Language and Violence

Abstract

It has been pointed out that thinking and speaking about violence is paradoxical. Violence, like evil in general, appears to be characterised by absurdity and irrationality. Moreover, violence is not a subject that we can contemplate freely, something that we can think about, but something that we are against and thus think against. Violence seems primarily to demand that we combat it rather than reflect on it. But how can we be sure that our battle against violence is not in itself violent, or whether in fact it needs to be in order to succeed? And what does that imply for our engagement? Based on three short texts by three contemporary French authors—Eric Weil, Emmanuel Levinas and Paul Ricoeur—this chapter explores several avenues in pursuit of answers to the unanswerable question of what violence actually is, in a quest to attain the unattainable and conquer violence.