Abstract

In The Force of Nonviolence, Judith Butler presents five key interventions to the field of nonviolence philosophy: (1) a critique of social contract theory for the way it imagines human beings as independent, (2) an approach to nonviolence based in the preservation of life within a context of social action, (3) the advancement of Butler’s alternative framework of equal grievability, (4) the claim that violence is difficult to define independently of social context, and (5) a Freudian analysis of the death drive that offers a strategy for disrupting violence. In response to each of these interventions, this article argues that: (1) social contract theory is a heuristic for justifying the existence of a state, (2) Gandhi’s concept of truth provides a more comprehensive approach to nonviolence that concerns the whole self and all beings, (3) a concept of function would make a better guide to human responsibility, (4) violence can be defined independently of social framework, and (5) without reliance on the concept of a death drive, there are nonviolent remedies for social attitudes of aggression as found in the work of Jane Addams and William James.