| Description |
xxvi, 357 pages ; 24 cm |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 305-342) and index. |
| Summary |
"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 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."--Publisher information. |
| Contents |
The point -- 1. Why are people violent? : What we mean by "violence" ; Natural aversion to killing and hurting ; What we mean by "moral" ; Conflicting moralities and post-hoc justifications ; Pain and suffering are not intrinsically evil ; Forerunners of virtuous violence theory and how it goes beyond them ; Scope: What we are and are not discussing ; Illegitimate, immoral violence -- 2. Violence is morally motivated to regulate social relationships : Fundamental ways of relating: the four elementary relational models ; Cultural implementations of universal models ; Constitutive phases ; Metarelational models -- 3. Defense, punishment, and vengeance : Defense and punishment ; Vengeance ; Metarelational retribution ; Violence due to conflicting models -- 4. The right and obligation of parents, police, kings, and gods to violently enforce their authority : Corporal punishment of children ; Violence in the military ; Violent policing ; Violence by gods ; Explanations of accidents, misfortune, and suffering ; Trial by ordeal and combat ; Metarelational aspects of authority-ranking violence -- 5. Contests of violence: fighting for respect and solidarity : Knighthood in medieval Europe ; Gang and criminal cultures ; Fighting among and alongside the gods ; Sports ; Fighting among youths ; Metarelational aspects of fighting for respect and solidarity -- 6. Honor and shame : Guest-host relationship ; Honor killing ; Honor violence in the United States ; Honor among thieves ; How the metarelational honor model organized the violence of the Trojan War -- 7. War : The motives of leaders and nations ; The moral motives that move soldiers to go to war ; Killing under orders ; Killing for your comrades ; Extremist violence and terrorism -- 8. Violence to obey, honor, and connect with the gods : Gods command violence ; Sacrificing animals and humans to the gods ; Self-sacrifice to the gods ; China ; American Indians ; Christian monastic asceticism ; Christian and Muslim self-flagellation ; Theoretical elaboration -- 9. On relational morality: what are its boundaries, what guides it, and how is it computed? : Defining the moral space ; Distinguishing between moral and immoral relationship regulation ; What are the cultural preos delimiting violence? ; Going beyond the culturally prescribed limits to violence ; Is morally motivated violence rational and deliberative or emotional and impulsive? -- 10. The prevailing wisdom : Are most killers sadists and psychopaths? ; Are killers rational? ; Are killers impulsive? ; Are killers mistaken? -- 11. Intimate partner violence : Intimate partner violence is widespread ; Intimate partner violence is morally motivated to regulate relationships -- 12. Rape : Rape in war ; Gang rape -- 13. Making them one with us: initiation, clitoridectomy, infibulation, circumcision, and castration : Initiation rites ; Circumcision and excision ; Eunuch opportunities -- 14. Torture : Motives of leaders who order torture ; Motives of torturers ; Motives of the public that approves of the use of torture -- 15. Homicide: he had it coming : How many homicides are morally motivated? ; Mass murder ; Homicides committed by the mentally ill ; Metarelational motives for homicide -- 16. Ethnic violence and genocide : Violence against African-Americans in the US South ; Genocide ; Null attitudes and dehumanization in the perpetuation of mass violence -- 17. Self-harm and suicide : Non-suicidal self-injury ; Suicide -- 18. Violent bereavement : Why are people sometimes enraged by death? -- 19. Non-bodily violence: robbery : Robbery for equality-matching vengeance ; Robbery for authority-ranking status -- 20. The specific form of violence for constituting each relational model : Communal sharing violence: indexical consubstantial assimilation ; Authority-ranking violence: iconic physics of magnitudes and dimensions ; Equality-matching violence: concrete ostensive operations ; Market-pricing violence: arbitrary conventional symbolism -- 21. Why do people use violence to constitute their social relationships, rather than using some other medium? : Criticality -- 22. Metarelational models that inhibit or provide alternatives to violence -- 23. How do we end violence? : Civil disobedience and hunger strikes ; Urban gang homicide -- 24. Evolutionary, philosophical, legal, psychological, and research implications : Evolution ; Philosophy ; Law ; Psychology ; Research -- The dénouement : What do we mean by "most" violence? ; The need for general explanations. |
| Subject |
Violence.
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Violence -- Moral and ethical aspects.
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Violence -- ethics.
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Violence -- ethnology.
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Violence -- history.
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Psychology, Social.
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PSYCHOLOGY -- Social Psychology.
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Violence. (OCoLC)fst01167224
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Violence -- Moral and ethical aspects.
(OCoLC)fst01167234
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| Added Author |
Rai, Tage Shakti, author.
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| ISBN |
9781107458918 (pbk.) |
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1107458919 (pbk.) |
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9781107088207 (hardback) |
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1107088208 (hardback) |
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