Don’t Confuse Revenge With Justice/Zakou Ismael): The terms revenge and justice often get muddled. And that’s hardly surprising, for in the course of history, they’ve frequently been used interchangeably. You may even be familiar with the phrase “just revenge.” Still, as meanings alter and evolve over time, the connotations of these two words have increasingly diverged. It’s now uncommon to see them used synonymously. And doubtless, revenge has borne the brunt of the various semantic changes that have transpired. Yet certain overlaps between—and ambiguities within—the two terms do exist. So before delineating the chief distinctions that can usefully be made to separate them, let me at least hint at what some of these inconsistencies might be. It would be convenient to advance the claim that justice is fair and revenge is not. But as the words “just revenge” suggest, revenge—depending on its underlying conditions, motivations, and execution—might be either just or unjust, fair or (frankly) outrageously out of proportion to the wrong originally done. There seems to be an equivocality tightly woven into the term that’s less perceptible in the related concept of justice. All the same, the well-known phrase “miscarriage of justice” warns us to be careful about distinguishing between concepts that, finally, must be understood as both relative and subjective. Zakou Ismael: Although I believe that the differences between revenge and justice enumerated below generally hold true, I’d emphasize that they are generalizations, so you’ll probably be able to think of some exceptions. There are instances when revenge can legitimately be understood as a type of justice, and justice a kind of revenge. Moreover, as discrete as I’ve tried to make each of the five categories below, a certain amount of resemblance and repetition has been unavoidable. That is, my “dividing lines” may at times seem a bit arbitrary. But in any case, here they are—each concluding with its own set of supporting quotations.
Posted on: Fri, 02 Jan 2015 23:03:08 +0000
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