Justice is part of revenge; as also for revenge is part of justice. “Justice” comes from a Latin word that means “straight, fair, equal”, it’s the quality of being righteous and loyal towards one’s state, although serves the interests of the stronger (Hourani, 1962), while revenge is the act of taking retaliation for injuries or wrongs. What ever the circumstances are being the individual who experiences a unjust act, results in the hunt for one of these two things: Justice or revenge. What are the key differences between the two? Justice can be defined as the concept of moral rightness, which is based on the rules of law, fairness, ethics, and equality among the governed citizens. Revenge, on the other hand, refers to an action taken by an individual as a response to an act of injustice. The principle of revenge is “an eye for an eye”…. Can revenge be justified and be as equally part of justice if they both seek retribution for a wrongdoing? The universal distinction between justice and revenge is quite distinctive, is there more beyond their differences? Revenge is retaliation by a wronged party against the person or people they see as having caused the wrong. The person at whom the revenge is directed may have harmed the person carrying out an act of revenge indirectly or not at all, but on some level there is a perceived personal grievance. An unaffected third party, on the other hand, can carry out Justice. In most developed countries it is considered vital that the judiciary be independent from the government, partly for this reason, which is justice also doesn't necessarily involve any act of retribution. For example, the “acquittal” of an innocent person can be considered an act of justice, but it certainly isn't reveng... ... middle of paper ... ...Cited 12 Angry Men. Director, Sidney Lumet. 1957. DVD. To Kill a Mockingbird. Director, Robert Mulligan.1962. DVD. Hourani, George. Thrasymachus' Definition of Justice in Plato's Republic. 2. 7. Focus Publishing, 1962. eBook. . Rosenbaum, Thane. "Justice? Vengeance? You Need Both." New York Times [New York Edition] 27 July 2011, Daily A29. Web. 11 Dec. 2011. . Nunez, Mark. "12 Angry Men." University of San Francisco. University of San Francisco, April/2000. Web. 11 Dec 2011. . Elster, Jon. Norms of Revenge. 4. Blackwell Publisher, 1990. 862. eBook. . Bar-elli, G. and Heyd, D. (1986), Can revenge be just or otherwise justified?. Theoria, 52: 68–86. doi: 10.1111/j.1755-2567.1986.tb00100.x
Sommers, Tamler. "The Two Faces Of Revenge: Moral Responsibility And The Culture Of Honor." Biology & Philosophy 24.1 (2009): 35-50. Academic Search Complete. Web. 15 Mar. 2014.
Justice can have many interpretations one that many have is that justice is a person paying an equal or worse penalty for the things that they do. But what is the difference between that and revenge? There is none. Justice is taking actions against a person or organization because of their wrongs but not in a spirit of revenge or spite but for the higher cause of stopping them from committing further wrongs. The Declaration of independence shows how The American people were not getting justice from their king. there are many grievances cited against him but the cruelest are where Thomas Jefferson writes of the state sanctioned murder and pillaging wrought by the British forces. “He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.” with the interpretation of justice that equal or worse penalty’s should be sentenced in the name of justice then by these standards London
Revenge is medicine to most people or it is an ongoing circle. When a person is betrayed or inflicted pain it is a natural reaction to think of a way to cause the same pain back. Revenge is part of everyday life and many find pleasure through it. Although it may be the natural reaction and could be someone’s gut feeling that is telling him or her to do it is almost never right and does not pay off in the end. Revenge is a ongoing circle due to the fact that when someone does something wrong to a person that person will want to do it right back and keep going back and forth until justice intervenes or someone realizes it is morally wrong. Just like the saying “an eye for an eye will make the whole world blind” is the
Redemption and revenge are strangely similar and at the same time, completely different. Both ideas can change a person’s life for better or worse. Both are used when something is done to someone that wasn’t good. On the contrary, one is used by those who look to the future and focus on how to solve the problem while the other is used by those who look at the past and focus on how to punish the wrong-doer.
Moving forward, rather than lagging behind, a truly noteworthy concept of revenge can be seen in the Shakespearean tragedy: “The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.” It is within this particular tragedy that prince Hamlet is enlightened, by the ghost of his father, to the murder of his father by his uncle, Claudius, an incestuous, adulterous beast who greedily claimed the throne and Hamlet's mother as his wife. (Hamlet 1.5.45-46, 49-53) Nevertheless, it is through this enlightenment that Hamlet sets off toward avenging his father's death, but along the way he is pitted against misfortune as the downward-...
Sir Francis Bacon once had a idea of revenge this idea is shown in many different stories just to name a few Romeo and Juliet in which a dashing young man seeks revenge and gets banished. The Interlopers the short story where two men seek revenge and both men end up getting killed. The Blade of Grass in a Dreamless Field the story of a man who seeks revenge his whole life and ends up wasting his whole life seeking revenge. All of these stories have one similarity in each one of them a person seeks revenge and only ends up getting hurt. Not only does revenge end up hurting you, revenge ends up hurting others.
Although the theory of retribution roots from the ancient principle of “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth ” traced all the way back to Hammurabi’s reign, the contemporary understanding of retribution is much more intricate. As stated in the essay “Why the Death Penalty is Morally Permissible” by Professor Emeritus of Philosophy Louis P. Pojman, “Retributivism is not based on hatred for the criminal (though a feeling of vengeance may accompany the punishment). Retributivism is the theory th...
Retribution – is a correctional aim which is to hold a person who has committed a crime accountable for committing a crime against another or society in the form of punishment. (Stojkovic and Lovell 2013) What we look at in retribution is when someone is punished there is legitimacy in the punishment of a particular crime that was committed. Some of the pros of retribution are retribution can make a person or society feel safer or a feeling of justice being served when a person is punished for the crime they committed. The con of retribution is during court proceedings the prosecution and the offender’s lawyer may come to a plea agreement which could give the offender a lesser sentence than what he or she would have gotten originally. (Stojkovic and Lovell 2013)
Revenge is best served cold or so says the well-known expression. This idea of revenge that they seek is usually to restore a balance and take an “eye for an eye” as the bible says. Revenge, if by chance everyone were in Plato’s perfect utopia, would be in a perfect form, where justice and revenge would be one, and the coined phrase an “eye for an eye” would be taken literally. By taking an eye for and eye, and punishing those who did wrong equally as they did wrong, there is justice. However, this revenge sometimes goes to far and is consequently not justice. This notion of Revenge and justice is often in literature, one of the better-known being the novel The Count of Monte Cristo, written by Alexandre Dumas. However, literature is not the only time that revenge and justice is discussed in. Works and Rules and real-life events that took place like the Bible, Hammurabi’s code, Twelve Tables, and others each have something different about the topic. More religious texts seem to forbid violence, while laws, such as the Hammurabi’s code, recommend revenge, but equal revenge. By judging from literature, it can be concluded that most authors have different opinions on the matter at hand, and revenge is sometimes justice, but usually not, and tends to lead to violence that was not intended.
Revenge is such an enormous part of a being human. It is something that no matter how much you try to avoid part of you will persistently lust for it. When you are hurt in any way your natural instinct will always tell you to make the one who hurt you feel just as bad if not worse as how you felt. It is such a natural and powerful feeling, that when revenge is incorporated into a story it makes it so much stronger. Revenge will make you see so many more sides of characters and make them seem much more complex. Revenge can give fictional characters a more human quality. That is why so many writers use it as their theme.
Justice means having justification for the actions being taken. Vengeance means taking action because of being wronged. This movie has a little of both, in my opinion, but it is something a little different. There’s justice for the sake of justice, and then there’s justice for the sake of vengeance. Each one could be called something different, but the meaning of each one is the same. Justice for the sake of justice is when something is done for the sake of the law, such as Ringo being taken back to “the pen” because he escaped. Curly does not want to, and, in the end, he doesn’t, but he keeps saying he is going to. Justice for the sake of vengeance is when action is taken against someone or something who has wronged you and it is justified.
Retribution is what most commonly referred to as the “just deserts” model that says the punishment should match the “degree of harm a criminal has inflicted on their victims” (Stohr, Walsh, & Hemmens, 2013, p.6). In other words, what they “justly deserve”. Where minor crimes should expect a minor punishment, those who commit more severe crimes should expect to be met with just as severe of a punishment in return. An example, some believe that when someone kills someone else, that person should then, in turn, receive the death penalty (depending on the state this would also be allowed or expected by law).
Sir Francis Bacon once said “The first wrong breaks the law; revenge of that wrong destroys law itself” (Bacon). Bacon explains this in his essay Of Revenge. If one seeks revenge, one is only going to hurt oneself in the end. Revenge is hurtful and spiteful and one will possibly hurt others through it. One can fix it if one changes ones view on things. Throughout the following, Romeo and Juliet, Biography of Takashi Tanemori, Present Tense, The Blade of Grass in a Dreamless Field, one will see how revenge affects a person and the people around them.
People can be motivated to take revenge on others for various reasons. While these reasons may be considered as very serious or rather trivial, they are all motives for revenge. Revenge occurs when a person has been offended or angered by an individual and in result they have the desire to pay them back. People’s opinions on revenge differ from each other, some may believe it is justified and some don’t. Mahatma Ghandi believed that revenge is not the answer and he stated that “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”. This quote portrays the opinion that if everyone gets even then there will be no one else; if we all take an eye for an eye everyone would be blind. Revenge can be learnt through real life experiences as well as fiction and can be shown as justice or unacceptable. It becomes difficult to determine when revenge can be justified but is revenge always worth it?
Taking revenge is a bitter sweet thing. I have always thought that people should always get what they desire, whether it be a grade, a smile and hug or in some cases, revenge. When I was in high school there seemed to be someone always trying to get me in trouble, they would say things that wouldn’t be true or do things to make me look bad. The fact that I never seemed to do anything to them would make me mad and wonder what I could do to get them back. Revenge would usually come in some sort of verbal put down or I would try to physically hurt them. It always seemed when I would get the revenge right away I would feel really good but as I thought about what I did, and what they did to me I would always feel guilty or wish I would have never done anything to them in return.