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 phrase, “Vengeance is
mine, I will repay, saith the Lord,” comes from Paul’s letter to the Romans
(12:19), where the apostle quotes from Deuteronomy
32:35: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay. In due time their foot will slip;
their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them” (NIV). Friedrich
Nietzsche took a look at that verse and concluded that it discredits the Hebrews’
(and Paul’s) conception of God because vengeance and omnibenevolence are
contradictory. To say that God is both vengeful and perfect goodness (as in
universal benevolence) is untenable, so Nietzsche’s point is that internal
contradiction within a concept renders it invalid; to say that God
itself does not exist is another matter.
The God of love and universal
benevolence found in the Gospels represents an internally-consistent conception
of the divinity because love (especially agape) and benevolentia universalis
do not contradict each other. In the Gospels, Jesus preaches and provides examples
of mercy and forgiveness even to enemies. In criticizing logical contradiction in
holding that it is sufficient to discredit the validity of a concept by
rendering it nonsensical, Nietzsche almost seems Kantian. The first formulation
of Kant’s Categorical Imperative mandates that if a maxim for action yields an
absurdity when universalized, that maxim is inherently unethical, even if applied
by an individual rather than by everyone (e.g., lying, for instance).
Admittedly, assigning
vengeance exclusively to a deity may have been motivated by a constructive
intention—that of keeping retribution out of the hands of us mere mortals, who rarely
even recognize that vengeance is best served cold rather than inflamed by passion,
and thus likely to be carried to an extreme rather than circumscribed by
self-discipline. The Israeli genocide in Gaza demonstrates just how flawed
human judgment can be with regard to assessing when enough vengeance has been committed.
In retrospect, assigning vengeance to Yahweh so the Hebrews would not carry out
vengeance themselves seems not to have worked. The human instinct for
retaliation—to force an aggressor to pay, even if only by mental anguish—remains
remarkably powerful. Nietzsche posits in The Genealogy of Morals that
the assumption of equivalence of pain and the thing (or person) lost originated
in the earliest debtor-creditor relationships—an equivalence that Shakespeare made
famous by the proverbial line, “a pound of flesh,” in The Merchant of Venice.
Both Nietzsche and Shakespeare were skeptical regarding the efficacy of another’s
pain in making up for a loss of property, money, and even a loved one. Not only
that equivalence, but also the version of justice that is presumably satisfied
by vengeance can be critiqued, and an alternative, now-extinct theory of
justice proposed.
Unfortunately, the film, The
Foreigner, presents viewers with an idealized depiction of revenge
accomplished, albeit with much effort by the protagonist in satisfying his urge
so well literally without overkill. Jackie Chan plays Quan Nogoc Minh, a former
special-forces operative whose teenage daughter is killed in a London bombing
by a rogue group called the “Authentic IRA.” Quan targets Liam Hennessy, the
Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, correctly suspecting that Hennessy’s
past IRA ties can give him access to the bombers’ identities. Quan is
relentless in pressuring Hennessy, even with violence unleashed especially on
Hennessy’s henchmen, so Hennessy himself would be motivated enough to find out the
identities of the bombers. Quan even suffers an injury in an exchange of gun
fire. The film’s message at this point is that justice by vengeance can require
a lot of effort and even harm to oneself. To be sure, as a former special-ops military
man, Quan is formidable against the henchmen, and Hennessy is eventually
sufficiently motivated to seek out the names of the bombers from a current
IRA-contact. Pretending to be a repairman, Quan gains access to the small
apartment where the bombers are planning their next caper. Spraying the
apartment with machine-gun fire, Quan kills all but one of the terrorists, and severely
wounds the woman. Quan slips away, down the elevator and back to his residence.
Even though police know that Quan is responsible for the carnage, they choose
not to arrest him, and even shoot the woman themselves! The film’s message at
that point is that Quan’s vengeance is fitting and justified. When he returns
home, where he is a local restaurateur, he is visibly fulfilled emotionally
because he has succeeded in his vengeance without falling sort or overreaching.
Watching the film after 2023, Quan’s
precisely and appropriately carried out retaliation in vengeance for the loss
of his daughter can be contrasted with Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians in
Gaza, which went much beyond the number of Israelis killed and kidnapped by
Hamas in October of 2023. In the film, Quan limits his quest to the actual bombers,
rather than going on to kill everyone who has ever been associated with the
IRA, such as Hennessey. For example, Quan makes a kind of bomb that would not
kill Hennessey when it goes off in the building in which Hennessey’s office is
located; Quan merely wants to motivate Hennessey so Quan can apply vengeance to
the murderers of his daughter. Such an approach to vengeance differs from Israeli
government statements that everyone in Gaza, even babies, were guilty and therefore
should be killed. Unlike the movie, the “real-world” case shows just how warped
self-serving human judgment can be concerning “pay back.” John Locke, a political theorist, posits as a
primary rationale for the existence of government the tendency of human beings
to unleash excessive punishment in avenging crimes committed against themselves,
their families, or their property. Without an impartial authority capable of
restraining retaliatory violence, excesses such as a genocide can occur even by
a government supported by such a significant percentage of voters that a nation
itself can be said to be culpable in committing crimes against humanity out of
sheer vengeance.
The fact that Quan stops and
returns home the moment he achieves a strictly proportional vengeance can be
viewed as idyllic with respect to self-imposed restraint in human nature. Vengeance
in the real world is almost never as perfectly calibrated as depicted in the
film, although the physical and mental stamina required of Quan even just to get
the names of the bombers is hardly ideal. Vengeance is not easy even when it is
held to justifiable proportionality. Even though the film brings closure to
Quan’s quest and he can resume living and even grieve his daughter’s death, Locke’s
point is nonetheless valid. As the case of Israel in Gaza and even the West Bank
demonstrates, state actors wielding military and police raw force to enact retribution
can be extremely dangerous.
Furthermore, public legal
justice rarely feels as emotionally satisfying to victims as Quan’s accomplished
vengeance feels to him once he is back home. Examining the film’s closure more
closely, however, can lead us to conclude that Quan’s satisfaction is not
complete; he is not made whole as he had been prior to the loss of
his daughter by having accomplished his objective of violently killing the
bombers.
Back home, Quan does not get
his daughter back. Nietzsche points out that the vicarious satisfaction of
creditors by the infliction of pain on non-paying debtors represents a strange
equivalence because real satisfaction in terms of getting the loaned money
back has not been achieved. Just because a debtor suffers from a creditor’s demand
of “a pound of flesh” does not mean that the creditor’s bank account is
restored with money that can be spent to feel pleasure in the future. The
sadistic pleasure even in knowing that someone else is suffering (e.g., in a
debtor-prison) substitutes for such pleasure. The value of money lies ultimately
in pleasure, whether money is spent or the absence of money is used to cause
the suffering of another person (and thus pleasure to oneself). Such an
equivalence of another’s pain for money can nonetheless be questioned, as Nietzsche
does, and thus the sort of justice waged by Quan in the film can be viewed as
something less than restorative and thus making an aggrieved person whole once again.
Because Quan’s daughter is not restored to him, he is not made whole in spite
of the pleasure he feels in having made the bombers pay by suffering pain and
losing their futures. Quan’s satisfaction upon returning home can therefore only
be partial; vengeance cannot be perfect because that which (or who) has been
lost is still gone. Even if a person believes that God will execute vengeance
on our behalf, the stolen property or destroyed lives are not restored. Praying
for divine vengeance turns out to be human, all too human, rather than making a
person whole once again.
An alternative, by-now extinct
theory of justice rooted in love and benevolence, wherein even enemies are
treated with compassion rather than retaliated against, is available. Unlike
the sort of justice evinced in the film, justice as love and benevolence can
restore a victim to wholeness even though the lost thing or person of value is
not returned. Of compassion being due
even to enemies, a person subscribing to this theory of justice could say, Gladly
I give this unto you, not because you deserve it, but because God is love and
to the extent that you partake in being, you are of God, which is perfect being,
and thus you are owed benevolence. This line reflects Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s
formulation of justice as caritas sapientis seu benevolentia universalis:
wise love, that is, universal benevolence. Perhaps the wisdom of such love is due
in part to the inherently incomplete restoration that is possible from justice
as vengeance.
A story in which Quan serves the bombers by taking care of their children, even raising one or two if one of the bombers is subsequently killed, would present us with a radically different narrative—one so alien and thus unbelievable that such a film would likely never be produced. A formidable exception is the film Gandhi (1982), which arguably showcases justice as compassion for one’s adversaries, as when Gandhi, barely conscious during one of his hunger strikes meant to stop the Hindu-Muslim violence, tells Nahari, a Hindu man who has just confessed that he has killed a Muslim child in revenge for his own son’s death by a Muslim man, “I know a way out of Hell. Find a child, a child whose mother and father have been killed and raise him as your own. Only be sure that he is a Muslim and that you raise him as one.” Such a mission would restore Nahari to spiritual wholeness and thus enable him to live once again rather than be spiritually dead in guilt and still-unrequited resentment. For even though Nahari has killed a Muslim boy, that act cannot restore Nahari’s own son to him. Without justice as compassion to his enemies, Nahari is left only with the partial satisfaction that vengeance can give. Even though The Foreigner ends with Quan back home visibly relieved from having accomplished his objective against all probability, his satisfaction cannot be whole because he is not fully restored psychologically or spiritually. His daughter, if in heaven, would have cause to mourn him, whereas if he were to have extended compassion rather than pain to his enemies, she would have reason to rejoice.
