When the Facts “Call Down Vengeance”. Feeling of Revenge, Sensibiility to Injustices and (A Hint At) Retributive Justice in Scheler’s Formalismus

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to provide an elucidation of what, at first sight, appears as a specific and negative affective phenomenon, namely that of revenge, which although its sinister popularity risks constantly to be muddled with a simple state of excitement deprived of intentionality or with a kind of “ justice without justice”. The understanding of the nature of revenge and of impulse of revenge allows to enlighten a peculiar feeling’s class, to which revenge in a certain sense belongs to, and to investigate the meaning and the sense of Scheler’s ambiguous term “Vergeltung” in order to attribute to retributive model of justice, by a comparison with revenge, its correct role and place in the world of Scheler’s. Our back-idea is the one, according to which, refining sensibility to injustices can contribute to a primary form of identity, namely that of our living body.

Keywords

• revenge
• emotions
• retribution
• sensibility to injustice