Citation

Bäck A. Philos. Stud. 2004; 117(1/2): 219-230.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2004, Springer)

DOI

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PMID

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Abstract

There is a lot of rhetoric and commotion about "violence", even in the scientific community itself. We hear daily about violent military conflicts, violations of human rights, domestic violence, violence in the media and in sports,and emotional and verbal violence. In 1972 58% of American males thought that burning a draft card or holding a sit-in is violent. UNESCO commissioned twenty scientists to make a platform statement, the "Seville Statement on Violence" (November,1989), to condemn the notion that human beings have a biological, genetically determined basis for violence and aggression. Moreover,social scientists have been debating how to define 'violence' for practical reasons. Particularly in doing empirical research,it becomes a practical issue to have a clear definition of 'violence': is the incidence of domestic violence, of violence in school,of aggressive displays in troops of chimpanzees on the rise? How to tell, if we have no criteria for what constitutes violent or aggressive behavior? It is ironic that a large literature has arisen recently in and across various social sciences on the meaning of 'aggression' and 'violence' independently of much reference to or involvement by philosophers.It is ironic since the analysis of the conception of violence and its connections to related conceptions seems to fall squarely in the provenance of philosophy. Moreover,the current lack of philosophers becomes even more puzzling given the considerable philosophical interest on this topic during the sixties and seventies - incited by the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War.In any case, I shall proceed.I propose here to define 'violence'. In doing so, I shall distinguish 'forcefulness', 'aggression' and 'violence'. Because the current usage, both in ordinary language and in the various academic fields, is not consistent, my definitions, although descriptive,will also be somewhat stipulative and precising.