Pure Retribution
I basically agree with the idea of Pure Retribution. But in some points, I can not completely agree with it.
Firstly, I agree the returning of good for good is necessary, but not sufficient because sometime, even if one has never done anything good for you, you still should do something good for the person. For example: if you see a stranger who does not swim is fallen in water. You are the only one available on that spot. Should you do the person a favor to save him or her? The answer is certainly positive. What I am saying here is that sometime, doing good thing for someone is not because you reward someone for the good thing she or he has done for you, rather, because doing good for the person will make the her or his life better. When doing so we do not intend to seek for any good reward for the person. Sometime, we do not even get chance to know the person well (for example in emergency) thus sometime return good for nothing is necessary as well if needed.
Secondly, sometime, returning harms for harms is not necessary. People who claim this usually are for two purposes. One is to intentionally teach a person a lesson for how harmful thing the person has done. The other is to demand the fairness.
For the first one, it is not necessary to teach someone knowledge or give an experience by returning one harms. Physical experiencing is not the only way that we obtain knowledge. For example, we learn how cruel is the Nazi by watching the film or TV of that subject matter, But no one prefer choosing to create a second Holocaust and become a victim of it in order to get an experience of Nazi cruelty. Because in doing so, one might lose one’s life, it costs too much. The same thing is applied the case of returning harms to harms. In some case, people get harmed because of mistakes, sometime, people who made that mistakes feel much regretted and guilty, which might bring them much greater pain then the original harms that they have done to you, then it is not necessary to return harms to them again because they have learned from the lesson well.
For the second reason, demand of fairness, it is impractical to seek fairness by harming one back. How much harm to be returned is considered fair enough? It is very difficult to measure it. How can we be sure that we can return the exact same amount of harm to the person as he or she did to us? What would we do about if the harm we return to the person is much greater then the original harm the person has done to us? Let say a person hurts your, if you hit the person back that only hurts the persons skin or hurts the persons both of legs. Should the person return you another hit again in order to make both of you to be harmed equally and fairly? If both sides want the same amount of returning harm, when the fights will be stopped? In this case, I will say that negotiating non-harm compensation probably is a better solution for balancing the fairness than returning harm for harm. For example, money compensation.
