“I could kill him!” people say – and sometimes do. More dryly put, sometimes people are disposed to violently enforce relationships, and often they are supposed to do so. The provoking injury may be limited to the social self, but the retaliatory attack is often directed at the offender through his or her body. That is, when people perceive that they themselves, their CS partners, or their AR dependants have been morally “injured,” they may be disposed to inflict bodily injuries on the offending party – or on others whom they treat as collectively responsible for the offense. Often they want to get even in an EM framework, avenging the wrong done to them, an eye for an eye. This disposition is moral in every sense: the injured parties feel themselves to be victims of a transgression that demands punishment. Subjectively, the affront morally “requires” a violent response, and, indeed, the offender may have intended her provocations to incite a fight. The phenomenological experience of the offended person is that they “had to” strike back to preserve their moral integrity.

Peers and reference groups may condone these forceful responses to insults or infringements of social-relational rights; in nearly every culture there are intolerable transgressions to which an offended person must strike back violently, whatever the practical or material consequences. More distant outside observers, especially modern educated Westerners (including ourselves), may deplore violent retaliation, condemning what we judge to be horrific, cruel, callous, or uncivilized cruelty. We may fail to see the perpetrator’s perspective, incorrectly attributing the violence to the perpetrator’s having lost self-control, being amorally impulsive, or failing to understand that he was making the victim suffer. Socially dominant moralities, expert philosophical doctrines, sanctified and institutionalized religious precepts, or official legal frameworks may prohibit violent retaliation, and punish it. But none of that implies that the retaliator’s violence was not morally motivated. To defend vital relationships, to redress grievous wrongs, or to terminate intolerable relationships, people may feel morally impelled to homicide. In the eyes of the perpetrator, pain, maiming, or death is just what the victim deserves – it is justice.