[p. 244]
|244| property, my personality is nevertheless violated thereby, because in my body itself is my immediate self-feeling.
§ 20
The coercion that has been posited by such an action must not only be sublated, i.e. the inner nullity of such an action not only be presented in a negative way, but retaliation must also set in in a positive way. (The form of rationality in general, universality or equality, must be made valid against it.) For since the agent is a rational being, there lies in his action that it is something universal. If you rob another, you rob yourself! If you kill someone, you kill all and yourself! The action is a law which you set up and which you have in and for itself recognised precisely through your acting. The agent may therefore be subsumed, for his part, under the same manner of action which he has set up, and to that extent the equality violated by him be restored: ius talionis.
Explanation. Retaliation rests in general on the rational nature of the wrongdoer, or it consists in this, that the wrong must be converted into the right. The wrongful action is indeed an individual irrational action. But because it is carried out by a rational being, it is, though not according to its content, yet according to form, something rational and universal. Further, it is to be regarded as a principle or law. But as such it counts at the same time only for the agent, because only he recognises it through his action, but not the others. He himself, then, essentially belongs under this principle or this law, which must be carried out on him. The wrong which he has done, carried out on him, is right, because through this second action, which he has recognised, a restoration of equality is set up. This is only formal right.
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