Revenge has a flaw. The individual punishes according to his own feelings. That is why we need something else.

What do we need?

A justice that does not avenge but punishes. It does not ask: How hurt am I? It asks: What is right? It does not depend on who happens to be stronger.

Think of a judge. He, too, is a single human being. But he does not judge his own case. He wants to put nothing into the punishment that is not in the deed.

More follows from this:

Here we need an entirely new will. A will that, as a single person, wills the universal. It does not ask: What is in it for me? But: What is good and right? We call this will the moral will.

It is not merely a pious wish. It has grown out of the whole path we have walked.

Summary: Against revenge, we need a punishing justice. It calls for a will that wills the universal. This is the beginning of morality.

§ 501. The self-assertion of right-in-itself is mediated a) by the fact that a particular will, the judge, is commensurate with right and has an interest in proceeding against the crime (which, in revenge, is at first contingent), and ß) through the (likewise at first contingent) power of execution to negate the negation of right posited by the criminal. This negation of right has its existence in the will of the criminal; revenge or punishment therefore turns, 1. against the person or the property of the criminal, 2. and exercises coercion against him. Coercion, in this sphere of right generally, already takes place against the thing – in seizing it and in maintaining it against another’s seizure – since in this sphere the will has its existence immediately in an external thing (as such, or as corporeality) and can be laid hold of only in this. – But coercion is no more than possible, insofar as I can withdraw myself, as free, from every existence – indeed from the very scope of existence, from life. Rightfully, it is only the sublation of a first, immediate coercion.

§ 501. The self-assertion of right in itself is mediated α) through the affirmative relation of the particular will (the judge) to right – which is at first contingent – and β) through the negation of the particular will, which could just as well behave negatively toward right too – through coercion, which is grounded in the right of the universal will, of right in itself, against the particular will, and which is possible because the will has its existence in an external thing. But coercion is no more than possible, insofar as I can withdraw myself, as free, from every existence – indeed from the very scope of existence, from life. Rightfully, however, coercion is only the sublation of a first, immediate coercion.