retributive punishment’, and why at the heart of the retaliator’s motivation structure there is a tragic self-frustrating contradiction. It also explains how and why revenge spirals escalate rather than bring closure to the violence and injury. The alternative suggested by the article is not ‘forgive and forget’, but ‘remember and resist’. In conclusion, a few powerful defences of revenge are discussed as objections to this generally anti-vengeance mora...
Revenge: A Multilevel Review and Synthesis
Annual Review of Psychology, 2019
Why do people take revenge? This question can be difficult to answer. Vengeance seems interpersonally destructive and antithetical to many of the most basic human instincts. However, an emerging body of social scientific research has begun to illustrate a logic to revenge, demonstrating why revenge evolved in humans and when and how people take revenge. We review this evidence and suggest that future studies on revenge would benefit from a multilevel perspective in which individual acts of revenge exist within higher-level cultural systems, with the potential to instigate change in these systems over time. With this framework, we can better understand the interplay between revenge's psychological properties and its role in cultural evolution.
Revenge: An Analysis of Its Psychological Underpinnings
International journal of offender therapy and comparative criminology, 2014
An overview of the literature and theories concerning revenge is presented in this study. The aim is to clarify the boundaries between a healthy and pathological way of dealing with revenge to improve diagnostics, with regard to both theory and clinical practice. Revenge is an intrapersonal phenomenon and the extent to which people need revenge has a certain degree of stability. A healthy way of dealing with revenge may restore the psychological balance that has previously been disturbed. However, the desire for revenge can be long-lasting and dysfunctional due to, among other things, early problems in development and specific personality traits. Consequently, a pathological way of dealing with revenge can be part of a disorder and can lead to destructive acts such as homicide and even mass murder. Some clinical examples are presented and points of attention regarding diagnostics and treatment are discussed.
The paper considers acts of private (in the sense of individually motivated and extra-legal) revenge, and draws attention to a special kind of judgement we may make of such acts. While endorsing the general view that an act of private revenge must be morally wrong, it maintains that under certain special conditions (which include its being just) it is susceptible of a rational respect from others which is based on its standing outside morality, as a choice by the revenger not to act morally but to obey other compelling motives. This thesis is tested against various objections, notably those which doubt the intelligibility or application of such non-moral 'respect,' or would assimilate it to moral approval; and it is distinguished from various positions with which it might be confused, such as the 'admirable immorality' of Slote, or the Nietzschean critique of morality. I The thesis of this paper is that, under certain conditions, an act of private revenge may properly be the object of a special kind of positive judgement, even though it is at the same time rightly morally condemned. The name I propose for this positive judgement is 'non-moral respect.' I will suggest in passing that respect of this kind can be extended to various other kinds of acts which are morally wrong, but the main focus of the paper will be upon revenge. By 'private revenge,' I mean a deliberate injurious act or course of action against another person, motivated by resentment of an injurious act or acts performed by that other person against the revenger, or against some other person or persons whose injury the revenger resents. Both motive (vengeful resentment) and injurious act must be present to constitute revenge. Within the motive, we could distinguish further between the passive resentment that is a response to the injury received, and the active vengeful feeling that empowers the decision to strike back, but I will not pursue this distinction, since for revenge both components must be present: where only passive resentment is felt, we have not revenge but forbearance, or impotent embitterment.