Payback: The Case for Revenge by Thane Rosenbaum

Author:Thane Rosenbaum [Rosenbaum, Thane]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
Published: 2013-03-22T16:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

WHEN SELF-HELP IS PERMISSIBLE

Vengeance and justice are commonly understood as sharing the tortured history of sibling rivals. Justice is the wise child; vengeance is the wicked one. Justice serves the greater good; vengeance only benefits the rogue citizen who refuses to abide by the law. Justice is favored; vengeance abhorred.

Centuries of human history have been dedicated to distinguishing between legal retribution and lawless acts of revenge. The Talmudic hairsplitting and intellectual contortions. All those differences demarcated and distinctions made. The avenger takes his injury or loss too personally, whereas courts of law, governed by the rule of law, are focused not on the harm but on the act itself, not how a wrong wreaks havoc on individuals (and deserves to be punished for that reason alone), but how it diminishes the overall sense of security that is essential to the functioning of a well-ordered society. In medicine they say treat the disease, not the person. Its legalistic equivalent is punish the act not the harm; justice is for all and not for the victim. The morality of vengeance is always subordinated to the legality of retribution.

But the larger truth, the more complete reality, is much more complicated than that. Revenge is not a toxin that modernity left behind, and justice is not the panacea that cures all disputes. Vengeance can actually lead to the just outcome, with the wrongdoer being properly punished and the victim feeling the satisfaction that comes with vindication. At the same time, conventional notions of justice—where victims are consigned to the back row of courtrooms and are silenced from speaking and where wrongdoers are acquitted of all charges or are simply released due to a technicality—can leave citizens feeling bitter and betrayed. There is no justice when the legal system fails, and there is nothing but justice when avengers discharge their duty by paying back what is justly owed.

In actuality, when performed to perfection, vengeance and justice can and should serve the same societal purpose and fulfill the same human need. Each contributes to moral order and community repair; each offers hope that all is right in the moral universe. And they are each present on judgment day; they are not, as so often assumed, separate remedies used independently to address the same wrong. The reason why justice and revenge are treated as if they operate only at cross-purposes from one another is because vengeance is generally misunderstood, while justice is all too often misapplied.

Vengeance is not a social ill if citizens believe that wrongdoers won’t otherwise receive their just deserts. And justice cannot take place unless citizens believe that true justice is being offered to them. Justice cannot exist in name alone; it must be morally and emotionally experienced as just, otherwise it is merely an empty pronouncement. Indeed, its public legitimacy depends on a general feeling that it can be relied on as a refuge of first resort rather than as a setting for kangaroo courts and phony show trials. Justice is at its

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