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“Many people believe that vengeance is the primary cause of the world's troubles today, causing unending feuds and vendettas that block every rational effort at resolution and peace.” (paragraph 18)

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“Despite volumes of propaganda to the contrary, experience seems to show that to see oneself as a helpless victim makes one less, and not more, likely to open one's heart to othersl...Justice is not forgiveness nor even forgetting but rather it is getting one's emotional priorities right, putting blame aside in the face of so much other human suffering and thereby giving up vengeance for the sake of larger and more noble emotions.” (paragraph 19)

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The argument [for rising above the urge to vengeance] is that instead of following that often narrow path to personal retribution we would much better embrace that expansive form of social consciousness in which we become more aware of the real desperation of others than we are of our own (usually petty) complaints...” (paragraph 19)(

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“But in addition to my insistence that vengeance is not the same as vendetta and feuds are not the same as vengeance, I would argue that the passionate hostilities of the world that are fueled by revenge are only secondary. ln many cases they are caused or at any rate aggravated and rendered unresolvable not by passion so much as by supposedly rational ideology. It is ideology that abstracts and elevates personal prejudices to the status of absolute truths and gives vengeance a set of reasons far less negotiable than any feud or mere urge to "get even:' Vengeance, at least, has its measure. Ideology, however "reasonable,” may not.” (paragraph 18) (rebuttal to counterclaim #7)

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Against the erasure metaphor: “...the obvious question is, can we undo a crime -for instance, rape or murder - in any sense whatever? In financial crimes, again, one can "erase" the debt by paying it back, but not the crime itself. For example, how could the terror suffered in an armed robbery he erased, even if the money were to be politely returned? ("Here you are, Miss; I'm a student at the local police academy and l wanted to experience what the criminal felt like.”) Indeed, how can we measure the fear suffered in such crimes, quite apart from any more substantial harm?” (paragraph 17)

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"One problem is that this moral balance is often simply equated, in the crudest utilitarian fashion, with a balance of pleasure and pain, as if the application to the villain of an amount of pain equal to the amount of pain he or she has caused balances the scales. (We should remember again the standard allegorical figure of justice, this time with her scales.) Where the crime is strictly pecuniary, it might seem that balance (like the repayment of a debt) might be literally appropriate, but this, of course, isn't so. One can pay back the amount of money stolen or otherwise taken, but this does not yet take into account the offense itself. As soon as one must pay back even an extra penny, the literalness of the "balance" again comes into question. Granted the original sum has been repaid, but now what is the "cost" or the "price" of the crime? Again, my point is not that the metaphor of "balance" isn't applicable or revealing of how we think about justice, but it underscores rather than solves our problems." (paragraph 16)

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“... ‘proportion’ too misleadingly suggests quantification where there often is none, and it summarizes rather than solves the problem of punishment. To be sure, it is somehow fitting to trade a life for a life (or more accurately, “a death for a death"), but is it just? And given the many extenuating circumstances that qualify each and every case, does ‘fit’ make sense?”(Against the counterargument #6.c.i)

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Against the fit metaphor: “But as many critics of retributivism have pointed out, such punishments are administered - or even make sense -only for a very limited number of crimes, such as intentional murder. But even then, as Albert Camus* has famously pointed out, ‘For there to be equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life.’” (paragraph 14)

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Against the debt metaphor: “The suggestion that there is an implicit contract ... is just another approach to the same metaphor. To link it with the other metaphors, punishment does not ‘balance the books’ nor does it "erase" the wrong in question, as repayment of a debt surely does.” (paragraph 13)

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“My favorite objection to the "eye for an eye" formulation was leveled against retributivism by Lord Blackstone* back in the eighteenth century. He queried, "What is the equivalent harm when a two-eyed man knocks out the eye of a one-eyed man?" [4] Cute, to be sure, but hardly a knock-down argument against the idea that the punishment should fit the crime... To be sure, few of us would suggest that the law should inflict such a punishment, but the "fit" is evident enough to us…” (paragraph 11)

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“But punishment is not the return of ‘evil for evil.’ The German philosopher Hegel* argued, I think convincingly, that this is one sure way to misunderstand the nature of punishment [3]. ‘Harm for harm’ perhaps, but it is justified and legitimate harm in return for unjustified and illegitimate harm.” (paragraph 10) (rebuttal to counterargument #5)

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“It is a relatively recent development-and an obviously very political move - that punishment of such crimes should have become the exclusive province of the state. Moral objections against vengeance and the desire for public order seem to me to have far less to do with this than the state's usual arrogance in abrogating individual rights and its desire for control. Indeed, it is a point worth pondering that major crimes against the person are construed by the law as crimes against the state. “ ( paragraph 8)(rebuttal to counterargument #4)

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“... but this certainly drains the substance from this standard objection against vengeance.  At stake here is the important if problematic distinction between actually doing harm to an offender and depriving him or her of some essential human good, like liberty, for example.” (paragraph 7, rebuttal to counterclaim #3)

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“The idea that vengeance leads to a total loss of inhibition and control ignores the built-in and cultivated satisfactions of revenge, and seems to confuse the fact that mutually vengeful acts tend to escalate with the fact that a single act of vengeance typically has its very specific goals and, consequently, its own built-in standard of satisfaction[2]. I think that we are misled here by the conflation of vengeance, which is always aimed at some particular offense (or series of offenses) and the familiar feud, which is an ongoing form of personal, family or tribal hostility whose origins may well be forgotten. In other words, we conflate hatred (which may or may not be part of vengeance) with vengeance itself…” (paragraph 6, rebuttal to counterclaim #2)

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“Even Adam Smith writes, in this Theory of the Moral Sentiments. ‘The violation of justice is injury…it is, therefore, the proper object of resentment, and of punishment: ‘“ (paragraph 2)

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“But to seek vengeance for a grievous wrong, to revenge oneself against evil - that seems to lie at the very foundation of our sense of justice.” (paragraph 2, response to counterclaim #1)

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“But it is not to give up vengeance as such and, as in tit for tat, it is the ready willingness to retaliate that provides stability to both the social system and one's personal sense of integrity and control.” (paragraph 19)

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“Vengefulness, no doubt, is a vice, and because vengeance is so often dangerous and destructive it makes perfectly good sense for moralists to urge us to rise "above" the urge to vengeance …” (paragraph 19)

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 “the idea that we can ‘annul the evil’ through punishment”

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Fit metaphor - punishment should "fit" the crime

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Fit metaphor - punishment should "fit" the crime

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“Defenders of retributivism gladly weaken the demands of ‘fit,’ suggesting, for instance, that it provides only a general measure, that the crucial concept is "proportion" - so that petty theft is not (as it once was) punished with the harshness of a violent crime.” (paragraph 15)

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“The rationale of retribution, the “intelligence" embodied in vengeance, is the idea that "the punishment should fit the crime:' This is an idea that goes back (at least) Lo the biblical "eye for an eye" injunction…” (paragraph 10)

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Proper punishment for a crime is to follow “eye for an eye” (paragraph 10-17)

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“So conceived, of course, punishment is just another wrong, whether carried out as a personal act of revenge or under the cool, deliberate auspices of the state legal system.” (paragraph 10)

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“Historically, punishing the perpetrator for almost any offense against an individual, from an obscene gesture to rape and murder; rested with the family, and it was considered not only inappropriate but unjustifiable intrusion into private matters for the state to step in.” (paragraph 8)

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“One might, given the current tendency to inflate the meaning of words and numb our sensitivities to moral differences, argue that such acts do indeed constitute ‘violence’...” (paragraph 7)

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“There is no ‘natural’ end to vengeance.” (paragraph 6)

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“This is not to say, of course, that the motive of revenge is therefore legitimate or acts of revenge always justified” (paragraph 2)

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“But vengeance as such, I do not deny, is in any case dangerous. As the Chinese used to say (and no doubt still do), “ (paragraph 18)

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“‘backward-looking’ retribution is juxtaposed against the ‘forward-looking’ utilitarian concerns of deterrence and rehabilitation. That is, retribution is characterized in terms of its "undoing" a past offense; deterrence and criminal reform are concerned with preventing future offenses. Much of this dispute, I would argue, IS purely academic; it is almost impossible to imagine an instance in which both responsibility for the offense and concern for the future are not at stake…” (paragraph 9)

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“Sometimes vengeance is wholly called for, even obligatory.  Sometimes it is not, notably when one is mistaken about the offenders or the offense.” (paragraph 2)

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“Vengeance is not merely a matter of rational obligation, but neither is it opposed to a sense of obligation (e.g., in matters of family honor) or rationality (insofar as rationality is to be found in every emotion, even this one).” (Paragraph 3)

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“Vengeance is not just the desire to harm but the desire to harm for a reason, and a reason of a very particular sort. To flunk a student because he has an orange punk hairdo or because he disagreed with one's pet theory in class is not justified, but to expel him for burning down the department library is another matter. ”

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“Only a moment’s reflection is necessary to realize that we all recognize (eventually if not immediately) the difference between justified and unjustified revenge.” (paragraph 5)

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Punishment is put in the hands of the state and the law instead of the individual, “When current criminal law reduces the victim of such crimes to a mere bystander (if, that is, the victim has survived the crime), the problem is not that in vengeance we take the law "into our own hands" but rather that without vengeance justice seems not only to be taken out of our hands but eliminated as a consideration altogether.” (paragraph 7)

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The debt metaphor
The fit metaphor
The balance metaphor 
The erasure metaphor

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“It is probably (qualifier) true that vengeance generally aims at harm whereas the cooler claims of the law tend to prefer punishments by way of deprivation - the payment of fines, for example, or depriving the criminal of certain privileges or freedoms (to drive a car, for example, or to use the university library), or even depriving him of freedom as such.” (paragraph 7)

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Metaphorically violent (“but the more usual act of revenge is a negative vote in the next department meeting, a forty-five minutes delay in arriving to dinner, or a hurtful comment or letter, delivered with a vicious twist of phrase, perhaps, but rarely the twist of a blade…”) (paragraph 7)

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Because of these irrational thoughts, we take “the law into our own hands”, but in reality we have no power to take revenge

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“In vengeance one can also get caught up in the means or obsessed and distracted by the end, but the logic of reasons and appropriateness is nevertheless present as a standard.” (paragraph 5)

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“The desire for vengeance is not satisfied by	 harm to others alone no matter how harsh. It is a matter of emotion, and like punishment, it is always for some offense, not just hurting for its own sake.” (paragraph 3)

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Vengeance is based upon irrational (has reasons based on emotion but not logic) and violent emotions.

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“Thus the Old Testament instruction that revenge should be limited to "eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe" (the lex talionis,* Exodus 21:24-5)...” (Paragraph 2)

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“‘Getting even’ is and has always been one of the most basic metaphors of our moral vocabulary…” (paragraph 1)

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“The word justice in the Old Testament and in Homer too virtually always refers to revenge” (paragraph 1)

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Vengeance is referred to in many known works of literature as a way to “get even”.

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Writer’s Main Thesis: “I have not tried here to defend vengeance as such, but my claim is that vengeance deserves its central place in a theory of justice and, whatever else we are to say about punishment, the desire for revenge must enter into our deliberations along with such emotions as compassion, caring, and love.” (paragraph 18)

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Writer’s Main Thesis: “I have not tried here to defend vengeance as such, but my claim is that vengeance deserves its central place in a theory of justice and, whatever else we are to say about punishment, the desire for revenge must enter into our deliberations along with such emotions as compassion, caring, and love.” (paragraph 18)