Different Senses of the Concept of Violence

Abstract

The starting point of this research consists in assuming the multiplicity of meanings contained in the concept of violence, as well as the conflicts that such semantic vagueness entails for social life. This multiplicity of meanings refers to the great variety of phenomena of social life encompassed by the concept of violence, ranging from individual actions to institutions, the State, and so on.

The problem of vagueness, by contrast, refers to the dangerous confusion between two different levels in the use of discourse for the legitimation of power. These may be delimited as follows: the first refers to the set of beliefs that justifies the authority of power because its exercise results in a material improvement in the living conditions of the collective; the second refers to a set of beliefs manipulated and controlled by rhetorics that conceal forms of domination and alienation of individuals. What this paper seeks to analyze is this second level of the justification of power, together with the construction of certain forms of knowledge and legal forms that conceal violence under the appearance of justice and social equity.

From a methodological point of view, our first working hypothesis is that the concept of violence is not a mere tautology, but rather contains a multiplicity of meanings. To explain this, Frege’s theory of meaning will be used, particularly the distinction between sense and reference. From this, two conclusions will be drawn: first, that concepts of violence are descriptive, because each proposition provides new information and is not a simple repetition of the same; and second, that the nature of the referents of the concept in question consists neither in properties, nor in functions, nor in entities that refer to the objective world, but rather in historical constructions.

To prove the preceding claim, a second hypothesis will be introduced, which affirms the Nietzschean character of metaphor; that is, metaphor is an invention of human beings for living in society and protecting their own interests. To this end, Nietzsche’s conception of metaphor will be developed on the basis of his posthumous text On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense.

Thus, the final aim of this paper is to show that the set of beliefs that makes it possible to manipulate and control forms of domination and alienation of individuals through the rhetorics of discourse causes the oppressed human condition to erupt in violent behaviors.