Ethic Theory Moral Prac (2013) 16:1089–1092 DOI 10.1007/s10677-013-9439-y
Lorenzo Magnani: Understanding Violence, The Intertwining of Morality, Religion and Violence: A Philosophical Stance Springer-Verlag, Berlin/Heidelberg (Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, Volume 1), 2011, (ISBN 978-3-642-21971-9; e-ISBN 978-3-642-21972-6; ISSN 2192–6255) Library of Congress Control Number 2011930519 Anton van Harskamp
Published online: 5 September 2013 # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
This book is an impressive sample of applied philosophy. The author of this study on the relations between violence and morality, Lorenzo Magnani (University of Pavia), philosophizes on the pervasiveness of violence in human life by using insights from quite a lot of distinct nonphilosophical disciplines, like cognitive (social) science, evolutionary biology, sociology, cultural anthropology, political and economic theory, religious studies, theology! Presupposition in this work is that the ubiquitous presence of violence in human life is usually culturally more or less deliberately concealed. That is to say, according to M. the phenomenon of violence is often perceived as being only a manifestation of a highly irrational, non-human, anti-moral, exogenous force. The central thesis in this book is an argument against this perception of violence. According to M. violence is literally from ‘the beginning of mankind’ a universal trait of moral life. Violence, states M., is intertwined with morality, violence is most of the time even enacted for moral reasons! Already in the first chapter the foundation is laid for this undeniably challenging thesis. Arguing on the basis of the Coalition Enforcement Hypothesis of evolutionary biologist Paul Bingham, M. brings forward that seen from an evolutionary perspective, the biologically grounded adaptive mechanism of cooperation of related and unrelated (non-kin) animals, is a stimulus for the making of morality as well as for the making of violence. Even the possibility of altruism among human animals is connected with the possibility of violence. The emergence of ‘remote killing’ for instance, should have been an evolutionary advantageous form of moral group behaviour. There must have been, according to M., continuously ‘adaptive’ manifestations of violence in early processes of coalition formation, for instance when dealing with free-riders, in the expulsion of scape goats, in exclusion and boundary maintenance, and in many other forms of ‘otherisation’. Cultural-moral systems in human groups, suggests M., can only function when ‘coalitions’, primal forms of ‘society’, comprise the possibility of all kinds of verbal, symbolical and structural violence.
A. van Harskamp (*) Faculty of Social Sciences, VU University, Buitenveldertselaan 3-7, 1082 VA Amsterdam, The Netherlands e-mail:
[email protected]
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We may understand by now that M. works with a broad and abstract definition of violence. Although M. does not wish to provide for a clear-cut definition of violence, may be because of his insight that violence is always culturally perceived and may exist only in the eye of the beholder, it seems to be clear that M’s underlying definition of violence comes down to the classical idea that violence comprises all forms of behaviour which cause harm to people and to ‘things’ against their will or ‘nature’. That M. actually works with this broad definition is specifically revealed in his second foundational chapter, in which he points at the inherent violent character of … language. Building on the ‘semiophysical’ theory of the French philosopher and mathematician René Thom on the pregnancy affects of organisms, M. argues that seen from a naturalistic, evolutionary perspective the ontological dichotomy between thoughts and actions vanishes, and that thinking (as expressed in ‘language’) can be a violent instrument of human beings, a form of practicing ‘military intelligence’! M. substantiates his argument on the violent nature of language by showing that ‘communication’—think of Habermassian ideas on communication—is not always and inevitably a way of non-violent interaction. According to M. the potentially violent (‘military’) nature of linguistic communication is intrinsically moral (e.g., protecting others by sharing norms) and simultaneously violent (e.g., killing or mobbing to protect the group). M. demonstrates the violent character of language by referring to processes of abduction, that is to processes of reasoning (using language) in the presence of incomplete information. This chapter concludes with the claim that also philosophical language can have a violent character. To corroborate that claim, M. analyses the linguistic forms and arguments of a review in an academic journal of one of his very own books! He contends that this review actually was a violent semantic attack on himself! By the way, the reader and reviewer of this present book may wonder whether M.’s analysis of (and basically moral judgment on) ‘the language’ of an academic reviewer as being a weapon, should not be interpreted in terms of M.’s own theory as being also a form of intellectual, ‘defensive’ or counter violence? In the rest of the book M. builds on the foundational ideas developed in the first two chapters. Making use of Derrida, Benjamin, Girard and quite a lot of other philosophers on the nature of (written) language, the author ponders in the third chapter on the windy ways along which violence can be distributed by epistemological and moral fallacies. He works here with the concepts of epistemological and moral ‘bubbles’. ‘Bubbles’ are considered by M. to be social-psychological and cultural mechanisms by which, at the one hand, symbolical, verbal and structural violence is systematically disguised, and, at the other hand, continuously promoted and dissimulated. ‘Bubbles’ seem to be cultural spheres in which people can be trapped and at the same time mechanisms by which violence can be ‘promoted by denial’. M. discusses several cultural and political forms of publicly manifested epistemological and moral fallacies and then tries to spell out the effect of collectively shared ‘bubbles’ on the level of philosophical politics. He argues for instance, by making use of i.a. Derrida and Benjamin again, that the assumption that morality and law are functioning in cultures as barriers that divide violence from civility, is too simplistic, because morality and ‘law’ should conceal the potentiality of public violence: not only is ‘law’ once established along violent ways and still shows up traces of its violent origin, ‘law’ also involves potentially a form of violence, for instance in the form of punishment of transgressors. M. concludes this chapter with pretty extensively elaborated arguments on the actual state of liberal democracies and the ways by which these democracies are based on violence and are simultaneously threatened by violence. In the fourth chapter M. deals with the ways in which moral and violent forms of behaviour are always mediated by cultural symbols like flags, statues, political speeches and a mass of other material ‘things’. His basic assumption is that people construct their world out of ‘cognitive niches’, that the information people get in a ‘cognitive niche’ is as matter of course
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always partial and imperfect, that actual ‘lived’ cognitive niches are organized around material ‘things’, and that we may consider these cognitive niches to be birthplaces of morality and—the primary thesis of this book—carriers of violence. (By the way, sometimes, when reading this study, one may come across the suspicion that M. basically argues with the religious idea of ‘original sin’, the idea that evil in the form of potential violence is a kind of inbuilt tendency in the fabric of social life). In an interesting paragraph in this fourth chapter, M. uses some insights of Harry Frankfurt in On Bullshit (2005) in order to underpin his idea that violence works via material mediators: according to M. bullshitting in political cultures can be a mediator for verbal, symbolic, structural and may be also physical forms of violence. In the last paragraph of this chapter M. postulates that also ‘psychic energies’ can be mediators for violence. Working with ideas of, among others,. C.G. Jung en R. Girard, M. tries to make clear that violent behaviours like mobbing and public scape-goating may emerge out of archaic, collectively shared ‘Psychic Energies’. In the fifth chapter M. discusses processes of the fragmentation and individualization of collectively shared moralities. He deals for instance with the question: in what sense a private morality is still a morality. The main problem however which M. addresses in this chapter concerns the shifting relations between morality and violence. May one assume for instance that when criminals, psychopaths, fascists and other ‘violators’ recur to violence, that they have disengaged themselves from morality? In short: is involvement in violence a disengagement from morality? M.’s answer is eventually quite clear. Via extensive discourses on the motives and justifications of criminals, psychopaths and serial killers and via an extensive phenomenological analysis of the ‘fascist state of mind’ (which M. considers to be a still seductive state of mind) M. claims that there cannot exist culturally and morally detached manifestations of violence. Violence is not a purely spontaneous, ‘out of the blue’ (literally out of ‘nothing’) occurring outburst of irrationality. And M. argues that the recurrence to violence by ‘violators’ may for that reason not be interpreted as a disengagement from morality, but almost ever as a reengagement of a new morality. Along this way M. wishes to undermine (again) the idea that violence can not be considered to be something as a counter force of morality: also the recurrence to violence can be a moral action. In the sixth and last chapter M. tackles the theme ‘religion and violence/religious violence’. When he poses the simple and yet somewhat disputable question: ‘Is religion violent?’, it already becomes clear that M. positions himself in the middle of an ongoing debate on religion. M. does not take the position that the question is nonsensical (William T. Cavanaugh) or the position that religion has to be an inherently peaceful (moral) phenomenon (Grace Jantzen), neither the position of radical atheist gravediggers of religion who claim that religion is inherently a violent phenomenon (Richard Dawkins, among others). According to M. religion is a natural phenomenon, that is: a phenomenon that in principle can be evolutionary explained and that may fulfil positive adaptive moral functions (M. refers to, among others. Pascal Boyer for this view). But at the same time, making use of ideas of René Girard and philosopher Hent de Vries M. argues that religion is also an utterly ambivalent phenomenon, a system of moral claims and practices by which at the one hand a salvific explanation of violence can be promised, but by which at the other hand ‘the sacred’, central area of religion, can have violent effects. So, although M. does not take the position of those who consider religion inherently violent, he ponders extensively on the violence of the sacred. He also claims by means of a incisive and devastating (so: ‘violent’?) criticism of John Milbank’s views on religion (in his book Theology and Social Theory, 1990) that religious language may have violent effects, also when this language is dressed in philosophical theories: M. postulates for instance that Milbank’s ‘faith’ (‘I believe in the Church’) is in the end a potentially violent faith (cf. p. 245)!
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Most interesting in this last chapter on religion is that M. addresses a question which every reader of this study will deem to become pressing: may we surmise that the idea of the pervasiveness of violence in the fabric of social (and moral) life, results in the assumption that humans cannot evade violence? In simpler but ‘great’ words: are we trapped in a inherently violent world? It is quite clear that M himself poses this question in a discourse on religion and violence, because religions offer according to him salvation from sin and violence. M. answers this question on the inevitability of violence by at the one hand postulating (again) that ‘getting more moral’ (trying to be a better, ‘moral’ person, striving for a better world, sending moral appeals etc.) will not make our world less violent, and by saying at the other hand—and by using insights of a.o. Levinas—that it is (sometimes) possible to evade spheres of violence. M. concludes his book with the message that philosophers can not and may not give political directives for evading violence, but that insight in the pervasiveness of violence in human life may help to enhance our feelings of responsibility and to evade (sometimes) violent cultural and social tendencies. It will be clear by now that this book, Understanding Violence, is the outcome of on a highly ambitious philosophical project. The book basically is a philosophical attempt to give the reader an almost ‘metamoral awareness about (the) inherent violent nature of the ‘human condition’ (p. 296). It may also be clear that since this book comprises an overwhelming mass of ideas, convictions, and observations on violence and morality, criticism will be definitely possible, for instance criticism regarding M.’s definition of violence, his ‘ecocognitive’ perspectives and methods, his accounts of evolutionary ‘moral’ processes etc. Since however the central theme of this philosophical study points at a multitude of urgent, highly problematic contemporary issues, and since violence as a structural dimension of life is an understudied theme in (moral) philosophy, let’s read, study and discuss this important, thought provoking work!