Violence as a social fact

Authors: Alessandro Salice

Publish Date: 2013/01/11

Volume: 13, Issue: 1, Pages: 161-177

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Abstract

This paper describes a class of social acts called “violent acts” and distinguishes them from damaging acts The former are successfully performed if they are apprehended by the victim while the latter being not social are successful only as long as the intended damage is realized It is argued that violent acts if successful generate a social relation which include the aggressor the victim and if the concomitant damaging act is satisfied the damage itselfPrevious versions of this article were presented at the 27th Wittgenstein Symposium in Kirchberg Austria in August 2004 for the text of this talk cf Salice 2004 at the VI Congress on Collective Intentionality at the University of California Berkeley in July 2008 and at the Doktorandenkolloquium of Hans Bernhard Schmid at the University of Vienna in January 2012 I am deeply indebted to Georg Meggle Hans Bernhard Schmid and in particular to Kirk Ludwig for their valuable suggestions In addition I would like to thank the following people for their helpful comments David Schweikard Luca Tummolini Genki Uemura and Toru Yaegashi I also have to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions It goes without saying that I take full responsibility for any mistake that may be reported here

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