Die Rache und das Rätsel der Gabe

摘要

Starting from the question whether our daily and political usage of the term revenge really hits or rather obscures the core of the problem (I), the paper outlines a small phenomenology of the (blood) revenge of segmentary societies (II), to interpret vengeance in a second step theoretically as the negative of gift exchange as a reciprocal relationship of respect (III). The last section discusses the perverting effects of a failing institutionalizing of violence on archaic revenge (IV).