Elements of revenge.— The word “revenge" is said so quickly it almost seems as if it could contain no more than one conceptual and perceptional root. And so one continues to strive to discover it: just as our economists have not yet wearied of scenting a similar unity in the word “value" and of searching after the original root-concept of the word. As if every word were not a pocket into which now this, now that, now several things at once have been put! Thus “revenge," too, is now this, now that, now something more combined. Distinguish first of all that defensive return blow which one delivers even against lifeless objects (moving machinery, for example) which have hurt us: the sense of our countermove is to put a stop to the injury by bringing the machine to a halt. Occasionally, the strength of the counterblow must be so strong to succeed in this that it smashes the machine; but where that is too strong to be destructible immediately by an individual, he will nevertheless strike as hard as he can—making, as it were, a last-ditch effort. One behaves the same way against persons who harm one, as long as one feels the harm immediately: if you want to call this action an act of revenge, all right; but consider that it is only self-preservation that has here put its rational machinery into motion, and that in the last analysis one does not think at all of the harming person in such a case but only of oneself: we act that way without any wish to do harm in return, merely in order to get away with life and limb.— Time is needed—when instead of concentrating on oneself one begins to think about one’s opponent, asking oneself how one can hurt him the most. This happens in the second type of revenge: reflection on the other person’s vulnerability and capacity for suffering is its presupposition; one wants to hurt. Protecting oneself against further harm, on the other hand, is so little a consideration for the seeker of such vengeance that he almost regularly brings about further harm to himself and quite often anticipates this in cold blood. In the first type of revenge it was fear of a second blow that made the counterblow as strong as possible; here we find almost total indifference to what the opponent will do yet; the strength of the counterblow is determined solely by what he has done to us. But what has he done? And what use is it to us if he now suffers after we have suffered on his account? What matters is a restoration, while the act of revenge of the first type serves only self-preservation. Perhaps we have lost through our opponent possessions, rank, friends, children: such losses are not brought back by revenge; the restoration concerns solely a loss incidental to all these losses. The revenge of restoration does not protect us against further harm; it does not make good the harm suffered—except in one case. If our honor has suffered from our opponent, then revenge can restore it. But this has suffered damage in every instance in which suffering has been inflicted on us deliberately; for our opponent thus demonstrated that he did not fear us. By revenge we demonstrate that we do not fear him either: this constitutes the equalization, the restoration. (The intent of showing one’s utter lack of fear goes so far in some persons that the danger their revenge involves for them—loss of health or life or other damage—is for them an indispensable condition of all revenge. Therefore they choose the means of a duel although the courts offer them help in attaining satisfaction for the insult: but they do not accept an undangerous restoration of their honor as sufficient, because it cannot demonstrate their lack of fear.)— In the first type of revenge it is fear that strikes the counterblow; here, on the other hand, it is the absence of fear that, as I have tried to show, wants to prove itself by means of the counterblow.— Nothing therefore seems more different than the inner motivation or the two ways of action that are called by one name, “revenge." Nevertheless it happens quite frequently that the person seeking revenge is unclear about what really induced him to act: perhaps he delivered the counterblow from fear and in order to preserve himself, but later, when he has time to think about the point of his injured honor, he convinces himself that he avenged himself for his honor’s sake—after all, this motive is nobler than the other one. Moreover, it is also important whether he believes his honor to have been injured in the eyes of others (the world) or only in the eyes of the opponent who insulted him: in the latter case he will prefer secret revenge, in the former public revenge. Depending on whether he projects himself strongly or weakly into the soul of his opponent and the spectators, his revenge will be more embittered or tamer; if he lacks this type of imagination entirely, he will not think of revenge at all, for in that case the feeling for “honor" is not present in him and hence cannot be injured. Just so, he will not think of revenge if he despises the doer and the spectators of the deed—because they, being despised, cannot accord him any honor and hence also cannot take it away. Finally, he will forgo revenge in the not unusual case in which he loves the doer: to be sure, he thus loses honor in his opponent’s eyes and perhaps thus becomes less worthy of being loved in return. But even forgoing all such counterlove is a sacrifice that love is prepared to make if only it does not have to hurt the beloved being: that would mean hurting oneself more than this sacrifice hurts.— Thus: everybody will revenge himself unless he is without honor or full of contempt or full of love for the person who has harmed and insulted him. Even when he has recourse to the courts he wants revenge as a private person—but besides, being a member of society who thinks further and considers the future, he also wants society’s revenge on one who does not honor it. Thus judicial punishment restores both private honor and the honor of society—which means, punishment is revenge.— Indubitably, it also contains that other element of revenge which we described first, insofar as society uses punishment for its self-preservation and deals a counterblow in self-defense. Punishment desires to prevent further damage; it desires to deter. Thus both of these so different elements of revenge are actually tied together in punishment, and perhaps this is the main support of that above-mentioned conceptual confusion by virtue of which the individual who revenges himself usually does not know what he really wants.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.