Description
Book SynopsisWe live in a time when we are overwhelmed with talk and images of violence. Whether on television, the internet, films or the video screen, we can t escape representations of actual or fictional violence - another murder, another killing spree in a high school or movie theatre, another action movie filled with images of violence.
Trade Review"A valuable book not only because it recognises the impossibility of timeless criteria for thinking about violence and the naïvety of an appeal to absolute non-violence, but also because it raises questions about the nature of political responsibility."
Review 31 "A major contribution to the seemingly intractable question of violence and nonviolence by one of the greatest philosophers of our time. I cannot recommend it highly enough."
Simon Critchley
"No one can converse with thinkers of the past or present like Richard J. Bernstein does. In the brilliant and timely hermeneutic exercise of this book, he provides us with new ways to understand the phenomenon of violence and its dialectical relation to public power and freedom."
Rainer Forst, Goethe University Frankfurt am MainTable of ContentsAcknowledgments vi
Preface vii
Introduction 1
1 The Aporias of Carl Schmitt 12
2 Walter Benjamin: Divine Violence? 46
3 Hannah Arendt: On Power and Violence 78
4 Frantz Fanon’s Critique of Violence 105
5 Jan Assmann: The Mosaic Distinction and Religious Violence 128
6 Reflections on NonViolence and Violence 159
Notes 185
References 213
Name Index 217
Subject Index 222
