The limits of violence

Abstract

What constitutes violence, and what value may consist in aggression? There is a school of thought in political theory that puts forward the argument that violence can have a transformative social effect, serving an almost transcendent function as the hinge upon which history turns. The author contemplates several approaches to understanding the nature of violence. However dangerous these approaches to violence may be, they speak to a truth about the human condition that cannot be ignored, namely that violence may attract inasmuch as it disrupts, and that the ultimate imposition onto human freedom may be the possibility that negating the given is too uncomfortable to countenance. In this sense, an overweening emphasis on peace in social relations may be the mask of a tyranny that cannot be resisted.