Hannah Arendt died this day in 1975. As her death falls during the 16 days of Orange the World which aims to end violence against women and girls across the world, it's worth noting that Arendt wrote a slim book 'On Violence'. Although she doesn't define the word she, nonetheless, gives many examples of violence that have occurred throughout the world.
It started me thinking: What picture comes to mind when someone says the word violence?
I would guess that you thought of extreme physical force to cause harm.
Does it have to be physical?
Does it have to be intentional to count as violence? For instance, suppose you wave your hands in front of someone in such a way that it means they think you could strike them because of your physical proximity. Now suppose you do hit them but claim it was unintentional. The fact that you were physically waving your hands close to their body is cause for concern. It's one thing to talk with your hands. Most people do but they do so in a confined way by keeping their hands and arms within their own body space. They do not invade someone else's.
As I mentioned in my Philosophy Fluency podcast series, Season 1, episode 10, and expand on here, violence can also be verbal, written, psychological, technological, socio-economic, unnecessary, reckless violence, sexual, domestic, state and war violence. Perhaps there are more forms of violence I haven't mentioned. In all cases, the result of the violence is to cause maximum harm, emotional distress and trauma.
So the assumption is that violence is intentional because it's impossible to accidentally cause such traumatic harm to another human being. Violence is fuelled by hate which often springs from bigotry, prejudice and discrimination.
Jews (and gays) have often been at the receiving end of such hatred which resulted in the Holocaust. Such hatred, discrimination, and prejudice exists still in institutions as well as in communities. Arendt gives a shocking account of this in her seminal book 'The Origins of Totalitarianism'. This is a must-read, especially now. It makes for an emotional read and one has to pause to recover from time to time because some of what she writes shocks one. Arendt powerfully presents the historical past so that one is gripped but horrified by what one learns. How can one not know all this?
I'll be dipping in and discussing parts of these books which I'm reading at the moment. It's not the first time I've read parts of her Totalitarianism book, but my previous reads have been literally just dipping in whereas now I'm slowly reading and thinking about the text. I'm struck that Arendt can write this book and it's published and remains so and is well received. But you can say the same thing today and you're perceived as controversial, if not worse! What's happened to the world? What's happened to humans not caring how they treat others? Why has violence reared its ugly head again? How can we stop violence, in all its forms, once and for all? When will hate disappear and be replaced with love? #orangetheworld
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