Dr. T. Govier (Canada)
Victims, Revenge, and Retribution

When wrongs, or moral mistakes, are committed, there are some persons who are harmed by these acts. We can distinguish three levels of victims. The primary victims are those who are directly harmed. For example, suppose that a man is killed in a civil war. He is a primary victim (V1). If he had a wife and children harmed by his death and other family members are secondary victims (V2). Further victims are members of the community, which will be damaged and rendered fearful by his death. They may be called tertiary victims (V3). In the case where V1 is killed, responses to the wrongful act are in the hands of secondary victims and the community (V2 and V3).

One common response to moral mistakes is to have a desire for revenge and to embark upon acts and campaigns of revenge for harms imposed. Desires for revenge, and acts of revenge, are not morally correct. They are, however, often rationalized from a moral perspective. The theory is that a certain person or agency (P) has committed a wrong against a victim (V1, V2, or V3) and that it is morally appropriate to restore a balance by committing an equivalent wrong against P. The assumption in revenge reasoning is that a kind of elementary justice, or moral balance, will be restored if P is harmed. If a victim can be the agent of bringing this harm, the victim will restore his or her power (or, in some societies, honor) and achieve a kind of satisfaction from doing so. From a common sense point of view, there may seem to be good reasons for revenge. Some would claim that revenge is emotionally natural for individuals, and therefore good. Others assert that revenge is natural in the evolutionary sense that it has survival value. On this theory, in the remote human past, tribes who practiced revenge would inspire fear and would, for that reason, be less likely to be attacked and would survive better than rival groups.

Nevertheless, there are both practical and moral arguments against revenge as a response to wrongdoing, or moral mistakes. From a practical point of view, revenge harms people, is only rarely satisfying to victims, inspires further animosity on the part of the original attacker, and leads to ongoing violence and counter-violence. A current illustration of this may be seen in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In political contexts, responding to serious violence with more violence is extremely risky, since the level of violence is likely to escalate as a result. From a moral point of view, revenge is open to the fundamental criticism that victims are immorally seeking to satisfy themselves by deliberately committing harming others. If the original act was wrong, and the act in response is equivalent to it, that vengeful act must also be wrong. (As the old saying goes, "two wrongs do not make a right.")

Revenge should be distinguished from retributive punishment imposed within a legal system under the rule of law. On principles of retributive legal justice, a person who has been fairly convicted of committing a criminal offence deserves to suffer punishment for it. This is not revenge by victims, because it is the state, through its judicial system, that imposes a penalty on the wrongdoer. If punishment is harsh, we cannot say that it does not exist, but the level of violence is reduce and controlled. War crimes trials such as that of Slobodan Milosevic may be understood as efforts toward retributive penal justice in an international context.

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Reasoning about cases
Reasoning about emotions