Guillermo Eguiguren Melossi

This paper develops a novel explanatory reconstruction of revenge by examining a feature commonly acknowledged but theoretically underexplored: its character as a personal matter. Analysis of this dimension shows four distinctive features of revenge. First, it is the response to a perceived harm done to someone’s core identity; second, it aims at restoring the victim’s sense of self-worth; third, it is nontransferable, that is, it presupposes the victim to be the cause of the perceived offender’s harm; and fourth, its harm is intended to be at least as significant for the perceived offender as the triggering harm was for the avenger. The study attempts to explain how this proposed explanatory reconstruction allows us to effectively distinguish revenge from similar phenomena such as retaliation, punishment, and retribution, while clarifying its distinctive features. Finally, this approach not only clarifies revenge’s motivational structure but also provides methodological guidance for research in legal theory and psychology.

This paper develops a novel explanatory reconstruction of revenge by examining a feature commonly acknowledged but theoretically underexplored: its character as a personal matter. Analysis of this dimension shows four distinctive features of revenge. First, it is the response to a perceived harm done to someone’s core identity; second, it aims at restoring the victim’s sense of self-worth; third, it is nontransferable, that is, it presupposes the victim to be the cause of the perceived offender’s harm; and fourth, its harm is intended to be at least as significant for the perceived offender as the triggering harm was for the avenger. The study attempts to explain how this proposed explanatory reconstruction allows us to effectively distinguish revenge from similar phenomena such as retaliation, punishment, and retribution, while clarifying its distinctive features. Finally, this approach not only clarifies revenge’s motivational structure but also provides methodological guidance for research in legal theory and psychology.