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Vengeance, resentment and vendetta: the question 1:40 We might also stay a bit on the same subject, since V is for vengeance. The difference between resentment—in Nietzsche we also find a fairly strong notion of it—and vengeance. And then maybe you'll tell us about the Corsicans too, in relation to... Vengeance, the vendetta. The vendetta. Or this notion of vengeance—if we go back, for example, to the Epic, in Homer, it's something quite normal.
2:10 Achilles avenges the murder of his friend Patroclus by killing Hector, and then everyone finds that very... In a way, Creon avenges the city. No one is bothered by it, basically, because that's just how it is. So, what can you tell us a bit about this notion of vengeance? Is it ultimately a moral concept? Or is it, once again, something absolutely neutral from an axiological point of view? And also let's see a bit how resentment and vengeance fit together.
Vengeance, a legal concept in societies 2:43 To begin with, it's not a moral concept; to begin with, it's a legal concept in societies. My wife caught in flagrant adultery—I kill her. Full stop. That's not the Corsican speaking. I mean that there are societies where all this is seen in a very good light, where it goes without saying. And still today, in a former Soviet Central Asian republic, I mean, men would go and whip a woman from the neighboring village and carry her off, like the rape of the Sabine women in Roman antiquity, in order to marry her.
3:13 And now it's still done, but with cars. The authorities have great difficulty when they try to put a stop to it, because some of them are themselves implicated in the fact that women are treated as spoils to be conquered. And even as the very origin of all spoils. It's the primary value. So vengeance is a legal term, and one that isn't even pejorative in certain societies. I don't know if you remember—you're a bit young—but that wonderful comedy film with Mastroianni called "Divorce Italian Style"
3:43 which takes place in Sicily, etc. And there's his little niece, Tim Bragg, who is rather young, and he wants to get rid of his appalling and morally dubious plot device—he wants to get rid of his wife, who's a pious little bigot who wants to make love to him all the time while talking about God, etc. There are lots of children, he wants to get rid of her, he says "I'm in Sicily." So we come to vengeance. If I manage to catch her in flagrant adultery... it's going to be hard to find her a lover because she's virtuous beyond belief. That's the whole plot of the film. I mean, I'd have the whole jury on my side.
The duty of vengeance and Corsican vendetta 4:13 And sure enough. At one point the mafia even comes to see him and says, "You're taking too long to get your revenge, that's not good, it lowers people's regard for these values." So, to begin with, vengeance is not everywhere seen as an ugly feeling. Often there is a duty of vengeance in certain cultures. Now, on this point, I'll own up to my Corsican side—I've really felt this. Insofar as harm done to one of my cousins, to me who shares drops of blood with her, is a wrong, a damage done to all those in whom that blood flows.
4:46 That's what is terribly criminogenic in this kind of ethos, if I may say so, this archaic ethic. It's the whole bloodline, in the classical sense of the term—the close or distant family members who are affected. And so it would be immoral not to take revenge. That's why vendettas last several generations and cause dozens of deaths. I know of one vendetta with more than 60 deaths over three generations. At the start, it was a little old woman who had two goats in a village.
Public law and the Code of Hammurabi according to Hegel 5:18 One of them strayed into the neighbor's garden. The neighbor kindly threw a little stone so the goat wouldn't eat his lettuces. "I've only got my goats left. He threw stones at me. He wanted to humiliate me." He spoke to his nephews. It ended up causing 60 deaths across several generations. "Like the House of Atreus." "Yes! Exactly. We're right in the middle of tragedy." There you go. So these are notions that must be taken seriously—until, precisely, something links the notion of law to the notion of the public. There, I come back to "people." Pueblo.
5:49 "Public" is the epithet of "popular"—of "people," sorry. That's not a coincidence, after all. That is, from the moment justice is taken up by something that transcends the parties concerned. Otherwise it's permanent carnage. Hegel admires the Code of Hammurabi. Is justice exempt from vengeance? Absolutely not. I'm just giving an example. Hegel said the Code of Hammurabi is an immense progress. That famous stele you can see in the Louvre—"and the thief shall have his hand cut off." He says it's an immense progress.
Reparation, punishment and the death penalty in Rousseau 6:19 "It seems barbaric to us," he says. Fortunately, for our own sake, he tells us. But it's an enormous progress that murder is no longer left to each person's arbitrary will, but that there is a common written text for everyone, stipulated. And even with all its severities, he says it's progress—the simple fact that there is written law. Of course. But justice will reason less and less in terms of vengeance, and more and more in terms of reparation.
6:51 How can we explain Rousseau's position, for example, on the death penalty? The fact that he remains attached to it. Like Kant, too. It's not yet what we'd expect from them. Yes, of course. First, we mustn't be anachronistic. I mean, it's not that there were no advocates of abolishing the death penalty in his time, but they were rather the exception. The general rule at the time was capital punishment. But personally, this is a point on which I probably disagree, because I'm a modern, in heavy quotation marks.
7:26 I think we can, today, largely and for a long time now, do away with the death penalty. But you're asking me how to explain Rousseau—I think there's an inspiration that's first of all sociological. But is this really in the order of vengeance? No, no—of the notion that man is free in what he does.
8:18 That's why we don't send him to prison. Except when we're a parent—we bang the table, we say "it's mean," which helps keep alive the child's spontaneous animism. There you go. But on the other hand, punishment is a right that restores the offender to his social standing. That this right should extend to the death penalty—there I disagree. There's a threshold that gets crossed somewhere; I won't go over all the arguments of those who oppose the death penalty, but there is a threshold that gets crossed.
8:53 And there you go, that could have been necessary at a time when there was no other recourse to limit the harm and harmfulness of certain criminal agents. I mean, today—I hope this isn't a disappointing answer—but don't tell me that if your child were raped tomorrow and cut to pieces, you wouldn't have a different judgment. I'm talking about law here, not about my personal whims. But for now, I don't see what the death penalty adds to the law.
