Topics Emotion

Question I've been thinking about the concept of revenge lately, and I was wondering what purpose it served. For example, if someone were to hurt or kill one of my loved ones, I would feel the need to seek revenge, despite the fact that revenge itself does not accomplish anything (if I were to hurt the person who killed my loved one, they wouldn't be brought back). Is this a psychological coping mechanism, or some other sort of phenomenon?

Accepted:
December 6, 2012

Comments

Some philosophers would say that the need for retribution goes deeper than just being revenge, in that a balance is achieved when someone suffers for the suffering caused to others. Clearly this is not just revenge since some perpetrators of crime might feel that the state was justified in punishing them, since they had deserved the penalty, and they could hardly be said to feel better because of their feelings of revenge. On this view punishment is designed to restore the status quo ante the crime and any feelings that accompany it are irrelevant. In that case revenge is not connected to punishment and the latter should not be identified with it.