With the whole concept of vengeance, my deepest concern is for the individual’s creation of a meaning to existence and I see this creation of meaning as inherently bound to an ethical relationship with the other. While every individual is responsible for the creation of his own existence, this existence is always connected with others. I cannot exist without being in relationship with other people. My presence in the world, the choices I make, even the choices I make not to make choices, impacts on others- immobile or in action; we always weigh upon the earth. Every refusal is a choice; every silence has a voice… each of my actions by falling into the world creates a new situation for the other. We all have something to learn from one another irrespective of our core knowledge.
In order to fully recognise the humanity of another, one must be able to accept and recognise the ambiguous nature of both self and other. A ‘will to freedom’ can never be achieved at the cost of another’s freedom, because to do so would in effect be a denial of both one’s own true humanity and that of the person one seeks to master.
A reciprocal interpersonal bond is essentially destroyed when one person abuses the other as thing or ostracises because he does not belong to their social preferences, when a person is degraded and stripped of his subjectivity and freedom and is treated as an object. Do we need to struggle with ourselves to justify the notion of one individual essentially claiming mastery over another individual through an act of vengeance? Having endured life as a citizen in a torturous and tumultuous country of mine, I am aware of the horrific acts of brutality committed by the current government. I acknowledge that such acts awaken a deeply felt need for retribution. Watching the degradation of our fellow humans to the status of objects arouses in society a passionate hatred and rage against the perpetuators of the evil. When there is great suffering, there is an almost primeval need to avenge, to make it right, to obliterate the horror of dehumanisation from memory and restore a balance or a natural order where evil once dominated.
Essentially, this need is a cry for the restoration of humanity, for the recognition by the abuser that the greatest crime was to treat the victim as non-human, a thing- to make the abuser understand the impact of his causing of discomfort amongst us all and crime on another person. One understands torture by undergoing it. Therefore, the demand for vengeance is the demand for the abuser to exchange situations with his former victim, and through himself becoming a victim, viscerally understanding his crime. While it would be difficult to criticise the immediate acts of vengeance by particular individuals in particular situations, it always has a disquieting character. While one may understand the reasons for acting on the deep wells of hatred and rage, when an avenger aspires to set himself up as judge, the very notion of vengeance becomes suspect: but if we look into our own depths, who among us dares say: I am better than that man? It requires a lot of arrogance and very little imagination to judge another. While an action taken to redress a wrong may stem from a desire to restore the balance of justice, it may equally stem from the desire to power and mastery that slumbers in all of us. Who can say if the avenging act is retribution, or tyranny? We must be aware that if personal acts of revenge or retribution are undertaken, if one acts as judge and executioner in response to a passionate hate, one simply replaces one abomination with another. One act of revenge calls for another act of revenge, evil engenders evil, and injustices pile up without wiping one another out as Gandhi put it, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”.
Therefore, the rule of law justly forbids individual acts of retribution, and in removing judgement to the impartial justice system it effectively distances the act of vengeance or punishment from the passionate hate that demands it. Social justice does not condemn the aggressor in his totality, as mob justice does, but rather condemns the perpetrator as the agent of evil acts repudiated by society. One needs to act positively, swiftly above all with broad common sense. Every person or every leader commences his struggle for the pursuit of happiness for mankind and as time unfolds sinks himself into corruption and regresses back to the same old system of injustice.
However, the raw emotion simmering below the justice system demands that suffering be avenged, and there is great anger and frustration when this right is perceived to be denied. But even if the abuser feels what his victim felt, it won’t remedy the evil the abuser caused: it will not balance the wrong committed. While we seek vengeance as a way of balancing the scales of justice, in reality we are left with the realisation that we cannot ever control the other in his freedom. We can never compel the aggressor to feel the pain of the original suffering. We cannot compel regret or repentance. We can never reach the core of any individual. So, if the intent of vengeance is to reassert the reciprocity of human relations, to restore a balance to the world, then that intent can never be satisfied.
Although all punishments are partially a failure, inevitably, justice/retribution is necessary if only to recognise the evil that is in man. When a man deliberately tries to degrade man by reducing him to a thing, nothing can compensate for the abomination he causes to erupt on earth. There resides the sole sin against man. The mistake is to think that vengeance achieves the moral purpose it sets out to achieve. This is rarely possible. Vengeance cannot compel the freedom of a person, the aggressor, to create anything other than what he wants to create for himself. Vengeance is not the serene recovery of a reasonable and just order. If punishment or vengeance is to have any point, it’s not as a balancing or restorative measure, but rather as a public acknowledgement of humanity’s refusal to accept degrading behaviours.
I see the ethical perspective as essentially a constant questioning of individual motives and intentions. The meaning of one’s existence emerges through an active acknowledgement of the ambiguities of the past, present and future, of a life lived in consciousness of death, and of the relationship of self and other. Ambiguity is at the core of what it means to be human. The ethics built on that ambiguity bears within it not the certainty of success, but the acceptance of the possibility of failure. It may not be possible to compel the aggressor to understand or repent his crimes against humanity: it may not be possible to balance wrongs; all punishment may be a failure- but nevertheless the human cry for meaning demands that the degradation of humanity can never be ignored: their crimes have struck at our own hearts.
It is our values, our reasons to live that are affirmed by their punishment and yet the questions remain, as significant today as eighteen or sixty years ago: What does humanity lose in the act of vengeance? And what does it gain, if anything?
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Peace, love and good health to you all!
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