Vengeance vs Revenge

The words vengeance and revenge are often used interchangeably, and in ordinary speech there is little practical difference between them. Both refer to the desire to inflict suffering upon someone who has done wrong, usually because that person is regarded as deserving to suffer for what he or she has done. Nevertheless, there is a useful distinction between the two concepts. Revenge tends to refer to a personal response to an injury or wrong, whereas vengeance has a broader and often more solemn sense of retribution or the infliction of deserved punishment.

Revenge is commonly associated with the feelings of the individual who has been wronged

Vengeance can be understood as the execution of a judgement against the wrongdoer.

Revenge is personal

Revenge therefore has a strongly personal character. If someone deliberately harms me, I may want to harm that person in return. The desire is expressed in the familiar idea of 'getting even'. Revenge is essentially backward-looking: something has been done to me, and I want the person responsible to suffer because of it. The emotional elements of anger, resentment and humiliation are often prominent. Indeed, revenge is frequently portrayed as arising from an almost visceral desire to restore the balance between victim and offender by making the offender experience something resembling the suffering that he or she has caused.

Vengeance is impersonal

Vengeance can have the same emotional origin, but the word tends to carry a more impersonal and authoritative connotation. One can speak of 'divine vengeance', for example, or of a people seeking vengeance for an atrocity. The word suggests that the suffering inflicted upon the offender is not merely the private satisfaction of an injured individual but the carrying out of some larger judgement. Vengeance therefore sits closer to the idea of retribution. It may be thought of as punishment that is deserved because a moral order has been violated.

This distinction can be seen particularly clearly in the difference between personal revenge and public punishment. Suppose that a man assaults another person and the victim subsequently attacks him in retaliation. We would normally describe the second act as revenge. The victim is personally responding to the wrong that has been done to him. If, however, the offender is arrested, tried and sentenced by a court, the resulting deprivation of liberty is normally called punishment rather than revenge. Yet one possible philosophical justification for that punishment is retribution: the offender deserves to suffer a proportionate consequence because he has inflicted an unjustified harm upon another person. In this sense, legal punishment can be regarded as a socially controlled and institutionalised form of what might otherwise become private vengeance.

The distinction is important because revenge and retribution are not quite the same thing. Revenge is commonly concerned with satisfying the victim's desire for retaliation, whereas retribution attempts to establish an objective relationship between wrongdoing and punishment. A person motivated by revenge may think, 'You hurt me, therefore I want to hurt you'. A person motivated by retribution is more likely to think, 'You committed this wrong, therefore you deserve this proportionate punishment'. The second formulation does not depend upon the victim's personal feelings and, at least in principle, can be applied impartially.

Revenge can therefore become disproportionate. Once the desire to retaliate is accepted as a sufficient justification, there is no obvious point at which retaliation must stop. One injury can provoke another, which provokes another in return, producing the familiar cycle of revenge. What begins as retaliation for a genuine wrong can become increasingly detached from the original offence. The moral danger is that the victim's understandable anger becomes a licence to inflict whatever suffering seems emotionally satisfying.

Vengeance can also become excessive, of course. The word does not magically make retaliation just. Indeed, the expression 'vengeance' can sometimes suggest something more terrible than ordinary revenge precisely because it implies the deliberate and uncompromising infliction of punishment. The biblical language of 'vengeance' is a good example: it can express the idea that wrongs will ultimately be answered by a power possessing the authority to judge and punish. In such contexts, vengeance is not merely personal retaliation but the restoration of a violated moral order.

The relationship between anger and justice

This brings us to an important philosophical distinction between anger and justice. Anger at wrongdoing is not necessarily irrational or morally wrong. A person who sees an innocent individual deliberately harmed may quite properly feel indignation. Indeed, the complete absence of moral anger in the face of serious wrongdoing might itself be regarded as a defect of character. The difficulty arises when the desire to punish becomes detached from considerations of proportionality, evidence and fairness. Justice requires us to ask not simply whether the offender deserves punishment but how much punishment is deserved and what form it should take.

Private revenge vs Public justice

This is one reason why modern legal systems attempt to remove punishment from the hands of the victim. The criminal law effectively says that the victim does not have to avenge the wrong personally because the community will respond through an impartial institution. The police investigate, the courts determine guilt, and the sentencing system determines an appropriate punishment. In principle, this transforms private revenge into public justice. The underlying emotional impulse---that serious wrongdoing ought not simply to go unanswered---may remain, but it is subjected to rules intended to prevent retaliation from becoming arbitrary or excessive.

There is nevertheless a persistent connection between punishment and revenge. Some theories of retributive punishment explicitly acknowledge that punishment satisfies an important human intuition: wrongdoing deserves a proportionate response. The philosophical challenge is to distinguish this legitimate desire for moral accountability from the desire to make the offender suffer simply because suffering is satisfying to the victim or to society. The first can potentially be incorporated into a theory of justice; the second is much closer to revenge.

The distinction can therefore be expressed quite simply.

**Revenge is primarily retaliation by or on behalf of the person who has been wronged; **

Vengeance is retaliation conceived as the satisfaction of a larger moral or judicial claim that the wrongdoer deserves to suffer.

Both can involve anger and a desire for retribution, and in ordinary language the two words overlap considerably. The essential difference is one of emphasis: revenge is more personal and emotional, while vengeance is more likely to imply judgement, moral authority and the restoration of an order that has been violated.

The distinction also helps illuminate the purpose of criminal punishment. If punishment is merely institutionalised revenge, its justification is ultimately that victims or society want offenders to suffer. But if punishment is vengeance understood as principled retribution, it requires something more: a reason why a particular amount and form of suffering is deserved. And if punishment is justified instead by deterrence, rehabilitation or incapacitation, then suffering is not its ultimate purpose at all. The offender is punished because doing so serves some further moral or social objective. The continuing debate over punishment is therefore, at bottom, a debate about whether justice requires us to make wrongdoers suffer simply because they have done wrong, or whether punishment can be justified only by the beneficial consequences that it produces.