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Virtuous Violence: Hurting and Killing to Create, Sustain, End, and Honor Social Relationships
What motivates violence? How can good and compassionate people hurt and kill others or themselves? Why are people much more likely to kill or assault people they know well, rather than strangers? This provocative and radical book shows that people mostly commit violence because they genuinely feel that it is the morally right thing to do. In perpetrators' minds, violence may be the morally necessary and proper way to regulate social relationships according to cultural precepts, precedents, and prototypes. These moral motivations apply equally to the violence of the heroes of the Iliad, to parents smacking their child, and to many modern murders and everyday acts of violence. Virtuous Violence presents a wide-ranging exploration of violence across different cultures and historical eras, demonstrating how people feel obligated to violently create, sustain, end, and honor social relationships in order to make them right, according to morally motivated cultural ideals.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published November 27, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
September 13, 2017
Not a review - but here's a presentation given by the author, covers the main ideas. (Link is a pdf.)
http://www.doktorikool.ut.ee/kstt/orb...
http://www.doktorikool.ut.ee/kstt/orb...
November 19, 2015
A fascinating book that raises the question that is not very often explored by people, which is that pretty much all violence is carried out because the perpetrator believes it is the right thing to do. In the eyes of the attacker, the violence is virtuous. They explore how violence is one response to maintain, control, end, or create social relationships and cultural systems. In an honor-based culture, it is expected that honor killings would be carried out to rebalence certain social relationships. A father who employs corporal punishment on his little son might be doing it for the son's own good, or be doing it because the relationships between the father and their pastor, or the father and God, is also at risk if he fails to beat his son. The husband beats the wife to restore the hierarchical family relationship or to undo perceived shame. We cannot understand violence from a perspective that begins with the individual, or puts the individual at the center. Violence is about the maintenance of social and cultural relationships. A lot of fascinating insights here into the origins of violence.
February 20, 2018
A counterpoint to the claim that "violence is dehumanizing." The theory is unorthodox and yet feels obvious and commonsensical once it is pointed out and absorbed. I posted my summary to Dead Men Blogging.
October 7, 2021
Could be an exciting book. He makes sections nearly unreadable with his abbreviations. Page 280: "That relationship may be compassionate CS unity, protective AR hierarchy, fair EM quality, or utilitarian MP proportionality , so long as...." Is that supposed to be intelligible? There are definitions 260 pages earlier, should you be able to remember them.
October 22, 2022
Excellent book on the motives of violence and how to decrease violence.
Nice quotes:
- Pinker: "Moralization is the original sin of the behavioral sciences. Scientists of human nature – psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, geneticists, neurobiologists – must be committed, as scientists, to describing the world as it is rather than as we wish it to be. But it’s irresistible to read our morals into reality and describe the world as if it strove to implement our values. Nowhere has this fallacy been more damaging than in the attempt to understand violence."
- Pinker: "Having myself tried to make sense of 10 thousand years of human violence, I came to a conclusion that is very similar to the one that Alan Fiske and Tage Rai present in this book: most perpetrators of violence are neither pathological nor self-interested but are convinced that what they are doing is in the service of a higher moral good."
- Pinker: "the motives for violence generally grow out of a relationship between the perpetrator and the victim, or their relationships with third parties. The perpetrator is violent to make the relationship right – to make the relationship what it ought to be according to his or her cultural implementations of universal relational moral principles. That is, most violence is morally motivated. Morality is about regulating social relationships, and violence is one way to regulate relationships. ... Most violence is morally motivated. People do not simply justify or excuse their violent actions after the fact; at the moment they act, people intend to cause harm or death to someone they feel should suffer or die."
- "Most previous theories of violence and most previous descriptive theories of morality have been derived from the explicit or implicit folk theories of the theorist’s specific culture, together with the theorist’s experiences in his or her own culture. Most theorists have had very limited knowledge and less understanding of other cultures, and none have systematically explored their ideas across the wide range of cultures and times. Hence, in this book we have made every effort to collect observations from around the world and across history."
Nice quotes:
- Pinker: "Moralization is the original sin of the behavioral sciences. Scientists of human nature – psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, geneticists, neurobiologists – must be committed, as scientists, to describing the world as it is rather than as we wish it to be. But it’s irresistible to read our morals into reality and describe the world as if it strove to implement our values. Nowhere has this fallacy been more damaging than in the attempt to understand violence."
- Pinker: "Having myself tried to make sense of 10 thousand years of human violence, I came to a conclusion that is very similar to the one that Alan Fiske and Tage Rai present in this book: most perpetrators of violence are neither pathological nor self-interested but are convinced that what they are doing is in the service of a higher moral good."
- Pinker: "the motives for violence generally grow out of a relationship between the perpetrator and the victim, or their relationships with third parties. The perpetrator is violent to make the relationship right – to make the relationship what it ought to be according to his or her cultural implementations of universal relational moral principles. That is, most violence is morally motivated. Morality is about regulating social relationships, and violence is one way to regulate relationships. ... Most violence is morally motivated. People do not simply justify or excuse their violent actions after the fact; at the moment they act, people intend to cause harm or death to someone they feel should suffer or die."
- "Most previous theories of violence and most previous descriptive theories of morality have been derived from the explicit or implicit folk theories of the theorist’s specific culture, together with the theorist’s experiences in his or her own culture. Most theorists have had very limited knowledge and less understanding of other cultures, and none have systematically explored their ideas across the wide range of cultures and times. Hence, in this book we have made every effort to collect observations from around the world and across history."
August 16, 2022
This is no easy read for certain.
Each chapter basically goes like this: identify a certain kind of violence, show examples across several cultures, times periods, governments, etc and break down how a person or a people or a government can decide that type of violence is justified.
It's so clinical in places it can get really disconcerting, but the conclusions they come to are enlightening but kinda shocking how much Fiske and Rai can define pretty much every aspect of humanity with different forms of violence.
Each chapter basically goes like this: identify a certain kind of violence, show examples across several cultures, times periods, governments, etc and break down how a person or a people or a government can decide that type of violence is justified.
It's so clinical in places it can get really disconcerting, but the conclusions they come to are enlightening but kinda shocking how much Fiske and Rai can define pretty much every aspect of humanity with different forms of violence.
April 27, 2023
I’m giving this a 5 for research and content, but it is written in a dry, academic style. If it was written in a more accessible, user friendly way, I think it would’ve gotten the attention that it deserves and help society reframe the causes and thus, (hopefully) some efforts to combat the epidemic of violence.
July 23, 2017
Very interesting theory backed up with plenty of examples. A bit too many abbreviations and neologisms. Parts of the book felt most natural to skim read.
December 8, 2021
At the least, a readable and provocative polemic.
January 3, 2023
العنف الفاضل
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في كل ثقافة ، يشعر بعض الناس أحيانًا بأن من حقهم أخلاقيًا أو أنهم مطالبون بإيذاء أو قتل الآخرين. المبادرات العنيفة ، والتضحية البشرية ، والعقاب البدني ، والانتقام ، وضرب الأزواج ، وتعذيب الأعداء ، والتطهير العرقي والإبادة الجماعية ، وجرائم الشرف ، والقتل ، والفنون القتالية ، والعديد من أشكال العنف الأخرى عادة ما تكون ذات دوافع أخلاقية. الحقيقة هي أن الناس غالبًا ما يشعرون - ويحكمون صراحةً - على أنه من الجيد في العديد من السياقات ممارسة هذه الأنواع من العنف ضدّ الآخرين: يعتقد الناس أنه في كثير من الحالات لا يمكن تبرير إيذاء الآخرين أو قتلهم فحسب ، بل إنه شرعي تمامًا .
علاوة على ذلك ، غالبًا ما يعتبر الناس أن ممارسة الآخرين للعنف ضد أطراف ثالثة أمر يستحق الثناء أخلاقيًا - وفي بعض الأحيان يعترفون أو حتى يقدرون أخلاق العنف الذي يمارس ضدهم. نتمنى ألا يكون هذا صحيحًا - فنحن نبغضه. لكن هذا صحيح ، لذا لفهم العنف أو الحد منه ، يجب أن نعترف بجذوره الأخلاقية. معظم العنف ذو دوافع أخلاقية. الناس لا يبررون أفعالهم العنيفة بعد وقوع الواقعة ؛ في اللحظة التي يتصرفون فيها ، بل يعتزم الأشخاص التسبب في ضرر أو موت شخص ما يشعرون أنه يجب أن يعاني أو يموت. أي ، يتم دفع الناس إلى العنف عندما يشعرون أنه لتنظيم علاقات اجتماعية معينة ، فإن فرض المعاناة أو الموت أمر ضروري وطبيعي وشرعي ومرغوب فيه ويتم التغاضي عنه والإعجاب به وتبريره أخلاقياً. باختصار ، معظم العنف هو ممارسة للحقوق والواجبات الأخلاقية. من خلال العمل في إطار نظرية النماذج العلائقية ونظرية تنظيم العلاقات ، فإن أطروحتنا تقول : أن الناس لديهم دوافع أخلاقية للقيام بالعنف نسمي نظريتنا هذه ؛ نظرية العنف الفاضل.
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Alan Page Fiske
Virtuous Violence
Translated By #Maher_Razouk
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في كل ثقافة ، يشعر بعض الناس أحيانًا بأن من حقهم أخلاقيًا أو أنهم مطالبون بإيذاء أو قتل الآخرين. المبادرات العنيفة ، والتضحية البشرية ، والعقاب البدني ، والانتقام ، وضرب الأزواج ، وتعذيب الأعداء ، والتطهير العرقي والإبادة الجماعية ، وجرائم الشرف ، والقتل ، والفنون القتالية ، والعديد من أشكال العنف الأخرى عادة ما تكون ذات دوافع أخلاقية. الحقيقة هي أن الناس غالبًا ما يشعرون - ويحكمون صراحةً - على أنه من الجيد في العديد من السياقات ممارسة هذه الأنواع من العنف ضدّ الآخرين: يعتقد الناس أنه في كثير من الحالات لا يمكن تبرير إيذاء الآخرين أو قتلهم فحسب ، بل إنه شرعي تمامًا .
علاوة على ذلك ، غالبًا ما يعتبر الناس أن ممارسة الآخرين للعنف ضد أطراف ثالثة أمر يستحق الثناء أخلاقيًا - وفي بعض الأحيان يعترفون أو حتى يقدرون أخلاق العنف الذي يمارس ضدهم. نتمنى ألا يكون هذا صحيحًا - فنحن نبغضه. لكن هذا صحيح ، لذا لفهم العنف أو الحد منه ، يجب أن نعترف بجذوره الأخلاقية. معظم العنف ذو دوافع أخلاقية. الناس لا يبررون أفعالهم العنيفة بعد وقوع الواقعة ؛ في اللحظة التي يتصرفون فيها ، بل يعتزم الأشخاص التسبب في ضرر أو موت شخص ما يشعرون أنه يجب أن يعاني أو يموت. أي ، يتم دفع الناس إلى العنف عندما يشعرون أنه لتنظيم علاقات اجتماعية معينة ، فإن فرض المعاناة أو الموت أمر ضروري وطبيعي وشرعي ومرغوب فيه ويتم التغاضي عنه والإعجاب به وتبريره أخلاقياً. باختصار ، معظم العنف هو ممارسة للحقوق والواجبات الأخلاقية. من خلال العمل في إطار نظرية النماذج العلائقية ونظرية تنظيم العلاقات ، فإن أطروحتنا تقول : أن الناس لديهم دوافع أخلاقية للقيام بالعنف نسمي نظريتنا هذه ؛ نظرية العنف الفاضل.
.
Alan Page Fiske
Virtuous Violence
Translated By #Maher_Razouk
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews