Examining the subtle forms of aggression, violence, and harassment that occur in our society and manifest in institutions and places of work, the expert contributors collected here describe the experience of social marginalization and expose how vulnerable individuals work to navigate exclusionary climates. This volume explores how bodies disrupt the status quo in multiple contexts and locations; provides insights into how institutions are structured and how practices that may cause harm are maintained; and, finally, considers progressive and proactive alternatives. (...) This book will be a key resource for academics and professionals in education, sociology, nursing, law, business and political science, as well as organizations and policymakers grappling with aggression in the workplace. (shrink)

한나 아렌트의 사유 BR 돌봄이 필수인 간호계에 ‘간호사 간 약자 괴롭힘’이라는 돌봄 부재의 병리적 현상이 만연하고 있음에도 간호교육계와 간호 현장에서는 이렇다 할만한 전략을 내놓지 못하고 있는 것이 현실이다. 이에 필자는 한나 아렌트의 악의 평범성, 무사유, 다원성, 탄생성, 상호이해 등의 개념을 적용·논의함으로써 우리 사회의 필수 인력인 간호사들의 직무 스트레스 환경과 상대적으로 취약한 간호사들이 겪는 괴롭힘 현상을 고찰해보고자 개인 간호사 간의 무례함과 괴롭힘을 넘어 간호·의료계 결정권자들에게도 아렌트의 사유를 적용한 담론을 시도하였다. 사유 능력이 논의의 요점이지만 이러한 논의의 선결 조건으로서 상호이해와 합의 가능한 ‘간호사 (...) 간 공공영역’에 관한 아렌트의 시각 또한 포함하였다. 상호이해에 의한 인간 존엄성에 목적을 둠으로써 무사유와 괴롭힘 현상을 극복하고 평생 전문직으로서의 간호를 추구하는 모든 간호사에게 논의의 장이 되길 바란다. (shrink)

A survey of university students tested whether committing animal abuse during childhood was related to approval of interpersonal violence against children and women in families. Respondents who had abused an animal as children or adolescents were significantly more likely to support corporal punishment, even after controlling for frequency of childhood spanking, race, biblical literalism, and gender. Those who had perpetrated animal abuse were also more likely to approve of a husband slapping his wife. Engaging in childhood violence against (...) less powerful beings— animals—may generalize to the acceptance of violence against less powerful members of families and society—women and children. This paper discusses the implications of this process. (shrink)

Psychological trauma is a favoured trope of modernity. It has become commonplace to assume that all ‘bad events’ – and particularly those which involve violence – have a pathological effect on the sufferer’s psyche, as well as that of the perpetrators. This essay explores the ways victims of rape and sexual assault were understood in psychiatric, psychological, forensic, and legal texts in Britain and America from the 19th to the late 20th century. It argues that, unlike most other ‘bad (...) events’, which were incorporated within trauma narratives from the 1860s, the ascription of psychological trauma was only applied to rape victims a century later. Why and what were the consequences? (shrink)

From "Materialism and Revolution" through _Hope Now_, Jean-Paul Sartre was deeply engaged with questions about the meaning and justifiability of violence. In the first comprehensive treatment of Sartre’s views on the subject, Ronald Santoni begins by tracing the full trajectory of Sartre’s evolving thought on violence and shows how the "curious ambiguity" of freedom affirming itself against freedom in his earliest writings about violence developed into his "curiously ambivalent" position through his later writings.

Only rarely does life imitate art in the starkness and directness of its message. When that message is a tragic one the effect becomes indelible. Such was the impact on Peru of the events of Uchuraccay, a small village located in its central highlands. Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission called it “an emblematic referent of the violence and pain in the collective memory of the country” (TRC, 121). [i] In the twenty-year turmoil that engulfed Peru at the end of (...) the last century, 69280 violent deaths were recorded. What makes Uchuraccay emblematic of this carnage is not just its own destruction; it is the web of misunderstandings that entangled the participants. On January 23, 1983, eight journalists from Lima were caught in this web. Mistaken for terrorists, they and their guide were attacked by the natives of the village. Remarkably, one of the journalists left a photographic record of their slaughter. There also exists a photograph of the bodies of the journalists after they were exhumed a few days later. In it, their eyeless sockets are clearly evident.[ii] When I saw the photo in Lima, it reminded me of the moment in Greek tragedy that is called “recognition.” This is the point when the veil of illusion is stripped from the characters. The most striking example of this is Oedipus’ appearance after he has blinded himself. In his eyeless state, the audience recognizes his previous blindness to his unnatural condition. This moment of recognition is a public exhibition. It is a disclosure of the way things actually were during the events depicted. In what follows, I am going to take this final image of the journalists as a disclosure of the communal blindness that engulfed Peru. My aim is to relate this blindness to the violence that was its tragic correlate. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Imitation, Violence, and ExchangeGirard and MaussPer Bjørnar Grande (bio)RECIPROCAL VIOLENCE AND THE DESIRE FOR WHAT THE OTHER DESIRESIn this article, I would like to draw attention to the potentially violent outcome of exchange interactions between individuals and groups. Both Girard and Mauss examine violence in a wider social and political process.1 According to Mauss, the smallest difference, such as a lack of reciprocity, may evoke a (...) desire for retribution. Understanding reactions when there is a lack of symmetry, real or illusory, can give us an important insight into the generative mechanisms behind violence. This is why traditional societies tried, often very successfully, to protect individuals through prohibitions and taboos. These prohibitions and taboos were directed against any kind of activity that could possibly result in violent rivalries among the population. The killing of adulterers, thieves, and foreigners can be seen as a way of ridding society of people perceived as having undesirable traits and ridding it of the potential imitation of their bad desires. In this way, a society's violence may function in a protective [End Page 221] and anti-mimetic way. The violence against transgressors is a kind of mimetic anti-mimesis, a way of telling people to follow the rules of society so that they will become mimetically immune to the forces that threaten society.Violent victimizing appears to fulfill a generative function by preventing transgressions, moral cleansing, and restoration of peace. At the same time, however, it bears (unconsciously for the participants) a similarity to what one wishes to expel, namely, the feared violence and negative influence of the person or persons who are victimized. Despite attempts to expel violent transgressions, the attempts themselves are quite similar to the violence they are trying to exorcise. Both Freud and Girard argue that those who conduct a rite of sacrifice are projecting onto the sacrificial victim qualities that reflect some of their own innermost concerns.2 Sacrificial violence, seen from a modern, nonsacrificial standpoint, is a kind of suicide. By killing the other, one also kills something in oneself.In demolishing the victim they are symbolically annihilating aspects of themselves. What is destroyed is destructiveness itself: the feelings of violence and hostility that lie behind attempts to carry out violent activities. Such feelings are antithetical to the ties of friendship that bond a community together, and feelings of violence towards one's peers and associates must be banished if a closely knit community—such as a tribal brotherhood, a spiritual fellowship, or a modern nation—is to survive.3Modern societies are full of these projections of one's own desires onto the other, which expose the modern variant of what is sacrifice, and which are often less physically but instead psychologically violent, yet still victimizing in their attitude of projecting. Terms such as "imitation," "identification," and "comparison" do not have to turn out to be violent—even when a great deal of competition is involved. In this respect, I disagree with some Girardians who claim that imitative desire must be violent and who look back to an insight going back to Heraclitus that violence is the source of all.4 The all-decisive factor is the gradual shift from competition to rivalry, from being allies to becoming enemies. The transition from being competitive friends to rivals comes as a result of imitation. Seen in this way, imitative desire is the generative force behind violence, the snake that turns friends and lovers into rivals.This Freudian act of projection resembles an act of doubling, an intense mimesis of the other that creates doubles. From a Girardian perspective, it is the clash of desire that leads to doubling, and later to violence.5 The imitation of each other's desires will sooner or later cause some kind of violence.6 This doubling does not only have to involve two people; it can be groups, even countries. [End Page 222] But the effect is always negative. Raymund Schwager explains it in the following terms:Whoever is desirous has to expect that the others will too. Whoever succumbs to rivalry arouses the same passion in others. Whoever resorts to violence is imitated in his or... (shrink)

This paper argues that learning is inherently violent. It examines the way in which Heidegger uses – and refrains from using – the concept in his account of Dasein. Heidegger explicitly discussed “learning” in 1951 and he used of the word in several contexts. Although he confines his use of “learning” to the ontic side of the ontic-ontological divide, there are aspects of what he says that open the door to an ontological analogue of the ontic learning. In this discussion (...) it emerges that what precludes “learning” behaving as does “willing”, “waiting” and “thanking”, is something that derives from the relatedness of Dasein. The paper finally examines violence within the disclosure of truth. The approach to the investigation is experimental and is to some extent modeled on Heidegger‟s own later enquires. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:VIOLENCE, ANARCHY, AND SCRIPTURE: JACQUES ELLUL AND RENÉ GIRARD Matthew Patullo Princeton Theological Seminary This essay will examine the personal and social consequences ofsin, Biblically defined, and will contend that Christian faith necessitates a rejection of the secular political order. Exploring and contrasting the thought of René Girard and Jacques Ellul, we will demonstrate that Girard's mimetic theory supplies crucial theoretical underpinnings for Ellul's theology. Ellul, in turn, (...) sequencing the Biblical narrative somewhat differently, provides Girard the more biblically consistent content of the life of faith. The ethical content ofthe life of faith is a continuation ofthe salvation narrative inaugurated in Genesis 1-2, incarnated and perpetuated in Israel and later, the Church, the universalized community of the Abrahamic blessing. The historical content of this faith demonstrates the incompatibility of political power with freedom in Christ. The Church's ill-fated attempts to maintain an authentic practice of faith while legitimizing the secular order are exposed by the Biblical critique of power. While the growth of the global state has made a total withdrawal from the political order inconceivable, it is precisely its utter domination today that makes critical continued defiance by the Body of Christ. Original Sin Girard observes that when the snake first appears in the Genesis account of the Fall, it is already in conflict with God, opposing him as a jealous rival. Eve is enticed by it to covet divinity, to covet what belongs to God—the knowledge of good and evil—and to herself become God's rival (Girard 1 965, 1 82). Her imitation ofthe serpent's covetousness forms "an alliance of two against one" (Girard 2000, 171-185), and God is 26Matthew Patullo expelled from the relationship. The contagion of metaphysical desire, or mimesis, soon claims Adam and what began as a relationship ofobedience without conflict between God and human beings is forever changed. An acquisitive mimesis turns antagonistic and rivalrous (Girard 1978a, 95). When called to account for her disobedience, Eve blames the snake. Adam in turn blames Eve, implying that God is himselfat least partially culpable: "The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me ofthe tree, and I ate" (Gen 3:12, emphasis mine). In the Biblical account of human origins then, rivalry with God produces rivalry between people. Girard argues that although conflict must inevitably lead to violence, here "God takes the violence upon himselfand founds humanity by driving Adam and Eve far away from him" (Girard 1978a, 142). God's banishment of the first humans only mirrors the expulsion implied by human collusion with the snake. "Now we know that covetousness is the crux ofthe whole affair," Ellul writes, "since sin always depends on it. 'You shall not covet' (Ex 20: 1 7) is the last of the commandments because it summarizes everything—all the other sins" (Ellul 1985, 101; see also Girard 1999, 7-12). Prior to the Fall, Adam and Eve are not required to choose between good and evil. "AU that counted was the relation to God and its expression in action" (Ellul 1976, 51). Here Ellul understands freedom as obedience to God's commandments within the context ofa relationship with God. Independence from God is mere slavery: "Adam seeks to liberate himself from the limits which God has set for him and in so doing he enters into rivalry with other forces and becomes subject to sin" (Ellul 1976, 49). The knowledge that Adam and Eve covet and usurp from God is "the power to decide on one's own what is gooáanawhat is evil" (Ellul 1985,96?, emphasis Ellul's). Consequently, human morality is ofthe order ofthe Fall, and Girard concurs: the ethical always derives from victimary unanimity (Girard 1978a, 236), in this case the rejection of God. For Ellul "covetousness is equivalent to the spirit of power or domination" (Ellul 1985, 101)' and "no society is possible among people 1 "Sin is a break with God and all that this entails. When I say that people are not good, I am not adopting a Christian or a moral standpoint. I am saying that theirtwo great characteristics, no matterwhattheir society or education, are covetousness and the desire... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mimesis, Violence, and Socially Engaged Buddhism: Overture to a Dialogue Leo D. Lefebure University ofSaint Mary ofthe Lake René Girard's analysis ofdesire, mimetic rivalry, and the surrogate victim mechanism seeks to transform human consciousness in order to overcome seemingly intractable patterns ofrivalry and violence. In this project the Buddhist tradition, with its long commitment to nonviolence, its age-old suspicion of ordinary views of the self, and its (...) ancient experience of meditation as a transformative practice, exerts a claim to attention. The Buddhist tradition shares many of Girard's concerns: It denies the reality ofan autonomous, independent selfand calls attention to the interdependence ofall realities. It challenges its followers to become conscious ofthe sources oftheir own feelings and thoughts, to accept responsibility for them, and to be liberated from violence. Like Girard, Buddhism rejects the notion that there can be "good violence" as well as bad. For Buddhists, awakening from the illusions of the autonomous selfand freedom from violence are inseparable. The term, "Socially Engaged Buddhism," refers to a variety ofBuddhist move-ments since the 1950s which seek to apply ancient Buddhist principles to contemporary social, economic, and political problems. Powerful prejudices, however, threaten this conversation before it begins. Since the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer and Max Weber, Westerners have often seen Buddhism as a pessimistic religion, a worldnegating tradition that encourages the individual to withdraw from the world and seek a solitary salvation. The belief in karma has often been 122Leo D. Lefebure interpreted as fatalistic and inimical to social transformation. Buddhism, especially in the Mahayana traditions, has often accommodated to the dominant powers in society without exerting any effective social or political critique. Like every other major religious tradition, Buddhism has had an ambiguous history; and Westerners have often assumed prematurely that Buddhism has no history of social and political engagement whatsoever. Girard himself, in conversation with Jean-Claude Dussault in 1981, viewed Buddhism as a withdrawal from action in the world. Girard commented: Alors il me semble que la non-violence des religions orientales est la recherche d'une position hors de la violence, nirvana, etc., au prix de toute action. Mais cette recherche abandonne le monde en quelque sorte à lui-même. Alors il me semble que s'il fallait résumer d'un mot, ce serait un mot comme dégagement absolu par rapport à l'existence. ("Séminaire de recherche" 81) [It seems to me that the nonviolence of Eastern religions is the search for a position outside of violence, nirvana, etc., at the price ofall action. But this search abandons the world in a way to itself. Now it seems to me that if it were necessary to sum it up in a formula, it would be a phrase such as absolute détachement in regard to existence.] Later in the conversation, Girard expressed his own negative reaction: "Si vous voulez, je me sens profondément gréco-biblico-occidental face à ce renoncement nirvanesque total." (83) [If you please, I feel myself profoundly greco-biblical-occidental in contrast to this complete nirvanesque renunciation.] According to Girard's interpretation, Buddhism offers no constructive solution to the social problems ofrivalry and violence, but only an individual escape through withdrawal. Closely related to Girard's negative view ofBuddhism is his interpretation ofall non-biblical religions as channeling violence but as powerless to break the cycle ofviolence. He claims that only biblical revelation offers a basis for overcoming the violence of the surrogate victim mechanism: "To recognize Christ as God is to recognize him as the only being capable of rising above the violence that had, up to that point, absolutely transcended mankind. Violence is the controlling agent in every form ofmythic or cultural structure, and Christ is the only agent who is capable of escaping from these structures and freeing us from their dominance" (1987, Mimesis, Violence, and Socially Engaged Buddhism 123 219). Girard asserts that there is no common ground between the violenceridden mythologies which dominate all other religions and the revelation of God in Christianity (1986, 166). Girard is almost Barthian in his exclusivistic claims for Christian revelation, viewing all other religions as products of human mimetic striving and only Christianity as the true... (shrink)

Although the family is the safest environment for each member, sometimes violence and abuse can come from the family members. Violence causes family relationships to deteriorate as in all other relationships among people. Sibling violence, as a form of domestic violence, can sometimes have dire consequences that can result in family breakup, death or long-term loss of one of the siblings. In this study, sibling violence, which has the potential to harm family relations in such (...) a way, will be discussed in the context of two stories in the Qurʾān. It is aimed to contribute to other disciplines that study on this subject by examining the attitude of Islam against this violence, which affects the family, and the solutions of the Qur’ān to sibling violence. These stories in the Qur’ān are the story of Prophet Adam’s two sons who narrate an incident of violence that result in the brother killing his brother, and the story of Prophet Joseph and his brothers who narrate the sibling violence resulting in long-term loss. Both stories provide clues to the prevention of violence in the light of the causes of sibling violence and the behavior of the victim sibling in the development of events. In addition, because of the fact that these stories have taken place in the family of the prophets, they give people the message that sibling violence can happen in any family.Summary: Because of the social nature of the mankind, it must live in structured societies. Family is the medium for him where he is born, raised, socializes and prepares for his future life. It is normal sentiments of love, mercy and tolerance which dominate in a family. But despite this, it is possible for a family member to be a transgressor against another family member’s rights. Emotions like jealousy and hostility can cause violence between siblings. Psychologists generally attribute the source of this kind of violence to the parents’ failure to show equal love and affection to all children. While this is an important cause for violence among the siblings, craving for attention and acceptance from society, trying to achieve material and sensual superiority and desire for social success can incite feelings of envy among the siblings. While feelings of jealousy is unproblematic when its intensity can be considered normal, it can cause psychological imbalance if it increases to the level beyond manageable limits. If the latter case occurs, this produces a state of mind where a sibling becomes capable of committing every act of transgression to another sibling, which is the most important cause for the violence among siblings.Archetypical stories of Cain and Abel, and Prophet Joseph in the Qur’ān provide some clues pertaining to recognition and prevention of violence among the siblings. In these two parables, the real reason for envy does not lie in the other sibling. According to the Qur’ān, the true reason for this envy is attributed exclusively to the transgressor. In the parable of Cain and Abel, source of the problem between the siblings is the sacrificial offering to Allah. While the offering of Abel was accepted, Cain’s was not. Cain felt jealous and threatened his brother with death. Facing with his brother’s threat, Abel stayed firm and peaceful, said to his brother that if he were to attack him, he will not retaliate even for self-defence. He reminded Cain that his envy and anger was not due to him, Abel. Abel reminded Cain that the act that Cain was contemplating was a great sin in Allah’s eyes and that it is punishable by eternal hellfire. Cain, despite these warnings, went on to implement his intention of murder successfully.When we inspect the parable we can see that Abel was free from any guilt on his part for his brother’s envy which is the source of his transgression. His sacrifice was accepted because Abel was among the pious and this doesn’t harm or effect negatively Cain in anyway. Therefore the main cause for the jealousy of Cain is his unworthiness in the eyes of Allah, in reality, the reason is solely Cain himself. Therefore it is totally unfair when Cain put the blame on his brother Abel. By the way of this example, the Qur’ān reminds mankind not to blame others for his problems and to take responsibility. Envy, which is the main reason for violence among siblings, will cloud judgment and prevent clear thinking. In the parable of Cain and Abel, the Qur’ān recommends not to taunt the already jealous sibling by way of words and actions and instead, encourages warning against the grave consequences of evil intentions both in this world and in the hereafter. In the parable of Prophet Joseph, because of jealousy of their father from Joseph, bigger brothers of Joseph planned to kill him but they give up on the idea of killing him and instead they dumped him in a well. Later on in the parable, some merchant finds Joseph and brings him to Egypt. There, Joseph becomes a high ranking statesman and meets with his older brothers. Because of the famine, older brothers are in need of Joseph for food and asks him for it, without knowing that the person they are asking from is their little brother, Joseph. Although Joseph faces with his brothers on a superior position his behavior exemplifies the best course of action to end violence among the siblings. In order to remove animosity and callousness from his brothers’ heart, the gradual plan that Joseph had implemented is a great example for healing the wounds that violence among the siblings can cause. It is unreasonable to expect all the animosity and jealousy that brothers of Joseph held for years to go away completely in a moment. Prophet Joseph did not remind his brothers of their crime, on the contrary he was very generous to them. He brought their father and their brother Benjamin to Egypt and in front of them Prophet Joseph forgave his older brothers for the crimes they had committed against him. In this way, Prophet Joseph prevented his brothers potentially denying every transgression they did if he were to confront them in their first meeting, and made them ready to accept their evil deeds.Parables of Cain and Abel and Prophet Joseph are important for recognizing that envy can destroy the mercy that the siblings innately have for each other. It is understood from the parables that envy must be controlled and violence can’t be realized under any circumstances. It is clear from these parables that violence is never a solution for the jealousy among the siblings. A positive and viable solution would be for Cain to seek Allah’s approval instead of killing Abel and for brothers of Joseph this would be to earn their father’s love and respect. Introspection and analysis regarding possible reasons for jealousy and trying to resolve them and striving to be a better human, sibling, or child is a solution prescribed by the Qur’ān. Also, importance of speaking in a soft tone with the person who is experiencing intense jealousy, avoiding provocative language and behavior and trying every possible way to set this person straight is emphasized. The Qur’ān reminds us through these two parables that the human nature is prone to evil suggestions from the satan and for this reason humans need generous and benevolent help from others in order to clear themselves from these evil temptations. (shrink)

Background: Ethical studies in nursing are very important topics, and it is particularly crucial with vulnerable populations such as new graduated nurses. Neglecting ethical principles and violence toward graduates can lead to their occupational burnout, job dissatisfaction, and leaving the nursing profession. Objective: This study was designed with the aim of understanding the experience of Iranian experienced nurses’ use of lateral and horizontal violence against new graduated nurses. Research design: This qualitative study used a conventional content analysis (...) approach; it was conducted with 18 experienced nurses. Data were collected through unstructured and semi-structured interviews of various general hospital departments in northwest of Iran and analyzed using methods as described by Graneheim and Lundman. Ethical considerations: This study was approved by the Regional Committee of Medical Research Ethics. The ethical principles of voluntary participation, anonymity, and confidentiality were considered. Findings: “Psychological violence,” “Verbal violence,” “Physical violence,” and “Source of violence” were four categories extracted through data analysis. Discussion: Violence behaviors are instances of workplace maltreatment that damage individual nurses, quality of care, and the ethical climate of the healthcare settings. The lateral and hierarchical violence in nursing were explained by oppressed group model. Conclusion: This study provided the context for identifying details of various types of workplace violence against new graduated nurses. It should be approached as a health system priority that requires specific multi-dimensional methods to manage consisting of identification, strategic planning, policymaking, prevention, education, and research. (shrink)

I suppose I’m writing this because of my 1965 paper on Pacifism. In that essay I argued that pacifism is self-contradictory. That’s a strong charge, and also not entirely clear. Let’s start by trying to clarify the charge and related ones.Pacifism has traditionally been understood as total opposition to violence, even the use of it in defense of oneself when under attack. I earlier maintained (in my well-known “Pacifism: A Philosophical Analysis” (Narveson, Ethics, 75:4, 259–271, 1965)) that this position (...) is contradictory, if it is intended to mean that one has no right to use violence. While that is perhaps going too far, pacifism as so characterized is surely, as I have later argued, self-defeating in an obvious sense of that expression. But in any case, contemporary theorists who describe their views as pacifist profess to hold no such doctrine—they regard that familiar characterization of pacifism as a caricature. They do express strong opposition to war, but even that is not unlimited. If the chips are genuinely down, they will approve going to war-level self-defense—but they deny that it ever is really necessary, or at least that it is necessary nearly as often as actual war-making behavior among nations would suggest.In this it is not clear that we have a purely philosophical disagreement. How much opposition to war qualifies a view as “pacifist”? That is now very hard to say. After all, all decently liberal thinkers are against violence as a standardly available way of pursuing one’s ends. We all agree that if violence is to be justified, it takes something special. It should be a “last resort,” Just War theorists have classically said, and while ‘last’ is very difficult to pin down, at least, violence should be very far from the first thing a responsible nation thinks of. What’s more, the “something special” is not just that one’s ends are so important. It has to be that the violence would be employed in defense, of self or of other innocent parties under threat. So if there is genuine disagreement, it must be along this line: that we are morally required to make very substantial sacrifices in the pursuits of our otherwise legitimate interests, including our interests in security, in order to avoid using the violence of war.Is this reasonable? I think not. We should, of course, be reasonable, and that includes refraining from violence—except when the violence is necessary to counter the aggressive violence of others. For we reason, on practical matters, in terms of benefits and costs. Agents, especially political agents, can, alas, benefit from violence where that violence is unilateral. Thus it is rational to see to it that it won’t be unilateral. And when it is not unilateral, then the balance is in favor—strongly in favor—of peace. It remains that we must, alas, be able to make war in the possible case that we can’t have peace. When everybody shares the preference for peace, then we can scale down and hopefully even eliminate war-making capability. (Contemporary nations have already scaled down considerably—there have been few wars in the classic sense of military exchanges between states as such in recent times.) But until the scaling down is universal and includes a genuine renunciation of the use of warlike methods to achieve ends other than genuine self-defense, what most of us think of as “pacifism” is a non-option in the near run. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to explore the relationship between revolution and violence in Marxism and in a series of texts drawing on Marxian theory. Part 1 outlines the basic normative frameworks which determine the outer limits of permissible violence in Marxism. Part 2 presents a critical analysis of a series of later discussions - by Sorel, Fanon and Žižek - which transformed the terms in which violence was discussed by developing one particular aspect of Marxist (...) thought. By teasing out the implications of revolutionary theory for the commission and permission of violence, it is possible to specify those points at which it tends towards excess. This in turn points towards limits that an adequate normative theory of revolutionary violence should establish. (shrink)

In the attempt to understand and interpret behavioral patterns, collectively and individually, the example of the Amorion Dynasty is being used. Studying the texts on this topic by the chronographers of later periods, reveals a string of events that historians attributed to personal motives and attempted to interpret as the result o f the abovementioned feelings. This interpretation of the historical events, which did not consider the governmental, social and economic circumstances that allowed the range of human emotions to find (...) expression, is part of the contemporary perception of history. Without being anthropocentric, it does take into consideration the nature and emotions of leading figures and the collective behavior of people shaped by love or infatuation and are often expressed through hatred, rage and violence. (shrink)

At the end of the Second World War, the figure of Gandhi haunts political philosophy as it wrestles with the task of justifying violence in the name of history. The story begins with Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at noon in 1938. Gandhi’s name appears during a discussion between Roubachof and Ivanof. A few years later (1946), Koestler publishes in French a book entitled Le Yogi et le commissaire, analysed by Merleau-Ponty in Humanisme et terreur (1946–1947). Camus replies in L’Homme révolté (...) (1951). Ricœur’s thinking, examined in the present article, has its own place in this debate. At stake is our own knowledge of the conditions under which the rejection and condemnation of violence might, in fact, accommodate violence. (shrink)

This article places Hannah Arendt’s fundamental view of the instrumentality of violence in dialogue with Walter Benjamin’s ‘Critique of Violence’ in order to demonstrate the importance for each of a notion of ‘mere life’ or ‘life itself’ to an understanding of the agency of violence in modernity. Arendt’s critique of vitalism is most fully developed in The Human Condition, where she describes an entanglement of the instrumental activity of homo faber with life and labour in the work (...) of Bergson, Nietzsche and Marx. I suggest that Bergson’s treatment of life as creative evolution unexpectedly yields an accurate description of politics as spontaneous, unpredictable motion that Arendt takes as typical of modernity. Since Arendt also credits Bergson with a decisive influence on what she takes to be a growing commitment to the life-enhancing, creative potential of violence in the oppositional movements of the 1960s, which she explores in her late essay, On Violence, I trace out the continuity between Arendt’s earlier account of homo faber and her later critique of postmodern oppositional violence. (shrink)

A study of Hindu engagements with violence which have been structured by scriptural themes reveals that violence has been regulated, enacted, resisted, negated or denied in complex ways. Disputes based on Vedic orthodoxy were channeled, in classical India, through the mythical frameworks of gods clashing with demons, and later in the medieval centuries this template was extended to the Muslim foreigners who threatened the Brahmanical socio-religious orders. In the modern period, the electoral mechanisms of colonial modernity spurred Hindu (...) anxieties about a weakened nation which would die out in the face of Muslim solidarity, and various Hindu organizations began to increasingly draw on motifs from the Vedas, Bhagavad-gītā, and other texts to speak of a martial Hindu nation. These two moments—the articulation of the boundaries of the robust Hindu nation and the projection of the Muslim as the enemy lurking at the gates—have been integral to the shaping of Hindu cultural nationalism by several key thinkers and political activists. Thus, the forms of violence associated with Hindu universes should be placed within their dynamic socio-historical contexts where Hindus have interpreted, engaged with, and acted on a range of scriptural texts both to generate violent solidarities and to speak of peace. A study of these phenomena alongside some Christian theological attempts to legitimize, valorize or transcend violence from within scriptural horizons points to the complex conceptual terrain encompassed by the conjunction in “religion and violence.”. (shrink)

It is the aim of this contribution to question the two conceptions of violence in the later Levinas. One of the face, the other the violence that must be overcome by the face. The article argues that this cannot be understood fully without taking into account Levinas’ Talmudic philosophy. By focusing on the notion of trauma in the later work of Levinas, it is argued that Levinas’ idea of the human subject is understood as radical vulnerability. This idea (...) is evaluated on the basis of short comparisons with the thinking of Lacan, Žižek and Camus. The claim is made that to Levinas, violence is not a phenomenon to be eliminated by rational ethics, but one that forms the very notion of humanity itself. This is elaborated by showing how the Bible takes on a central role in Levinas’ thought. (shrink)

In his later years, Leo Tolstoy wrote numerous books, essays and pamphlets expounding his newly-articulated denunciations of all political violence, whether by dissidents or ostensibly legitimate states. If these writings have inspired many later pacifists and anarchists, it is partly thanks to his masterful deployment of the literary technique of ‘defamiliarisation’ – or looking at the familiar as if new – to shake readers into recognising the absurdity of common justifications of violence, admitting their implicit complicity in it, (...) and noticing the process which numbed them into accepting such complicity. This paper discusses Tolstoy’s use of the imagination to defamiliarise and denounce violence, first by citing several typical examples, then by reflecting on four of its subversive characteristics: its disruption of automated perception, its implicit concession of some recognition, its corrosion of conventional respect for traditional hierarchies, and its encouragement of empathy. (shrink)

This paper will bring Žižek’s divine violence as an Act, a means without end, into conversation with Derrida’s divine violence, différance and auto-deconstruction as the impossible possibility of justice. Although Žižek has, in his later works, conceded to his indebtedness to Derrida, there are certain important differences between the two thinkers. The paper will focus on their respective interpretations of divine violence and the link to minimal difference (Žižek) or différance (Derrida). Their respective interpretations of divine (...) class='Hi'>violence will be further explored with regards to Derrida’s auto-deconstruction as a kind of Heideggerian Gelassenheit and Žižek’s interpretation of the Lacanian Act. Critchley criticises Žižek for being too Gelassen in his dream of patiently waiting for an absolute, divine, cataclysmic revolutionary act of divine violence. This patient waiting or non-violent violence will be read within the context of Derrida’s auto-deconstruction: a means (an Act/Event) without specific end. The second part of the paper will explore a re-reading or inter-textual reading of John’s Gospel within the context of the above conversation. The reading will specifically focus on the Christ-event, creating an alternative community to the Roman Empire as it transverses the primal fantasy of this empire. This will be translated into the context of the contemporary neo-liberal fantasy, namely John’s alternative Christian community as a community of subjects who enjoy their symptom. As such a community they present a non-violent violent transversion of the primal fantasy of for example neo-liberalism. Such a community could be interpreted as a community of non-action action with an auto-deconstructive ethos: the divine violence of the Christ-event. (shrink)

Heidegger's later philosophy has often been regarded as a lapse into unintelligible mysticism. While not ignoring its deep and difficult complexities, Julian Young's book explains in simple and straightforward language just what it is all about. It examines Heidegger's identification of loss of 'the gods', the violence of technology, and humanity's 'homelessness' as symptoms of the destitution of modernity, and his notion that overcoming 'oblivion of Being' is the essence of a turning to a post-destitute, genuinely post-modern existence. Young (...) argues that Heidegger's conception of such an overcoming is profoundly fruitful with respect to the ancient quest to discover the nature of the good life. His book will be an invaluable resource for both students and scholars of Heidegger's works. (shrink)

In this paper we draw on data from in-depth interviews with men who have used violence and abuse within intimate partner relationships to provide a new lens through which to view the conceptual debates on naming, defining and understanding ‘domestic violence’, as well as the policy and practice implications that flow from them. We argue that the reduction of domestic violence to discrete ‘incidents’ supports and maintains how men themselves talk about their use of violence, and (...) that this in turn overlaps with contentions about the appropriate interventions and responses to domestic violence perpetrators. We revisit Hearn's 1998 work The Violences of Men, connecting it to Stark's later concept of coercive control, in order to develop and extend understandings of violence through analysis of the words of those who use it. We conclude by exploring the implications of these findings for recent legal reform in England and Wales and for policies on how we deal with perpetrators. (shrink)

Legal responses to battered women who kill have long animated scholarly debate and law reform activity. In September 2012 after 47 years of alleged abuse, Frenchwoman Jacqueline Sauvage fatally shot her abusive husband three times in the back. The subsequent contested trial, conviction for murder, unsuccessful appeal and later presidential pardon of Sauvage thrust the French law of self-defence into the spotlight. The Sauvage case raises important questions surrounding the adequacy of the French criminal law in this area, the ongoing (...) proliferation of gendered stereotypes in law and the need for reform. In the wake of the Sauvage case, this article provides a timely analysis of the gendered law of self-defence in France. Drawing from an in-depth analysis of the judgments imposed in the Sauvage case, this article examines the adequacy of French legal responses to battered women who kill and ignites an argument for further law reform. (shrink)

The dominant narrative today of modern political power, inspired by Foucault, is one that traces the move from the spectacle of the scaffold to the disciplining of bodies whereby the modern political subject, animated by a fundamental fear and the will to live, is promised security in exchange for obedience and productivity. In this essay, I call into question this narrative, arguing that that the modern political imagination, rooted in Hobbes, is animated not by fear but instead by the desire (...) for glory and immortality, a desire that is spectacularly displayed in the violence of the modern battlefield. I go on to argue that Hannah Arendt, writing in the ruins of the Second World War, rethinks the modern legacy of political glory. I claim that Arendt's reflections on violence and glory, which she rethinks from her earliest writings on violence in the 1940s to her later reflections on war in the 1960s, offer the possibility of a new political imagination wherein glory and the desire for immortality is now rooted in the responsibility of bearing an enduring world. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:RELIGION AND SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE Paul Ricoeur Université de Nanterre Paris X These are issues that I take very much to heart, so I will risk my own thoughts on the relation between religion and violence, not excluding the violence in and ofreligion. This is to say that I am not evading the objection made by Jean-Pierre Changeux in a recent discussion, namely, that religion as such (...) produces violence. I do not wish to evade the objection nor to hide behind the collateral explanation that it is when religion is detoured by politics that it produces violence. It is the presupposition that religion produces violence that brings me into discussion with René Girard. I encountered his work several decades ago and I have met him intermittently, with moments of distancing and rediscovery. This is the case for me again today regarding one of his later books, The Scapegoat. I cannot forget the dazzling excitement of 1972 when Violence and the Sacred first appeared. And then for me came a moment of hesitation, of doubt: isn't this explanation too psychologizing? Aren't the Gospels too easily exonerated ofthe accusation ofviolence? But I thereafter experienced disappointment with alternative accounts, principally sociological ones, and in particular with the one given by Maurice Bloch in La Violence du religieux. I am going to take the risk of a personal interpretation ofthe intimate relation between religion and violence. My own conviction, at bottom, is that I have been able, by broadening and deepening the issue, to discern the point where this very movement of going deeper bifurcates and branches out toward external violence. I have clarified my position in La Critique et la conviction and in my more recent debate with J.R Changeux, Ce quifait que nouspensons on this complicity between religion and violence. And it was in pursuing the direction opened up in La Critique et la conviction that I rediscovered an 2 Paul Ricoeur interest in The Scapegoat. I found his interpretation not only to be complementary to my own, but its necessary complement. I will now proceed to show how René Girard's thesis is necessary to my own thinking. So now I will go directly to my interpretive proposal, then I will turn to the position of Bloch in La Violence du religieux, a sociological interpretation, in order to come back in the end to Girard. It is by way of reflection on tolerance considered as a progressive initiation that I arrived at the interpretation I am going to present. At its minimal state, we find only the tolerance ofthe intolerant person, who states, "I don't agree with what you believe, I disapprove of it, but I cannot prevent it. I tolerate it in the sense of not being able to prevent it; I would like to prevent it, but I do not have the power to do so." At a second level, tolerance is more positive, saying, "I maintain the conviction that I am the one who has the truth, but I recognize, by way of being accommodating, that you have the right to profess what I hold as false, and I do this in the name ofjustice. That is to say, you certainly have the right, and it is one equal to mine, to profess what you believe, although I take it as false." I would say that the force of the principle ofjustice as thus expressed is this: any other life is worth as much as mine. Let us say that what I recognize here is the right to error. But at this stage I am torn within by the truth that I believe to be unilaterally mine and the justice that entails recognition ofthe other, which I place on another level from that oftruth. I make a further step in pursuing the issue, at a level farther advanced, when I say, "My adversary has perhaps a part ofthe truth but I don't know what it is." I would say that this is the perspectival version oftolerance: the other person sees a side of things, which I cannot see. But our positions cannot be substituted for each other. At this stage there is a... (shrink)

This essay explores the archive of a 1971 interview of Angela Davis by Swedish journalist Bo Holmström—recorded in Santa Clara County Jail where Davis awaited trial—to examine the relationship between Black radical thought and its social and intellectual mediation, especially when it comes to questions of violence versus nonviolence. Where Holmström invokes the “violence/nonviolence” binary in the interview, Davis pointedly resists its distortions, restoring the record of contemporary and historical conditions of racial terror that both necessitate and criminalize (...) Black self-defense. Decades later, the interview was filtered through the violence/nonviolence binary in editing for the acclaimed 2011 documentary, The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, with Davis’s wider conversation with Holmström not only abridged but remixed into a shorter exchange on armed self-defense. Studying the interview from its conditions of possibility through its later remixing, and reading it together with her opening defense statement (1972) and later speeches and writings, the essay excavates and explicates Davis’s original theoretical interventions and indexes a cluster of forces that mediate Black radical thought, Black women’s radical thought more specifically, and prison texts. The final section historicizes Davis’s theorization of the spatial and relational contexts of Black self-defense in Dynamite Hill, Alabama, and in California, and contends that her incisive interventions into the violence/nonviolence binary in 1971 remain critical here and now. (shrink)

This article critiques the idea of instrumental justification for violent means seen in Hannah Arendt's writings. A central element in Arendt's argument against theorists like Georges Sorel and Frantz Fanon in On Violence is the distinction between instrumental justifications and approaches emphasizing the `legitimacy' of violence or its intrinsic value. This doesn't really do the work Arendt needs it to in relation to rival theories. The true distinctiveness of Arendt's view is seen when we turn to On Revolution (...) and resituate the later arguments of On Violence in the context of her ideas about the separation between revolution and liberation. Arendt's commitment to the American discovery in revolutionary politics of a means that needs no further ends to justify it permits a rereading of her conception of liberation as an attempt to envisage a violence that, while tactically instrumental, is at the same time politically non-instrumental. But while Arendt's view is distinct, the article also highlights important thematic continuities with the writings of Sorel and Walter Benjamin. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:LIBERATION THEOLOGY AND THE INTERPRE.TATION OF POLITICAL VIOLENCE FREDERICK SONTAG Pomona OoUego Olaremont, Oalifornia " It is impossible to remain loyal to Marxism, to the Revolution, without treating insurrection as an art." Lenin, paraphrasing Karl Marx WHENEVER Liberation Theology ·and its contributions to theologicail discussion al'e ·concerned, no aspect has been more controversirul than its association with violence. There is no question that Marxism/Leninism depends on the (...) use of violence. But all liberation theories must take violence into consideration. On the one hand, the ties that hold humans in bondage may be so strong that only violent means ca.n be effective to release us. On the other hand, it is well known that violenre often breeds its own do·wnfall and results in ten·or more often than peace. Since the beginning of time, probably every prrogram seeking to release human beings to their furhl. potential has had to consider the use of violence to achieve its ends, even while awal'e of its potential dangers. Yet this issue takes on a new urgency in our time because of two s[gnificant changes in our situation: (I) Most communist proposals which have resulted in world~wide change have militantly asserted the necessity to use force if we are to be set free; (2) In recent times Liberati.on Theofogy has been espoused by some Christian theologians even while the adoption of pacifism or the abhorrence of violence by most Christian groups is well known. The question of religion's intrusion into the politicaiJ. reailm is problem 271 FREDERICK SONTAG enough, but add to this the question of the use of violence and the discussion becomes very heated indeed. Although many traditions have well-developed positions regarding violence and non-violence, Christianity will be our frame of reference in discussing these issues, since Liberation Theology has, in fact, developed in a Christian context. First of all we havie to ask whether the use of violence to ruchieve politicaJ ends is a;lways ruled out or whether some circumstances might justify it as an ruooeptable tool for Christian use. Where Christianity is concerned, it is always instructive to begin by looking at the life and work of Jesus. Trruditionally, Jesus is seen as rejecting the use of violence and as having suffered vioilence himself. Can anything so change this image as to make violence acceptable on Christian grounds? In ·considering this, we first have to note that Jesus himself lived under po1itiool oppression. We must oons~der the Jewish expectations for the ' Messiah ' and how this role came to be projecbed onto Jesus; their hope for release from Roman oppressors was what plruced mroh high political expectations on Jesus. Christians recognized Jesus as a' Messiah', even though he obvious1ly did not fulfill the role of a political liberato·r. Afiter his death and for centuries fater, Jewish political fortunes went from bad to worse. The people's expectations of gaining release by the hand of Jesus did not result in a change in their political fortunes. Christians diid enter into politics and governments in!Later years, and some welcome changes can be attributed to Christian influence. But still, none of these improvements can be directly attributed to Jesus' efforts in his own fileis a prime :requfoement for success. We 'are aware of the Marxist/Leninist insistency on toeing the line on dogma, for conformity to doctrine. But can the Christian,aiccept the uniformity of interpretation which effective acbion seems to require? If the Christian liberation theofogian argues that aU Christians cannot be required to aiocept some one program of wction, he or she is limited by the division that plurality brings. On the other LIBERATION THEOLOGY AND POLITICAL VIOL]j]NCE '277 hand, the Christian revotutionary activist should not be told that his program is " unchristian " as judged by some singular, authoritative standard. Of course, the chief complication in saying this lies with a hieI"archical church which includes authorities to formulate doctrine. The Christian who wants to act differently from what the srbructure of such a chureh allows will either: (1) have to find a way to act independently and still stay within that community; or (2) convince... (shrink)

In the first part of the paper the author briefly revisits two of the most important traditions that stand behind the contemporary conceptualizations of affect: the Deleuzian tradition and the Lacanian one. Having pointed to the most important features of the two lines of thinking affect, as well as to certain difficulties that arise within them, the author proceeds to offer his own simple conceptual model that would be operative in thinking about film experience. The model involves feeling, emotion and (...) affect as three distinct phenomena; the concept of “ex-spectator” is introduced in order to account for the crucial difference between emotion and affect. In the second part of the paper, the model is tested against the later films by Quentin Tarantino. The films are presented as “affective”: by skilfully operating with “reflective images” they are able to deconstruct the subject of the ex-spectator into the split-but-real, affected self of the true spectator. (shrink)

What, ultimately, is the nature of reality according to Derrida? What, in his scheme of things, is being, what is time? What is consciousness and how should we conceive of the relation between self and other? What sort of metaphysics, or, more specifically, what sort of ontology if any can Derrida justifiably be said to adhere to? The aim of this chapter is to address these questions in a way that will not be entirely disloyal, or, rather, will be as (...) loyal as possible, to Derrida's legacy. In “Violence and Metaphysics,” Derrida subjects this term to a relentless deconstruction. In Specters of Marx, written almost 30 years later than “Violence and Metaphysics,” Derrida famously invokes and sketches what he calls hauntology, namely, a “logic of haunting” understood as a discourse and practice that would transcend “the opposition between presence and non‐presence, actuality and inactuality, life and non‐life”. (shrink)

This article critiques the idea of instrumental justification for violent means seen in Hannah Arendt's writings. A central element in Arendt's argument against theorists like Georges Sorel and Frantz Fanon in On Violence is the distinction between instrumental justifications and approaches emphasizing the `legitimacy' of violence or its intrinsic value. This doesn't really do the work Arendt needs it to in relation to rival theories. The true distinctiveness of Arendt's view is seen when we turn to On Revolution (...) and resituate the later arguments of On Violence in the context of her ideas about the separation between revolution and liberation. Arendt's commitment to the American discovery in revolutionary politics of a means that needs no further ends to justify it permits a rereading of her conception of liberation as an attempt to envisage a violence that, while tactically instrumental, is at the same time politically non-instrumental. But while Arendt's view is distinct, the article also highlights important thematic continuities with the writings of Sorel and Walter Benjamin. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt’s critical acceptance of the Jewish national liberation movement and her support for the formation of a Jewish Army during the Second World War stand in contrast to her later critique of armed anticolonial struggles. I address this tension in three steps. First, I explain the role of violence in her theory of liberation. Next, I address the problem with liberation in terms of a sovereign nation-state and the alternative of federation. Finally, I return to the case of (...) Jewish liberation to show that the apparent tension can be resolved if it is understood within the framework of federalism. Instead of understanding national liberation as self-determination, federalism allows for a non-sovereign freedom that supports the plurality of nations within a shared political community. (shrink)

Examples of scriptural and historic militancy in Christianity and Islam are frequently compared today without sufficient attention to the complexity of the subject within each tradition. Through an examination of relevant biblical and Qur’anic materials, and of episodes in later history, this article attempts a fresh examination of violence in the two traditions. It argues that the tensions in each tradition related to violence, while similar in some ways, are quite distinct in others. In light of this, thoughts (...) are suggested on how each community may engage its respective tensions in order to work toward peace today. (shrink)

Michelle Madden Dempsey’s Prosecuting Domestic Violence: A Philosophical Analysis (2009) is an important book for many reasons. Amongst these are the prevalence of domestic violence and the extraordinary, largely unaccountable discretionary powers wielded by prosecutors in the United States. Against this background, Dempsey asks in particular what prosecutors should do when the victims of domestic violence withdraw their support from the proposed prosecution. In Prosecuting Domestic Violence, Dempsey provides a general account of prosecutorial practical reasoning that (...) can be applied to answer this question. Given that she argues that “particularly aggressive prosecution” is in at least some cases justified, the later chapters of the book address issues surrounding the victims of domestic violence: their rights and duties when it comes to prosecution and the measures that might be directed against victims who are unwilling to co-operate.What Dempsey calls her “central analytic tool” in .. (shrink)

Although Judith Butler's theorization of violence has begun to receive growing scholarly attention, the feminist theoretical background of her notion of violence remains unexplored. In order to fill this lacuna, this article explicates the feminist genealogy of Butler's notion of violence. I argue that Butler's theorization of violence can be traced back to Gender Trouble, to her discussion of Monique Wittig's argument that the binary categorization of sex can be conceived as a form of discursive (...) class='Hi'>violence. I contend, first, that Butler starts to develop her notion of “gender violence” on the basis of her reading of Wittig, and second, that Butler's more recent writings on military violence and the ethics of nonviolence build on her early interpretation of Wittig. On the basis of my reading, I suggest, in contrast to recent criticism, that Butler's later critique of violence is not at odds with but rather expands upon her prior work on violence. (shrink)

Ever since the 1960s, media and communication studies have abounded in heated debates concerning the psychological and social effects of fictional media violence. Massive empirical research has first tried to tie film violence to cultivating either fear or aggressive tendencies among its viewership, while later research has focused on other media as well (television, video games). The present paper does not aim to settle the factual question of whether or not medial experiences indeed engender real emotional dispositions. Instead, (...) it brings into play the resources of genetic phenomenology in order to ask how the formation of such dispositions would be generally possible. Thus, it aims to further the discussion by overtly employing the framework of Husserl’s later genetic phenomenology to the field of emotional experience. By posing questions with regard to how fictional emotional experiences contribute to the formation of apperceptions and to the specificities of emotional sedimentation, it also points out some shortcomings in Husserl’s account by drawing from Freud’s dynamic theory of drives and emotions. (shrink)

The article discusses how the meaning of the principle of “non-resistance to evil by violence” was changing in L.N. Tolstoy's religious and philosophical teachings and how this principle was evaluated in Russian religious philosophy of the late XIX - early XX century. In the first version of Tolstoy’s teachings, set forth in the book “What is my faith?”, the principle of non-resistance was understood in a moral sense, as the norm for all people; its execution should lead to the (...) perfection of earthly life. This idea of L. Tolstoy was sharply criticised by his contemporaries, who noted that there was no truly religious content in Tolstoy’s teachings, it was turning into a utilitarian doctrine of the earthly progress of mankind. Given this criticism, Tolstoy in his later works changed his understanding of the principle of non-resistance. Drawing a distinction between two levels of human life - “animal” and divine, Tolstoy recognised the principle of non-resistance to the law as the divine life of a man. As a result, the principle of non-resistance has acquired a religious rather than moral meaning, since the transition of a man to a divine life means a mystical transformation of his being. He is aware of his super-spatial and super-temporary unity with all people and with all being, and therefore can evaluate the consequences of his actions not only in the limited sphere of his life, but also in all infinite being. In this regard, a person realizes the absolute superiority of good deeds over evil, even if the latter are committed to confront evil. It is shown that some critics of Tolstoy came to a similar understanding of the religious meaning of the principle of non-resistance at the end of their lives. (shrink)

This paper explores how we could approach the decolonising of the debate on sexual violence within the South African post-colony. For this purpose, a historical event is analysed: two presbytery hearings of 1843 and 1845, both involving Xhosa convert John Beck Balfour, at the Scottish mission station of Burnshill based in Xhosaland (later called British Caffraria). The hearings involve (extra-)marital and sexual behaviour. Walter Mignolo’s notions of border thinking and colonial difference, further complicated with the idea of colonial-sexual differentiation, (...) are employed to show aspects of what is at stake in a decolonising reading of Xhosa convert sexual behaviour. (shrink)

Do pacifists and proponents of justified violence share a starting point? Whether or not just war theory contains an embedded presumption against violence is an important and disputed question. Substantively it is important not only because it has implications for the possibility of dialogue among Christians of different persuasions but also because the belief that the tradition advances no moral reservations about the use of force may have the effect of lowering the moral barriers against the resort to (...) war. Conceptually it is important because it reflects a fundamental methodological disagreement concerning the meaning and resolution of conflicts among moral duties. (shrink)

In this discussion with Craig Browne, Luc Boltanski comments on how his recent work reconsiders the questions of agency and the nature of social explanation. Boltanski reflects on the connections between his investigations of grammars of justifications and his later work with Eve Chiapello on the historical transition to a new spirit of capitalism. The significance of politics, conflict and critique to Boltanski’s sociology are highlighted. Bolanski explains why he regards May 1968 as a major disruption of the capitalist social (...) order and how the conservative response to this contestation subsequently prevailed in France. The reorganisation of capitalism in recent decades has increased social division, yet Boltanski believes that the recent recession and existing discontent could lead to unexpected outcomes. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:RANSOM'S GOD WITHOUT THUNDER: REMYTHOLOGIZING VIOLENCE AND POETICIZING THE SACRED Gary M. Ciuba Kent State University From tree-lined Vanderbilt University of 1930 Nashville, the modernist poet and critic John Crowe Ransom longed to hear in his imagination the God who thundered fiercely in ancient Greece, Rome, and Israel. The God of sacrifice who in Homer's Iliad, "his thunder striking terror," received libations from the warring armies (230). The (...) God of jealousy who in Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound "drove the sleepless thunderbolt, / plunged the fire spurting shaft/ down" on Typhon for defying heaven with his violence (46). The God of vengeance who in Ovid's Metamorphoses sent "blinding / Thunder [to shake] Olympus, and Pelim / Thrust down by heaven's bolt crashed over Ossa" when the giants piled mountain upon mountain to reach Jove's throne (35). The God ofviolence who in Psalm 78:48 delivered the cattle ofthe obstinate Egyptians "to the hail, and their flocks to hot thunderbolts" or who in 1 Samuel 7:10 "thundered with great thunder" to smite the Philistines. In God Without Thunder: An Unorthodox Defense of Orthodoxy Ransom attacked the modern heresy that deprived the deity ofsuch awful might and summoned Americans to live under a new myth of sacred violence. IfRansom listened with the ears ofthe Methodist faith in which he had been raised, he might have heard how the god of old was muted at the university where he studied and later taught. Ten years before Ransom was born, Methodist-sponsored Vanderbilt had eliminated the lectureship of naturalist Alexander Winched because hisPre-Adamites had challenged the Creation story in Genesis. But in 1914, when Ransom returned to his alma Gary M. Ciuba41 mater to begin more than two decades of teaching there, the Methodists ended their affiliation with Vanderbilt because of a dispute about church governance of the university (Bailey 9-10, 31-4). When the Scopes Trial caused a furor in 1925, Ransom was invited by Vanderbilt to condemn the Fundamentalists to the southeast in Dayton. He refused-not because he sided with the anti-Darwinists but because he believed that the tyranny of science was threateningthe poetic foundation ofreligion (Quinlan 40, n. 3). Ransom's thunderless plight was virtually imagined by H.L. Mencken, one of the most stinging critics of the creationists, when in 1922 he penned a tongue-in-cheek lament forthe passing ofthe ancient deities. "Where is the graveyard of dead gods? What lingering mourner waters their mounds? There was a time when Jupiter was the king ofthe gods, and any man who doubted his puissance was ipso facto a barbarian and an ignoramus," Mencken mock-elegized in "Memorial Service." "But where in all the world is there a man who worships Jupiter today?" (95). God Without Thunder provides the answer to Mencken's archly lugubrious question: it is John Crowe Ransom. Grieving the demise ofthe deity ofyore, Ransom's treatise on the religious imagination heralds a one-man revival of Jupiter Tonans. Ransom believes that the god ofantiquity has been muffled bythe spirit of scientific abstraction that reigns notjust in Tennessee but across all of America.7 Hetraces this modern cult ofthe mind beyond the current efforts ofreligion to seek a rapprochement with biology and physics; beyond the science-driven Prometheus of Shelley, the rationalism of the Protestant Reformation, and the inquiry of Copernicus; beyond the errors of early Christianity, to a kind of primal sin. Humans have used their intelligence first to set themselves above nature, then to order the world according to their ways, and finally to exploit all ofcreation for their use. Demystified by science, thunder has become not the mighty weapon ofthe ancient God who tolerated no rivals but only the noise of heated and expanding air. Ransom views science as having such ultimacy that it exercises a mimetic function: it provides Girardian models for desire. "Science directs us to amuse ourselves, between desires," Ransom writes, "by simulating 7 Louis Rubin reads Ransom's "Armageddon" as a poetic companion piece to God Without Thunder, for it tells how divine wrath has been compromised amid the suavities of the modern world At the apocalyptic battle of the poem's title, a militant... (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to establish a proper context for reading Jacques Derrida’s The Gift of Death, which, I contend, can only be understood fully against the backdrop of “Violence and Metaphysics.” The later work cannot be fully understood unless the reader appreciates the fact that Derrida returns to “a certain Abraham” not only in the name of Kierkegaard but also in the name of Levinas himself. The hypothesis of the reading that follows therefore would be that (...) Derrida writes The Gift of Death not as an attempt to re-present Kierkegaard’s Abraham either rightly or wrongly but as an effort to do with Kierkegaard’s Abraham what is possible with his thought in a broadly Levinasian/derridean framework. That the reading he provides of the Abraham story would not be recognizable to Kierkegaard is not the principal point of Derrida’s effort; his aim is to demonstrate that Levinas should not have been so hasty to dismiss Kierkegaard but could have recovered his interpretation of Abraham for purposes that Derrida and Levinas both share. (shrink)

Table of Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Introduction, by Olivia Custer, Penelope Deutscher, and Samir Haddad -- Part I: Openings -- 1. The Foucault-Derrida Debate on the Argument Concerning Madness and Dreams, by Pierre Macherey -- 2. Looking Back at History of Madness, by Lynne Huffer -- 3. Violence and Hyperbole: From "Cogito and the History of Madness" to The Death Penalty, by Michael Naas -- Part II: Surviving the Philosophical Problem: History Crosses Transcendental Analysis.

Theories in both contemporary psychotherapy and ancient philosophy associate deprivation with wrongdoing and suffering, but operate with different understandings of deprivation. The article will focus on two concepts of deprivation, one psychological and the other one ontological, as advanced by Bowlby in attachment theory, and Augustine of Hippo. In attachment theory deprivation is something one suffers as a result of the others’ actions ; it has neuropsychological effects, it relates to violent behaviour later in life, and it is therapeutically treated (...) mainly by emotional sensory work directed at attaining self-regulation. Understanding deprivation as Augustine does introduces a distinctive philosophical view on formation and can inform a type of reflective-behavioural work centred on forming impaired volitional and emotional capacities, and on reclaiming agency and responsibility both for what can be called self-deprivation and for ways to counter deprivation in offenders and victims. (shrink)

In her book Heidegger's Interpretation of Kant. The Violence and the Charity, Morganna Lambeth presents a comprehensive, compelling and original assessment of Heidegger's interpretation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in the 1920s. She places Heidegger's controversial claim that the transcendental imagination is the original root of cognition in the centre of her interpretation and fleshes its implications out throughout her book, gauging its significance from multiple angles (e.g., with regard to the advantages of Heidegger's reading over the readings (...) of other post-Kantian philosophers). Thereby, she not only manages to bring much clarity into the often dark and twisted claims Heidegger articulates through Kant's voice but also convincingly defends many of them. Generally, Lambeth aims to vindicate the significance of Heidegger's interpretation of Kant which, as she lays out, has received little acceptance in Anglophone Kant scholarship and is often met with the conviction that it is primarily informative about Heidegger's own philosophy into which he urges Kant violently (a view supported by Heidegger's later self-criticisms). Lambeth proposes a different and quite attractive story, suggesting that Heidegger is deeply engaged with Kant's own thought and offers a novel and “genuine interpretation of Kant” instead of looking into “a distorted mirror in which he can see only himself." In this vein, the conclusion of Lambeth's book assesses the merit of Heidegger's interpretation of Kant with regard to topics of contemporary Kant scholarship (metaphysics, discursivity, conceptualism, idealism, historicism). But Lambeth also makes a strong and original case for the significance of Heidegger's interpretation of Kant for Heidegger's own thought. As she argues, Heidegger develops his “temporal idealism” of Being and Time further when interpreting Kant. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:DHARMA AND DESTRUCTION: BUDDHIST INSTITUTIONS AND VIOLENCE Christopher Ives Stonehill College Photographs ofgentle monks in saffron, the cottageindustry ofbooks on mindfulness, and the Dalai Lama's response to the Chinese invasion of Tibet have all helped portray Buddhism as the "religion of nonviolence." This representation ofBuddhism finds support in Buddhist texts, doctrines, and ritual practices, which often advocate ahimsa, nonharming or non-violence. The historical record, however, belies the (...) portrayal of Buddhism as a "religion of nonviolence." By reinterpreting early doctrines of ahimsa, Buddhist thinkers have legitimated violence in particular situations, practitioners have committed acts of violence, and Buddhist institutions have lent support to other institutions—social, political, and governmental —engaged in violence. In this paper I will examine Buddhist perpetration andjustifications ofviolence,1 with particularfocus on Japan, arguing that, historically, Buddhists' desire for institutional security has taken precedence over total rejection of violence. 1 I have restricted my discussion to the killing of other human beings. I do not consider suicide andthe killing ofnon-human animals. For a discussion ofBuddhism, (self-)sacrifice, and suicide in relation to Girard's theory, see Charles D. Orzech, '"Provoked Suicide' and the Victim's Behavior." 152Christopher Ives Non-violence The doctrine of ahimsa figures prominently in early and Theravadan Buddhism. The first ofthe five moral precepts (panca silani) in Buddhism is ahimsa, and in the Dhammapada the historical Buddha purportedly states, All are afraid of the rod. Of death all are afraid. Having made oneself the example, One should neither slay nor cause to slay. (Ross 202) The Buddhaalso sketches the consequences ofhurting orharming (himsa): Who with a rod does hurt Beings who desire ease [of nibbana], While himself looking for ease— He, having departed, ease does not get. Theravadan monastic codes and practices, such as the uposatha biweekly confession of moral transgressions and recitation of the 227 rules in the Patimokkha (Skt. Pratimoksa), are closely tiedto ahimsa. One ofthe Patimokkha's four "offenses of defeat" (parajika dharmas), for which the punishment is immediate expulsion of the monk or nun from the order, is killing another human being (Prebish 11). Mahayana texts continue this exhortation against violence. For example, in the Dasabhimika-sutra we read that a Buddhist "must not hate any being and cannot kill a living creature even in thought."2 Early Buddhist texts include depictions ofthe ideal Buddhist king, the cakravartin-raja or "monarch who turns the wheel [of the Dharma],"3 as an exemplar of nonviolence. Contemporary Buddhist activist Sulak Sivaraksa expresses it, this king is a "an ideal ruler, a world-conquering monarch, who subdued the earth through righteousness rather than war" (Sulak 129), and whose ten main duties include striving for peace and ruling with nonviolent benevolence (129). For well over 2000 years 2 Cited in Har Dayal, The Bodhisattva Doctrine, p. 199; quoted by Kraft, 5. In much ofthe first section of this paper I am indebted to Ken Kraft's introduction to his volume. 3 The metaphor ofturning the wheel refers to the historical Buddha's teaching ofthe Dharma and the later propagation of it by others. Dharma and Deconstruction153 Buddhists have lifted up Indian king Ashoka (c. 272-236) as an instantiation of this ideal. The early Buddhist doctrine of ahimsa should not, however, be construed as compassionate altruism. Luis Gómez and other scholars have delineated how ahimsa at first did not express some sort of underlying altruistic concern for the well-being of others. Vegetarianism and other ways of avoiding himsa, harming or violence, derived from ancient Indian ritual taboos againstblood and otherbodily liquids (Gómez 36). Buddhists ethicized and psychologized earlier notions of physical pollution, and advocated abstention fromviolenceprimarily as ameans ofself-cultivation, as a way to keep the mind pure, like an unstained cloth (36). (Scholars have even argued that the positive expression oíahimsa, the practice ofdirecting metta (loving-kindness) to others, originally had as much or more to do with the spiritual benefits accrued by the person directing the metta as it did with the well-being of the person receiving it. Only later was ahimsa furtherreinterpreted as positive regard forothers, as seen in the bodhisattva ideal of Mahayana Buddhism. Violence in Buddhist History At numerous times over... (shrink)

This essay rethinks democratic experimentalism from an ethical point of view, and look at its potential for the future by drawing on two key thinkers of the late 20th and early 21st century: Richard Rorty and Luce Irigaray. I explore the experimentalist character in Irigaray's later thought and point to a pragmatist link in her works, and then dynamize her original theory of sexual difference by pointing to G.H. Mead's symbolic interactionism. Then a revolutionary character of Irigaray's thought is defended (...) by focusing on her interventions into the very core of Western philosophy and in particular its Hegelian heritage. By introducing Rorty into the debate, a pledge is made for a new democratic culture of love and nonviolence as a 'spiritual' mode of democratic experimentalism needed in our times. Finally, I show that Irigaray's and Rorty's thought share an affinity toward intercultural thinking, bearing important consequences for an ethicospiritual project of democratic experimentalism. (shrink)

RESUMEN El presente artículo tiene como objetivo reflexionar a partir de las principales ideas filosóficas de Walter Benjamin y Frantz Fanon sobre el problema de la violencia política para luego mostrar las diferencias y posibles relaciones en los planteamientos de los autores. En un primer momento se mostrarán las denuncias hechas por los dos autores al sistema político moderno en cuanto a que la apariencia pacífica de las relaciones sociales se fundamenta en relaciones mediadas por la violencia. Luego, se analizarán (...) los principales planteamientos acerca de la violencia divina y de la violencia revolucionaria o contraviolencia en cada uno de los filósofos. Por último, se aportarán algunas conclusiones que contrasten las propuestas de este diálogo y permitan trazar límites y posibilidades en la lucha política que cada autor en su particularidad está presentando. ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to reflect about the main philosophical ideas of Walter Benjamin and Frantz Fanon on the problem of political violence and then to present the differences and possible relations in the author's approaches. At the first time, will show the denunciations made by the two authors to the modern political system as a pacific appearance of social relations that are based on relations mediated by violence. Later, the main approaches to divine violence and revolutionary violence or counter-violence in each of the philosopher will be analyzed. Finally, some conclusions will be drawn to contrast with this dialogue and thus allow us to observe the limits and possibilities in the political struggle that each author in his particularity is presenting. (shrink)