Hello CuriousCat^⁠_⁠^ I hope for us to have a clean and fair argument. And for my take, let's take it this way. Revenge is morally justified when it restores a balance that was violently broken and no other mechanism is available to restore it. Aristotle made this case directly: a person who feels no anger at genuine wrongdoing isn't virtuous, they're deficient. The virtue isn't suppressing anger entirely — it's directing it proportionally, at the right target, for the right reason. Revenge done well isn't a loss of control. It's controlled retribution in response to real injury. The Count of Monte Cristo is the clearest articulation of this. Edmond Dantès isn't denied justice by accident — he's betrayed by the very people who should have protected him, and the institutions meant to deliver justice are either absent or complicit. When the system designed to punish wrongdoing fails, the moral claim to seek retribution doesn't disappear — it transfers to the wronged individual. Dantès doesn't become a monster by pursuing his revenge. He becomes the only mechanism left capable of restoring what was taken from him. This isn't a fringe position — it's the literal foundation criminal law is built on. Lex talionis, "an eye for an eye," wasn't a primitive impulse society eventually outgrew. It's the proportionality principle every modern justice system still runs on: punishment scaled to the offense, delivered because the wrong demands an answer. The only thing that's changed is who's authorized to carry it out. We didn't abandon the logic of revenge — we centralized it. That doesn't make personal revenge automatically wrong; it means the real question is whether the centralized system is actually functioning. When it isn't, the underlying moral logic doesn't evaporate. To be clear, this isn't a defense of cruelty or disproportionate vengeance for its own sake. The claim is narrower and harder to refute: when a wrong is real, proportionate retribution is available, and legitimate channels have failed or are absent, revenge isn't a moral failure. It's the last functioning form of justice.

I appreciate the response you've given me. But with all my confidence, have me explain this for you: A few of these don't actually land on the position I argued. The "cycle of violence" scenario — friend retaliates, cousin escalates — describes disproportionate, unbounded vengeance. I excluded that explicitly: my claim was for a single proportionate act of retribution, not open-ended escalation. You're arguing against a version of revenge I never defended. And notice what your own example proves — the reason endless escalation is bad is exactly why proportionality and bounded retribution matter, which is the logic my argument already runs on. Same with "feels satisfying doesn't make it right." I never argued revenge is justified because it feels good. I argued it through Aristotle's proportional-response virtue and through what happens when legitimate justice fails or is absent. Refuting an emotional-satisfaction case I didn't make doesn't touch the actual argument. The "fair judge in your own case" point is the strongest one you've raised, so follow it all the way through. Judges, juries, and prosecutors are also biased humans — wrongful convictions, political pressure, and prosecutorial misconduct are extremely well documented. If imperfect impartiality disqualifies a form of justice from ever being morally justified, that standard disqualifies institutional justice too, not just personal revenge. You can't apply that bar to one and wave it through for the other. You already said "justice through proper systems, sure" — so you don't actually believe that bar is universal. You're applying it selectively. And that selective application is the real gap. You never addressed the condition my whole case rests on: what happens when proper systems have failed or are absent. "Justice through proper systems, sure" assumes those systems exist and function. The entire debate is about what happens when they don't.

I believe it's time for us to end this. It's been a great argument so far. Now let me break it down for you. That statistic needs a source, but even granting it's accurate, it doesn't answer the question on the table. A society-wide rate comparing legal systems to lawless ones is about policy at scale — whether revenge should be the default mechanism for everyone. That was never my claim. My claim is narrower: in a specific case, when institutions have genuinely failed or are absent, can retribution by the wronged individual be morally justified? An aggregate violence statistic doesn't touch that question at all. On Monte Cristo: you're arguing his revenge becomes obsessive and disproportionate. Fine — but notice what that argument actually does. It doesn't refute the principle that proportionate retribution can be justified; it argues Dantès crossed the line from justified retribution into excess. That's the exact distinction I built into my position from round one. You're not disagreeing with the framework, you're disagreeing about where one fictional character lands inside it. That confirms the line exists, it doesn't erase it. "Who decides when systems have failed enough" is a real question, but it's not unique to revenge — it's the same epistemic challenge built into self-defense law, just war theory, and whistleblowing. None of those collapse into blank checks just because there's no single referee standing by. The standard isn't "whoever feels wronged gets to act" — it's whether, after the fact, the wrong was real, legitimate recourse was genuinely unavailable, and the response was proportionate. That's demanding, and most claims of personal revenge would fail it. A hard bar isn't the same as no bar. And "two wrongs don't make a right" would disqualify imprisoning a murderer too, since that's also harm imposed in response to harm. You don't believe that — which means you already accept that proportionate retribution for genuine wrongdoing isn't automatically "another wrong." You just want that exception reserved for institutions and denied to individuals, even in the exact scenario my argument is built around: when those institutions don't exist or have failed. That's the selective standard again, three rounds running.