Violence, Theories Of

It is almost impossible to provide a satisfactory definition of violence for all times and circumstances. Violence has many forms and varies according to contexts and circumstances. Its boundaries are fluid, and it is closely connected to cognate phenomena like power and force. Power may be defined in terms of potentiality to use violence, whereas force is the implementation of power and might not become violent. Force may take various forms and does not need to be violent in its immediate effects. It may be used as a threat to compel adversaries to obey. But its actualization may also sometimes include violence. In other words, violence may be defined as the most radical form of force.

There is a tacit agreement that destruction is the most defining feature of violence. It may be caused by pure natural forces, though some forms of natural violence may be traced back to human causes. At first sight, violence may be judged on the immediate effects of actions. Destruction, though, may last for a longer time. A master-slave relation, for example, may last decades without involving any physical destruction—but because of the lack of mutual recognition, the master-slave relation involves or even requires permanent gradual psychological and emotional destruction. It may take the form of physical, psychological, and emotional destruction and be directed against natural resources, animals, and human beings. In human relations, it may occur in all spheres of social life, in everyday life in interpersonal relations, family life, in schools, at universities, in industrial relations between social classes, and in international relations. It may have a range of motivations from psychological to cultural, political, and economic.

Written human history is almost a history of conquest, enslavement, robbery, murder; in short, it is a history of force and violence. Wars, in their various forms as civil or international conflicts, are the most obvious forms of violence. Compared with the long, warlike and bloody ages, peaceful periods in human history are almost negligible episodes. Marx, for example, who describes human history as a history of the expropriation of producers from their means of production, suggests that human history is written in the annals of mankind in letters of blood and fire. Similar observations in the liberal tradition are not rare. Kant, for example, suggests that the domination of evil in the world is as old as history. If the apocalyptic warning, that we live in the final age with the last day and the destruction of the world at hand, had ever any justification, then it is in our age. Contemporarily, humanity possesses biological, chemical, and nuclear means of mass destruction, whose accidental or intentional use is very likely to cause international escalation. The worst likely event could lead to the extinguishing of biological life for ages to come. The mere existence of this type of artillery demands an answer to the question of what makes human beings produce such weapons of mass destruction, what turns them into aggressive and murderous beasts, if they are honorable and wish to establish reliable natural circumstances and peaceful social relations among themselves.

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