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“Revenge does not long remain unrevengd.” (German Proverb)
I wanna talk a bit about fairness today. More specifically, fairness when it comes to justice. What do I mean by that? I mean: when some wrong as been committed against you, what kind of response is fair? And I'm talking about the sort of wrongs that typically fall outside our legal system. So what I really want to chat about, specifically, is a kind of retributive justice – revenge. Strictly speaking, retributive justice is a theory of justice where the punishment for a wrong is proportional to the harm done by that wrong; “an eye for an eye” kind of thing. More informally, I think this is tantamount to saying (proportional) revenge is permissible.
We all seem to instinctively have a compulsion or desire for revenge; when you get harmed two wrongs certainly seem capable of making things right. But it also seems like a more robust conception of fairness should hinge on something more than revenge and, maybe, even consider vengeful acts impermissible. So what I want to find out is: how intertwined is our conception of fairness with the permissibility of reprisals? If vengeance seems so intuitively right, why is it that a lot of us intuitively think we shouldn't dish out revenge? Our dispositions towards apologies and forgiveness seem relevant here; but it’s prima facie unclear why saying “sorry” makes up for a wrong in the same what revenge might.
Okie dokie. Let look at a case: Meet Jimmy. Jimmy's a jerk. One day, Jimmy left his flatmate's (Jenny) bottle of orange juice on the counter with the cap off and all kinds of ants and bugs got all in there. Gross. Her OJ is now a waste. Is it fair for Jenny to intentionally leave some food product of similar value that belongs to Jimmy out so that it spoils? Hmm. Even though Jenny might think “Jimmy, ya jerk”, I don't think she's got the right to intentionally ruin something of his; even if the reprisal is proportional. (If you're a retrubutivist, you'll probably have the conflicting intuition here.) Even though this reprisal would be proportional, the harm suffered by Jenny hardly seems sufficient to warrant any kind of act that has the intent of harming Jimmy. After all, don't sweat the small stuff, right?
But it's a different story if we tweak the case so that Jimmy intentionally left the OJ out to spoil it. Even though this remains a small harm to Jenny, the fact that Jimmy specifically set out to harm her surely becomes relevant. But, even then, she may not be permitted to take revenge and set out to intentionally harm him inretaliation. A lot of people here would say things like "take the high road" or "be the bigger person" or whatever.
Alright, so what about a bigger harm? What if Jimmy deleted Jenny's PhD dissertation a week before she was going to submit it. In this instance, whether or not he intended to do it seems far less relevant (if at all). We could, maybe, say that Jimmy owed her a degree of diligence to not do something like that. While this “due care” kind of clause likely also holds in the OJ case, there it seems more trivial – there are more important things than the OJ. But destroying someone's near finished PhD is pretty important; that is, a dissertation is far more important to someone that their bottle of juice.
So, here, then, is Jenny permitted to retaliate? Hmm. Even now I'm unsure. But what if Jimmy wasn't sorry or apologetic for deleting her dissertation? Now it looks like a case of him not willing to make amends for the wrong he did. So, do that mean Jenny now has the right to “balance the books”? At this point, finally, my intuitions are starting to lean towards yes. But I have reservations.
Without getting into those reservations or looking at other case, here's what I think we got: taking revenge, while having a compulsion to do it, is generally inappropriate. It's often not something you should do because the harm is either negligible or because the wrongdoer takes steps to make amends. However, in other instances – where the harm isn't negligible or the wrongdoer refuse to make (appropriate amends) – committing some vengeful act may be permitted. Right? I could say more, but I think that’s enough for now. This is just my spur-of-the-moment thoughts on the subject. I could be wrong. After all, what do I know.
2 comments:
Interesting post - It actually reminded me of a convo I had with some friends at a party a couple of weeks back (I attend the coolest parties.)
I like using Gandhi's maxim 'an eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.' If I've understood you right, you say that justification for revenge is directly proportional to level of harm, whether it was intended and how apologetic the 'jerk' was. I disagree. The only plausible 'benefit' that could come from committing a greater or equivalent act of revenge following a 'jerky' act is that you feel a little better knowing that the jerk is now suffering as much as you. There hasn't been an improvement in the jerk status of the original jerk, you've just fallen to their level, and created some sort of escalating vendetta-style retributions.
I would go as far as to say that vendetta type actions should never be justified, that attempts should either be made to improve that relationship between you and Mr Jerk, or that relationship should be severed. But I get that your intution is pleasing when faced with a situation where that relationship is unavoidable, and all other availabe options have been exhausted. But you should realise that once you take revenge, your chances of improving the situation are slim to none.
Fcuk, this is a rambled mess of a comment. I originally just intended to whine about how you set everything up so nicely, and then shied away from answering the hardest and most interesting question. Say I gunned down your grandmother in the street and stole her purse. Would you be justified in taking personal revenge against me?
Right, well I think acts of revenge are acts which would otherwise be impermissible (but one's which the actor seeks to justified on the basis of a past harm done by the target of her act).
And I think you're correct, for the most part. Revenge does often lead to escalation. And, instead of raising your status it lowers it.
As for your Grandma case, I don't know if it's all that interesting. After all, that's one that the justice system is designed to handle (and to try and defend vengeance here would also need to defend vigilantism -- which is a whole other bag of worms). I don't think our justice system is capable of handling the PhD dissertation case (for instance).
I, personally and humbly, think the more interesting case is war. After all, it seems that "just cause" for going to war is retaliation. Right?? They nuked our city, so we can nuke theirs. But, then, if it's okay for states to take revenge, why not ppl in their interpersonal relationships?
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