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.

It is also extremely difficult 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 extraordinarily sophisticated institutions for regulating, concentrating and exercising 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, whether we accept it openly or not, 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 decision.

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

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

Is preventing climate change... Self-defence? Is doing anything in my hands to eat or have a house to live... self defence? Can I use it to defend property? What if the threat is not another individual but an institution?

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?

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

We live surrounded by warnings about pending catastrophes, from climate change to wars between major powers or uncontrolled artificial intelligence...

In the meanwhile, the machinery of organised violence remains enormous. 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 weapons and military technologies.

Violence has certainly not disappeared from modernity.

And this produces a painful asymmetry:

We accept that organised institutions may legitimately use violence.

But under what circumstances may an ordinary individual, or 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 damage property? Can they attack the infrastructure producing the alleged danger? 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...…