The Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften: Events
Thursday, 12 February 2026, 11:00
Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften, Am Wingertsberg 4, 61348 Bad Homburg
Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften of Goethe UniversityFKH colloquium
Daniel Statman (University of Haifa)
»Is Revenge Inherently Wrong?«Abstract
In liberal societies, revenge is often regarded as inherently wrong. This paper challenges that view by examining two candidate grounds for its impermissibility: its motivation and its consequences in terms of injustice or harm. Because acts of revenge are defined by their motivation, the most plausible objection is that this motivation is itself morally flawed. I reject various arguments that seem to support this objection and then do the same with the view that revenge is impermissible because it tends to produce retributive injustice or unjustified harm. The paper concludes that the permissibility of revenge is contingent and that recognizing a vengeful motive is a reason for caution, not for refraining from action.
The speaker
Daniel Statman is a professor of philosophy at the University of Haifa and a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute. He has already been a guest scholar at the research college twice, in winter 2013 and in spring 2023. His recent publications are War by Agreement: A Contractarian Ethics of War (Oxford University Press, 2019, with Yitzhak Benbaji), and State and Religion in Israel: A Philosophical-Legal Inquiry (Cambridge University Press, 2019, with Gideon Sapir).
Participation
Closed event. Contact: Beate Sutterlüty; email: b.sutterluety@forschungskolleg-humanwissenschaften.de
In order to provide you with the best online experience this website uses cookies. Delete cookies
By using our website, you agree to the data protection declaration and to the use of cookies.
Learn more
I agree
Cookies are short reports that are sent and stored on the hard drive of the user's computer through your browser when it connects to a web. Cookies can be used to collect and store user data while connected to provide you the requested services and sometimes tend not to keep. Cookies can be themselves or others.
There are several types of cookies:
- Technical cookies that facilitate user navigation and use of the various options or services offered by the web as identify the session, allow access to certain areas, facilitate orders, purchases, filling out forms, registration, security, facilitating functionalities (videos, social networks, etc..).
- Customization cookies that allow users to access services according to their preferences (language, browser, configuration, etc..).
- Analytical cookies which allow anonymous analysis of the behavior of web users and allow to measure user activity and develop navigation profiles in order to improve the websites.
So when you access our website, in compliance with Article 22 of Law 34/2002 of the Information Society Services, in the analytical cookies treatment, we have requested your consent to their use. All of this is to improve our services. We use Google Analytics to collect anonymous statistical information such as the number of visitors to our site. Cookies added by Google Analytics are governed by the privacy policies of Google Analytics. If you want you can disable cookies from Google Analytics.
However, please note that you can enable or disable cookies by following the instructions of your browser.