“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Saturday, October 1, 2011

Disturbing Gentleness

That's the title of my nonviolence talk in Tampa. I'm arguing that nonviolence is not simply the absence of something--not at all, all the way down to the ontological level. Rather, nonviolence is a kind of weird presence, a disturbing coexistence with inconsistent beings. Violence is simply the attempt to rid ourselves of an intrinsically disturbing inconsistency and uncanniness.



2 comments:

zareen said...

This sounds excellent. Glad that you're posing nonviolence as something in its own right, rather than as a privation. I've been trying to do this as well. Looking forward to the recording.

bl said...

I'm looking really forward to this. I've seen Zachary's and your advocacy for nonviolence, though I haven't really seen a philosophical argument for it from either of you yet. (Though Zachary I do dig your definition of violence as "the vertical actualization of a power as harm.")

From both nonviolence and not-necessarily-nonviolence (I don't want to label them pro-violence a la the "pro-abortion" label pro-lifers use), I get arguments of tactics. Tactical arguments are fine, but only if you accept utilitarianism in a deep way. I feel like the nonviolence both of you reference is more cosmic, philosophical, and deep.

A buddhist utilitarian told me that nonviolence is always the path, though at times nonviolent action may seem violent on the surface. If a being is in torture, it may be right and nonviolent to end their life. If a malevolent tyrant is oppressing a nation, rebellion using fighting may be nonviolent. This pushes the meaning of nonviolence to the brink for me.