3 - The Nature of Vengeance
Memory, Self-Deception, and the Movement from Terror to Pity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
We are the skilled, the masterful, we the great fulfillers,
Memories of grief, we awesome spirits
stern, unappeasable to man,
disgraced, degraded, drive our powers through;
banished far from god to sunless, torchlit dusk,
we drive men through their rugged passage,
blinded dead and those who see by day.
– The Furies, in Aeschylus' EumenidesThus the will, the liberator, took to hurting; and on all who can suffer he wreaks revenge for his inability to go backwards. This indeed this alone is what revenge is: the will's ill will against time and its “it was.”
– Nietzsche's ZarathustraAs we turn to the Greeks and others who know the matter well, we should consider personal revenge. In conflicts at work, or in bitterness over a failed relationship, one thinks of getting even, imagining the pleasure of it while remaining alert to the dangers. Such private fantasies are exceedingly common, and if they have not been formally consulted so far, they have quietly informed our inquiry. It may seem, for example, that a certain sympathy with vengeful feeling – for a grieving spouse or victim – has enabled us to perceive a liberal deficit. Knowing these fantasies and their limits in ourselves, we may suppose that we have special insight where they are concerned, that we can perceive their bearing and proper limits within the present world. We might think that we can know them and control them even as we control our tempers.
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- The Culture of Vengeance and the Fate of American Justice , pp. 94 - 144Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008