Inigo, what sort of “punishment” do you have in mind? The first thing I think of when I think of punishment is a parent punishing a child for misbehavior. There are, of course, many other types, but that’s sort of an ideal example.
If you’re a parent, the purpose of punishing your child for doing X is to keep them from doing X again, through negative reinforcement and/or deterrence. In other words, you want them either to associate action X with punishment Y in their minds, and thus be disuaded from doing action X, or you want them to think, “If I do action X, punishment Y will follow—I’d better not do action X.”
Here are a couple ways that’s different from revenge:
(1) Punishing a person may well have love for that person and/or interest in that person’s well-being as a motive. Getting revenge on a person typically does not. In fact, revenge is generally motivated by a desire to make the person worse off.
(2) Punishment involves authority. Whether it’s a parent punishing a child, a sergeant punishing a private, the AMA punishing a doctor, or society (& its judicial system) punishing a criminal, it happens in the context of the punisher having some authority over the punishee.
From what little I know of game theory, if A and B then continue to select drinks for one another you have an example of an iterated prisoner’s dilemma – and “be nice first and then repay like with like” is a winning strategy.
Punishment should be based on intention. That’s why there’s the murder / manslaughter distinction and others in law (though it is often impossible to know for sure what someone intended to happen).
Whereas revenge is usually based on events.
Some upthread have suggested that revenge is fair, because it’s in proportion. But if you, say, punch a guy, and as he falls over he hits his head and dies, what is fair punishment? The family of the victim may believe the death penalty would be “an eye for an eye”.
And that’s the reason the “one eye for one eye” rule came into being: nowadays we both often misunderstand it as an allowance for revenge and usually restate it as “the punishment must fit the crime” - not “the revenge must leave the angry person happy”. Societies with that notion eventually realized that appropriate punishment is a teaching tool, whereas tantrums have a way of escalating. When my nephews break a boundary I have set and I apply the pre-defined punishment, I’m teaching “actions have consequences” and “you can choose which consequences you get by choosing your actions”, eventually, I hope that this will get me two happy, well-adjusted (1), grown-up nephews; revenge would get me… what? A pair of kids who learn that He With The Biggest Stick Hurts The Other Part The Mostest? That’s not something I want!
1: is it me or that sounds like I’m talking about car motors?
In practice, even if unstated, revenge is a vital part of our judicial system. That’s what “the punishment must fit the crime” really means for the common man (and don’t get me started on public death sentences here).
However, punishment also has a (common and individual) preventive purpose which is not found in revenge. That’s the “actions have consequences” part, and consequences of a specific action has to be predictable. Otherwise, it’s not punishment, but revenge.
Punishment is for the benefit of the person being punished. It’s classic operant conditioning. Person does X, punishment Y happens, person is less likely to do X in the future.
Revenge is for the benefit of the person who’s been wronged, not for the person who did the wrong thing. Somebody wrongs you, you want to see them suffer because it repays the suffering they caused you.
