ABSTRACT

Human agency goes hand in hand with fallibility. The capability to act inevitably involves the capability for wrongdoing. People hurt each other—sometimes intentionally, often without bad faith—and treat each other in unjust ways. The intersection between agency and vulnerability—the point where one subject gets negatively affected by the unjust action of another subject—thus can be conceived of as the existential and affective ground from which both the desire for revenge and the longing for forgiveness emerge. “Who among us”, Charles Griswold asks, “has not longed to be forgiven? Nearly everyone has suffered the bitter injustice of wrongdoing. Who has not struggled to forgive? Revenge impulsively surges in response to wrong and becomes perversely delicious to those possessed by it” (2007, XIII). Forgiveness and revenge are both responses to the experience of getting wronged. As such, they play a vital role in the lives of individuals and of communities.