The Necessity of Punishment - Enc. par. 500

¤ 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.