The Necessity of Punishment - Enc. par. 500

Robbert Veen's Hegel Podcast

¤ 500 As a violation of right, such an action is essentially and actually null. In it the agent, as a volitional and

intelligent being, sets up a law − a law, however, which is formal and recognized by him only − a universal

which has validity for him, and under which he has at the same time subsumed himself by his action. To

display the nullity of such an act, to carry out simultaneously this formal law and the intrinsic right, in the

first instance by means of a subjective individual will, is the work of Revenge. But revenge, starting from the

interest of an immediate particular personality, is at the same time only a new outrage; and so on without end.

This progression, like the last, abolishes itself in a third judgement, which is disinterested − punishment.