Interdisciplinary Workshop
Revenge, Retribution, Reconciliation:
Justice and Emotions between Conflict and Mediation

What happens after harm has been done and injustice had to be endured? Is revenge really sweet? Should the injured claim an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth? Who has the right to impose sanctions and mete out punishment? Is it at all possible for perpetrator and victim to settle their scores and ‘make good’ again? Or are there things that can never be undone?

The desire for justice and fairness—arguably a part of human nature—does not only influence individual interpretations of the world, it also shapes the ways in which societies and human relations are organized. Established legal systems and agencies of law enforcement, whether their authority is based on the rational foundations of the social contract or on the moral codes of religious laws, have the function to maintain social order by dispensing justice. While collective life rests on the notion that individuals surrender their natural rights to an authority that pursues justice for them, violations of laws and transgressions of social norms constantly probe this agreement. Extreme reactions to offences, sometimes deliberately circumventing institutionalized forms of punishment, attest to the strong emotional side of justice. Rage, disgust, and the urge for vengeance are affects that accompany the human quest for justice.

A Workshop organized by the Martin Buber Society of Fellows in the Humanities and Social Sciences Jerusalem brings together scholars from various disciplines in order to explore how individuals, groups, and societies in a variety of cultural contexts, political settings, and historical time periods respond to the perpetration of injustice. It investigates how an equilibrium can be maintained between the emotional thirst for an immediate and unmediated response to injustices and societies’ need to adjudicate measures and sanctions that seem proportional to the breech of justice.