The Ethics of Vigilantism: Does an Eye for an Eye Truly Deliver Justice, or Does it Just Leave the Whole World Blind?

Article by: Amy Boghoussian / Graphic by: Kailyn Mai

Human history suggests that violence and retribution are not anomalies but enduring features of social life. Revenge has existed across eras, cultures, and even species, functioning as a primal response to perceived injustice. This impulse persists in modern legal systems through retributive justice – the idea that wrongdoing must be answered with proportional punishment. While such frameworks aim to civilize vengeance, they also reveal its limitations. Retribution may satisfy emotional demands for closure, but it rarely produces justice that is durable, equitable, or transformative.

Vigilantism emerges most visibly when institutional systems fail. As John F. Kennedy observed, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” This insight captures the moral frustration that often fuels vigilante action: when legal channels are corrupt, indifferent, or ineffective, individuals may feel compelled to act. However, the ethical problem lies not in recognizing institutional failure, but in how that failure is addressed. Vigilantism responds to systemic injustice with personal retribution, replacing flawed collective processes with unilateral moral authority.

At its core, vigilantism rests on the assumption that an individual can transcend their own subjectivity. Yet humans are inherently flawed – shaped by trauma, anger, fear, and self-interest. Far from neutral arbiters, vigilantes are often motivated by unresolved personal injustices. While narratives frequently portray them as disciplined figures who rise above their pain, this portrayal obscures a fundamental contradiction: one cannot claim moral purity while operating beyond accountability. In acting alone, the vigilante is answerable only to themselves, creating conditions ripe for self-righteousness and disproportionate punishment.

This danger is especially evident in revenge-driven justice. Revenge is profoundly self-centered, prioritizing personal satisfaction over communal well-being. It seeks not balance, but escalation – often demanding suffering that exceeds the original harm. As a result, revenge perpetuates cycles of violence, generating new victims and new grievances. The well-known maxim “an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind” captures this reality: unchecked retribution does not resolve injustice, but multiplies it.

Recognizing these risks, modern societies have largely transferred the administration of justice to the state. While state justice remains retributive in form, its legitimacy derives from impersonality, procedural rules, and collective oversight. Ideally, punishment is no longer driven by emotional impulse, but by standards intended to ensure proportionality and consistency. This system is imperfect, but it represents an attempt to subordinate vengeance to collective reason.

Nevertheless, institutional justice can and does fail. Corruption, inequality, and bureaucratic inertia can allow the guilty to escape accountability while the innocent suffer. It is precisely in these moments that vigilantism gains moral traction. The vigilante presents themselves as the voice of the marginalized, the embodiment of a purer morality untainted by compromise. They frame society, not themselves, as the true culprit, portraying institutions as weak and justice as something that must be forcibly restored.

Yet, this framing masks a deeper ethical problem. Vigilantism is, fundamentally, a claim to absolute power: the power to define justice unilaterally and to enforce it without consequence. Such power is inherently dangerous. It appeals to a seductive fantasy: that if the “right” person were given total authority, justice would finally be achieved. But this belief is not rooted in selflessness; it is rooted in arrogance. To assume that one’s own moral judgment is uniquely incorruptible is an act of hubris.

Justice that depends on exceptional individuals standing above society remains fragile and exclusionary. It treats injustice as the product of isolated criminals rather than structural conditions, and it offers punishment rather than reform. More importantly, it lacks accountability. Any ethical system that permits unchecked power, no matter how noble its intentions, undermines the very justice it seeks to uphold.

What this reveals is that accountability must be foundational to any philosophy of justice. No individual or institution should be immune from scrutiny or consequence. Justice cannot be entrusted to those who operate beyond the reach of others, because justice itself is a social construct, one that must be negotiated, revised, and upheld collectively. It is not something imposed from above, but something built together.

Ultimately, vigilantism reflects a deeply human response to injustice: the desire to say “no” when the world feels unbearable. That impulse can be a catalyst for change, even a necessary one. But it cannot, on its own, create justice. The pursuit of justice is not a problem to be solved once and for all; it is an ongoing process of negotiation – deciding what to punish, what to forgive, and how to balance harm with healing. These are questions no individual can answer alone.

True justice, then, is not found in the lone vigilante who forces the world to make sense through violence. It is found in collective action, mutual accountability, and the shared burden of moral responsibility. Justice does not belong to those who stand above society, but to those who remain within it, working, imperfectly, persistently, together.

Bibliography

Andoh, Efua. “Why Some People Resort to Vigilantism—to the Admiration of Many.” American Pychological Association, 23 Dec. 2024, www.apa.org/topics/gun-violence-crime/vigilantism.

Greene, Jim. “Vigilante" Research Starters.” EBSCO, 2025, www.ebsco.com/research-starters/law/vigilante.

Like Stories of Old. “Why Vigilantes Can’t Deliver Meaningful Justice.” YouTube, 29 Jan. 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvguN86vsUA.

Robinson, Paul H. “The Moral Vigilante and Her Cousins in the Shadows.” Penn Carey Law: Legal Scholarship Repository, scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/506.