Abstract
When it comes to evaluating the primordial human emotion of vengeance, moral philosophers, ancient and modern, Indian and Western, are divided into two groups: revenge-approvers and revenge-denouncers. Socrates, for example, decries revenge but Aristotle extols it as a virtue. Using the works of Nietzsche and Nozick, insights from the Mahābhārata, and Euripedes’ Orestes, this paper distinguishes between revenge and retribution, and goes on to expose the misleading metaphors behind revenge-abetting phrases such as “teaching a lesson” or “getting even”. An elementary mistake of confusing the dictum “Do to others what you want to be done to yourself” with the totally different dictum: “Do to others what they do to you” seems to lie behind the vague concept of “reciprocity” which is invoked by contemporary pro-revenge moral philosophers. Robert Solomon’s subtle defense of revengefulness as an ineliminably human emotional motivation for justly angry actions is critiqued as slipping into a logical mistake. Finally, the paper proposes a moral psychological explanation of why revenge-spirals unstoppably escalate by the in-built discontent and self-contradiction in the motivational structure of the avenger’s principle: “He should never have done that to me, therefore I shall now do exactly the same thing to him!” Any act of revenge is doomed to self-frustration, because it mimics and repeats a wrongdoing in the name of resisting and deterring it, it does the same in the name of doing the opposite, expecting emotional closure and non-closure at the same time.
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Notes
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Over the years, after Solomon’s tragic untimely death, I have begun to understand Solomon’s position better and I see that we have a deep base of agreement on emotions having satisfaction-conditions, analogous to but not reducible to beliefs’ having truth-conditions. But the justification of revenge in the sophisticated version of “honor society” that we still live in could not be endorsed simply because it is widespread and natural to act out of vengeance. I distance myself from the strong “naturalism” implicit in such an ethical stance. Even in the Mahābhārata’s warlike honor society, it may be politically and reputationally heroic to avenge a harm done to you with matching violence, but being able to resist the revenge-impulse is regarded as morally heroic. Refusing to engage in the game that the first attacker starts puts the attacker, especially in an honor society, eventually to more shame if there are other ways of showing that one could have retaliated, but chose to ignore the insult or injury.
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Chakrabarti, A. (2012). A Critique of Pure Revenge. In: Higgins, K., Sherman, D. (eds) Passion, Death, and Spirituality. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4650-3_4
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