VIOLENCE

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Let´s be greek and dive today on…

a political tool called Violence.

It is difficult to deny that violence occupies a central place in our societies.

And impossible to reduce, simplify or minimise the burning fire that violence is in the human experience.

Even our most advanced societies use violence,
and perhaps especially those, use it extensively, developing sophisticated institutions to regulate, concentrate and exercise it.
Police use force. States imprison people. Armies wage wars.

So, despite our almost universal moral condemnation of violence, we already accept that violence Is Sometimes Legitimate.

And this is the Status Quo.

The philosophical question is therefore...
WHEN does violence become legitimate?

At the state level, from the Criminal law to the tradition of Just War Theory, we tried to establish a criteria such as necessity, proportionality and discrimination between combatants and civilians.

The problem, as always, philosophically speaking, is the individual chriteria...

Therefore... when are individuals entitled to use violence ?

The easy answer seems to self-defence. But understanding what self-defence means in the real world is quite a complex exercise.

Not the juridical type, which vary from one country´s law to another... but the core conception.

Is preventing climate change... Self-defence ?
Is doing anything in my hands to eat or have a house to live... self defence?

Or is Self-defence simply what a specific judge following a specific law decides that Self-defence is ?

Can I use violence to defend another person?
What if the state itself is acting unjustly and the legal mechanisms for correcting that injustice have failed?
What if justice... wasn´t done...

Our contemporary world makes this old philosophical problem as critically relevant as any problem can become.

We live surrounded by the feeling of intense pending threats, from climate change to wars between major powers or uncontrolled artificial intelligence...

States continue to arm themselves. Wars continue to occur. Police and security institutions retain coercive powers. And a very lucrative Industry of violence profits from military technologies.

Violence has certainly not disappeared from modernity...

This produces a painful asymmetry:
We accept that organised institutions may legitimately use violence, even profit from it...

But under what circumstances may an ordinary individual, or a group of individuals decide that violence has become legitimate?

If somebody sincerely believes millions of lives are threatened by climate change, war, dictatorship or a dangerous technology,
Can they attack the infrastructure producing the alleged danger?
Can they damage property?
Can they injure someone responsible for it?
Can they kill?

At what exact point do we answer: Yes.

Is there such a point... at all ?
or is that point... precisely... the debate ?

History is full of people who committed atrocities while sincerely believing that they were preventing something worse.

Is individual conviction sufficient to justify violence ?

The terrorist, the tyrant and the resistance fighter can all say:
The situation was exceptional. The danger was enormous. Ordinary mechanisms had failed. Violence was necessary.

In fact... thats what they usually say.

If believing strongly enough that catastrophe is coming legitimises violence, then almost anyone can manufacture their own moral permission.

This is precisely why the problem of violence cannot be simplified.

Are there circumstances in which no one can give us that authority... but nevertheless we may have to act..?

That is where our discussion, the discussion.. begins...
in a reflexion that many human beings all along history, were forced to face...

When, if ever, are we entitled to use violence?

Let's think about Violence...

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