In this episode of Elucidations, Matt sits down with Emily Dupree to learn about whether it’s rational or irrational to try to seek revenge.
As a culture, we kind can’t decide what we think about revenge. Out of one side of our mouths, we talk a big game about letting bygones be bygones, about how revenge and retaliation lead to cycles of violence, and about how nothing good can really come of getting back at people. But acts of revenge, where clearly warranted, also have a visceral moral appeal that it would be absurd to deny. If we didn’t think there were at least some situations in which a person ought to get their comeuppance, then there wouldn’t be so many heroic adventure movies centered around the protagonist’s quest for revenge. When the hero gets back at the villain, it just feels right, like the movie needs to end here and we can all go home; and no amount of pedantic, post-hoc reasoning can ever make that feeling go away.
Solving that dilemma is hard, but as a way of working up to it, our distinguished guest decides to tackle a slightly different question. Not: can seeking revenge ever be the right thing to do—but: can seeking revenge ever be a rational thing to do. Traditionally, most philosophers have answered that question in the negative. Calling it irrational means that it’s senseless and unintelligible, like anyone who does it is undergoing a (possibly temporary) lapse in their basic mental faculties. The reason most philosophers think that it’s irrational to take revenge is that there’s no way to undo the wrong that was done to you in the past. If Person A did something truly horrible to Person B, that thing doesn’t get undone when Person B does a new horrible thing to Person A. And if that’s the case, why do it? Doing it is all cost and no benefit.
In this episode, Emily Dupree argues that in fact, it can be rational to take revenge. How come? It isn’t all cost and no benefit, because in some cases, successfully taking revenge can lead to a unique benefit: namely, the restoration of the vengeance seeker’s moral personhood. For the unique benefit to come, certain background conditions have to hold: the original harm has to have been genuinely morally wrong, it has to have been as egregious as it can be (so it can’t be minor/inconsequential), it has to have taken place under conditions of the political state failing, and it has to have undermined the vengeance seeker’s moral personhood. In that case, it is possible for an act of vengeance to be intelligible as an attempt on the part of the vengeance seeker to get their moral personhood back. Note that our guest isn’t saying the vengeance seeker is right to seek vengeance in these circumstances. The view is just that seeking vengeance under these circumstances can be comprehensible, rather than just bonkers.
Tune in to hear our guest discuss some historical examples of revenge that we can comprehend!
Matt Teichman
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Episode 129: Nethanel Lipshitz discusses discrimination
Episode 128: Melissa Fusco discusses free choice permission
Episode 127 - Nic Koziolek discusses self-knowledge
Episode 126 - Listener Q&A with Agnes Callard and Ben Callard
Episode 125: James Koppel discusses counterfactual inference and automated explanation
Elucidations Episode 124: Graham Priest discusses Buddhist political philosophy
Episode 123: Graham Priest discusses Buddhist metaphysics
Episode 122: Frithjof Bergmann and David Helmbold discuss new work, new culture
Episode 121: Aaron Ben Ze'ev discusses the arc of love
Episode 120: Robin Dembroff on going beyond the gender binary
Episode 119: Stephanie Kapusta discusses misgendering
Episode 118: Tyler Cowen discusses Stubborn Attachments
Episode 117: Brian L. Frye says to plagiarize this podcast
Episode 116: Tommy Curry discusses black male studies
Episode 115: Katherine Ritchie discusses social groups
Episode 114: Sally Haslanger discusses ideology
Episode 113: Tom Pashby discusses quantum mechanics
Episode 112: Myisha Cherry discusses the skill of conversation
Episode 111: Greg Kobele discusses mathematical linguistics
Episode 110: Chike Jeffers discusses the social and political philosophy of W.E.B. Du Bois
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The Modern West
The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Podcast
University of Chicago Human Rights Program Distinguished Lecturer Series
The Latin American Briefing Series
CHIASMOS: The University of Chicago International and Area Studies Multimedia Outreach Source [audio]
University of Chicago Booth School of Business Podcast Series