The human urge to exact vengeance as if the resulting pain suffered by the culprit(s) were equivalent to that (or whom) is lost being restored—an equivalence that Friedrich Nietzsche characterizes as strange—is perhaps integral to human nature; the instinct may even be in our DNA and activated in the reptilian area of the human brain. Compassion to enemies flies in the face of that facet of our nature, yet it is arguably only from justice as love as universal (rather than convenient) benevolence, rather than from justice through vengeance, that full restorative satisfaction after having suffered a loss caused by another person is possible. We find this instinct to exact vengeance idealized in the film, The Foreigner (2017). Rarely is vengeance so perfectly fulfilled as it is in that fictional story. Yet the idyllic ending is deceiving, for even such fulfilment as the protagonist feels after having exacted revenge is not wholly restorative. More realistically, people tend to go overboard in refusing to delimit vengeful acts to fit the respective crimes/losses. Hence the Biblical attempt to assign vengeance to God, which is also problematic.
The full essay is at "The Foreigner."
