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."