Vengeance vs Justice?

[Wesley]

I think it would be an interesting show topic to talk about vengeance vs justice, how they are related and how they are not. I was involved in a mini-debate with someone in the chat room about this. He viewed vengeance as a normal emotion that should be excercised and that the death penalty for someone who harmed you or killed a family member may be justified. He felt this vengeance was justice. I felt there was a deliniation and that the only just method would be to attempt to make the victim whole through labor or money. This may require years of labor for the rest of one's life to pay off a life as much as possible, but vengeance doesn't do anything at all to bring justice to the situation, it only creates another dead body.

I think it could be an interesting advanced topic. Most on this forum agree with non-violence toward the innocent. Toward the guilty, it can be a little more difficult as to what should be done.

[Rob_Ilir]

Being born in a country famous for its blood feuds, all I can think of is that vengeance is the small guys compensation, justice is the big guys as that involves the justice apparatus.

 

When the anarchist bf was a social acceptable method, there were no more than 5 "vengeances" a year in a city of 40.000, and all had/have their own methods, such as no kids/woman, and you cant break into private property to take your vengeance (according to my grandparents).

   I do not agree with it, as it reminds me of "if all you got is a hammer everything is a nail", but what we call justice too is not really acceptable.  

[RestoringGuy]

I think the punishment is often meant by the word justice.  But that is unlikely to help the victim, but does give the state more leverage, including leverage to tax people, and leverage to monopolize the justice system.  The state maintains anybody who competes is called "vigilante".  So I agree the victim should be on the benefit side in order to be compensated by the violator.  Whenever I hear somebody say justice should be guided by "deterrence", I am baffled, because why are they arguing with me instead of deterring my argument by punching me into submission?  And how many murderers could just say they were acting in pursuit of their own form of death penalty?  It seems like vengeance requires flawed logic.   We can't stop establishment violence, therefore the statists don't want "justice", they just want to own the word.