Violence: Reflections about a word

Abstract

The starting point for my reflections about the word violence comes perhaps unexpected. In his book Kindly Inquisitors, the journalist and philosopher Jonathan Rauch outlines a radical defense of free inquiry against all forms of censorship, whether traditionally authoritarian or rooted in the modern notion of political correctness. This defense of free inquiry leads him to oppose all possible restrictions on verbal expression. In a chapter entitled The Humanitarian Threat he reviews measures, proposed and devised, against assaultive speech, quoting a professor who had stated To me, racial epithets are not speech. They are bullets. Rauch's reaction is eloquent and uncompromising: you do not have to be Kant to see what comes after 'offensive words are bullets': if you hurt me with words, I reply with bullets, and the exchange is even. © 2008 Springer-Verlag New York.