Violence

In his essay entitled Zur Kritik der Gewalt, Walter Benjamin has developed a theoretical discourse around the historical meaning of violence, trying to define its essence by isolating the term from the particular circumstances in which Gewalt is applied within the symbolic order of justice. The theoretical construction (or de-construnction, following the analysis made by Derrida in The mystical foundation of authority) of Benjamin's Gewalt opposes simultaneously two historical approaches to the definition of violence: the first one, strictly juridical, claims against the traditions of natural law and positive law; the second, largely hermeneutical, attempts to distinguish the decadent system of mythical violence from the possibility of what is called 'divine violence'. Although this essay will pay particular attention to the problematic dimension in which mythical and divine violence constitute themselves, a brief analysis of the critique against positive and natural law is nevertheless required in order to establish the fundamental relation between Gewalt and justice. According to Benjamin, " natural law that regards violence as a natural datum is diametrically opposed to that of positive law, which sees violence as a product of history. If natural law can judge all existing law only in criticizing its ends, so positive law can judge all evolving law only in criticizing its means ". Even though this opposition is presented as 1 evident, the antinomy is inherently solved in the possibility, given by both the approaches, to evaluate violence exclusively within an order of legitimacy. Wherein positive law assumes violence to be legitimate or illegitimate according to historical assumption, natural law presumes violence to be illegitimate a-priori: legal power becomes for both the tool to resist and contrast the illegitimate violence of the individual. It follows that " the surprising possibility that the law's interest in a monopoly of violence visa -vis individuals is not explained by the intention of preserving legal ends but, rather, by that of preserving the law

Violence and Civilization: Studies of Social Violence in History and Prehistory

South Asia Research, 1994

How do we understand those Indian ascetics who have developed an extremely elaborate martial tradition and yet have always taken strict vows of non-violence. especially when. for some ascetics today. that tradition has been put at the serviceof the mostextreme forms of Hindu militancy? And how is that tough union leaders can, with conviction. share the same ideas as Gandhi. or that Brahmans scarcely hesitate before using the stick. even though they loudly and insistently advertise their faith in non-violence? These ways of acting. which are often paradoxical in our eyes. may however allow us to reconsider our understanding of the concepts of violence and non-violence in Hinduism. for there are many aspects of Indian society and culture which effectively contradict ideas-taken for granted sinceGandhi-aboutthe roleof violence in them. The problem of violencecan be approached in manydifferent ways. For example. the forms that violence takes may be studied in the hope of understanding its causes and implications better. in orderto find a cure for it and to denounce its use. This is the approach taken in many worksthat are specifically devoted to examining the various forms of violencewhich exist in Indiansociety. Another approach is to ask, in a more general way. about the role played by violence in society. Then the question is about the place that violence comesto have in the establishment, perpetuation, transgression or subversion-ofsocial ties. As all research devoted to the anthropology of violence shows, however. such approaches become far more complicated once one takes into account a degree of relativism in relation to values. and allows for the possibility that what obviously appears as violence to us is not necessarily seenas such in another culture. 1 Moreover, it is evenharder • Authors' note: Thistexthas benefited from thecomments of Jackie Assayagand Catherine Clementin-Ojha, who are herebythanked.

Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture

Violence works at the same time as what we find in the world according to our best description of reality, and as what we fight and reject, hoping for a more peaceful world. It may also be what we recommend, as the only way to change things, or even what we celebrate, as the key resource of true art. Sometimes we even think that adequate theory arises from violence against given paradigms. How can it be so? Do we really understand what we refer to when we speak about violence?

Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 1988

2008

Dedication: this book is dedicated to Ned Curthoys Preface, Acknowledgements, and Contents Page Introduction 1. Genocide as Ancient Practice: Chimpanzees, Humans, Agricultural Society 2. Genocide, and Questioning of Genocide, in Classical Greece: Herodotus and Thucydides 3. Genocide, Trauma, and World Upside Down in Ancient Greek Tragedy: Aeschylus and Euripides 4. Utopia and Dystopia: Plato and Cicero's Republics 5. Victimology and Genocide: The Bible's Exodus, Virgil's Aeneid 6. Roman Settler Imperialism in Britain: Narrative and Counter Narrative in Tacitus' Agricola and Germania 7. The Honourable Colonizer 8. Was the Enlightenment the origin of the Holocaust? Conclusion: Can there be an end to violence? References Index

Critical Times, 2019

This article offers a reading of the concluding paragraph of Walter Benjamin's “Toward the Critique of Violence.” It discusses Benjamin's assertion that only a philosophical-historical approach can provide the key to a critique of violence in light of his essay's discussion of legal violence, and in light of his discovery of radically different types of violence. Benjamin argues that the legal order remains enclosed in a cycle of law-positing and law-preserving violence. Moreover, the legal order inherits the essential trait of myth and of mythic violence: ambiguity. This article shows that guilt is the destiny of those subjected to mythic (and legal) forms of violence. The fateful cycle of legal violence can be undone only by the irruption of an absolutely heterogeneous type of violence, which Benjamin calls divine violence. Its peculiarity consists in the fact that, in deposing legal violence (and the legal order as a whole), divine violence also deposes itself as viol...

Idea. Studia nad strukturą i rozwojem pojęć filozoficznych, 2013

Violence and religion The main topic we attempt to discuss here is by no means no simple nor quite suitable to be considered in such a short article, but since our aim is not in showing all instances of justification of violence in the whole history of Christianity and Buddhism we feel that we may carry out our task with reasonable success. We will focus only on the most representative and common explanations that were employed as justification for acting against and, in fact, negating some of the central concepts of the very teaching of the respective religions. We are aware that a Westerner writing about religion and violence is in a way biased by the recent trends of political correctness of regarding one religion as violent and easily absolving other that used or keep using violence in similar or even more extensive way. As a society we also like to think that violence for us is a thing of the past and that ours is the history of development of morality that deems violence unnecessary and unwelcomed. But, as John Docker states at the very beginning of his book on origins of violence it is more likely that: "The history of humanity is the history of violence: war and genocide; conquest and colonization and the creation of empires sanctioned by God or the gods in both polytheism and monotheism; the fatal combination of democracy and empire; and