The Multiformity of Violence [Editorial Essay]

Preview: The category of violence is unavoidably ambiguous, and the very moment we make an attempt at clarification or disambiguation an acute question arises, from what perspective should it be considered, philosophical, psychological, sociological, anthropological, or pedagogical? We then realize that even if we decided on one perspective, it is unavoidably intertwined with the others, which opens up a manifold field of possible approaches. Thus, the agenda adopted here is modest: to present a specific spectrum of accounts of violence and reveal its multiple facets that are inscribed both in the existential, individual dimension and in a socio-cultural context. The presented perspective depends on each individual author’s stance and the direction of her/his analyses. The path we have chosen in our considerations leads from violence in political power relations to symbolic forms of violence – from theoretical accounts of political oppression to descriptions of ontological, metaphoric or symbolic forms of violence, from Nietzsche to Foucault, from de Sade to Agamben, and to Arendt.