Violence and political order - philosophical investigations on the concept of violence and on the justification of using violence

• Applicant: Dr. Dietrich Schotte
• Subject Area: Practical Philosophy
• Term: from 2014 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 261781842

The justification and acception of a state is based on at least one benefit it provides: that it prevents unrestrained and unpredictable violence from happening by the institution of the state's monopoly of violence. That implies, however, that institutions and representatives of the state retain the exclusive right to use violence.Now, it remains a somewhat open question, to which degree institutions and representatives of the state possess the right to violence; especially so, since in reality said representatives over and over again use violence in way that can only be described as "illegitimate:" because its victims are those that should be protected against rather then subjected to violence by said representatives. An example are the actions of some policemen in the course of political demonstrations.The underlying problem that is merely highlighted by, but not restricted to this question centers on the justification of using violence as such: it is notoriously unclear when using violence is allowed, especially so when it comes to violence used by groups or institutions.The main aim of this project is that definition of clear concepts of personal, collective and institutional violence, respectively. The second, subordinate aim is the discussion of arguments that are supposed to justify the state's monopoly of violence. It is predominantly the widely accepted thesis that the state's monopoly of violence is the necessary condition to guarantee public peace and hence to be rationally accepted that is criticized as both insufficient and contradictory. On the one hand, it usually is unclear what exactly is meant by the seemingly innocent talk of a "monopoly of violence" (which, to be precise, refers to institutionalized violence); on the other hand, it is highly dubious why an institution should be able to claim legitimacy that does not prevent all violence from happening but only privatized, non-state violence - by threatening and applying violence itself!

• DFG Programme: Research Grants