Full-text resources of CEJSH and other databases are now available in the new Library of Science.
Visit https://bibliotekanauki.pl

PL EN


2017 | 1 | 1 | 39-60

Article title

From Moral Annihilation to Luciferism: Aspects of a Phenomenology of Violence

Authors

Content

Title variants

Languages of publication

EN

Abstracts

EN
Do the various ascriptions of “violence,” e.g., to rape, logical reasoning, racist legislation, unqualified statements, institutions of class and/or gender inequity, etc., mean something identically the same, something analogous, or equivocal and context-bound? This paper argues for both an analogous sense as well as an exemplary essence and finds support in Aristotle’s theory of anger as, as Sokolowski has put it, a form of moral annihilation, culminating in a level of rage that crosses a threshold. Here we adopt Sartre’s analysis of the “threshold of violence” as indicating a basic “existential” possibility wherein persons may and do adopt a posture of anti-god. This has considerable symmetry with the mythic and theological figure in the Abrahamic religions who is called “Lucifer.” This personage, at a unique timeless moment, found himself empowered to assume the right to exercise an infinite will-act which tolerated no superior normative perspective. I argue that this mythic stance is a live option for persons. Further, modern day nation-state military preparedness, where nuclear weaponry is a major tool of foreign policy, is a way of putting on ice and holding in reserve, but button ready, the onto-logical madness of the Luciferian moment.

Year

Volume

1

Issue

1

Pages

39-60

Physical description

Dates

published
2017-09-02

Contributors

author
  • Indiana University, Bloomington Indiana, USA

References

  • Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theolgiae.
  • Aristotle, Rhetoric.
  • Aristotle. Metaphysics.
  • Aristotle. Nichomachean Ethics.
  • Blondel, Maurice. La Philosophie et l’Esprit chrétien, Vol. I. Paris: PUF, 1946.
  • Darwall, Stephen. The Second- Person Standpoint. London: Oxford University Press, 1968.
  • Gilligan, James. Preventing Violence. London: Thanes & Hudson, 2001.
  • Gilligan, James. Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic. New York: Random House, Vintage, 1996.
  • Hart, James G. Who One Is, Book 2: Existenz and Transcendental Phenomenology. Dordrecht: Springer, 2009.
  • Hart, James G. The Person and the Common Life. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1992.
  • Hart, James G. Who One is, Book 1: A Meontology of the “I”. Dordrecht: Springer, 2009.
  • Henry, Michel. C’est moi, la verité. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1996.
  • Henry, Michel. From Communism to Capitalism. Translated by Scott Davidson. London: Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2014.
  • Husserl, Edmund. Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie, Husserliana XLII. Dordrecht: Springer, 2014.
  • Kierkegaard, Søren. Sickness Unto Death.
  • Kohut, Heinz. The Restoration of the Self. New York: International Universities Press, 1977.
  • Kraut, Richard, Aristotle on the Human Good. Princeton University Press, 1989.
  • Lavelle, Louis. Dilemma of Narcissus. Translated by William Gairdner. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1973.
  • Plato, Republic.
  • Ricoeur, Paul. History and Truth. Translated by Charles Kelbley. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1965.
  • Sartre, Jean-Paul. Notebooks for an Ethics. Translated by David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
  • Sokolowski, Robert. “Honor, Anger, and Belittlement in Aristotle’s Ethics.” Studia Gilsonia 3 (2014): 221–240.
  • Sokolowski, Robert. Moral Action a Phenomenological Study. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985.
  • Staudigl, Michael. Phänomenologie der Gewalt. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2015.

Document Type

Publication order reference

YADDA identifier

bwmeta1.element.desklight-7e9c59be-f796-4a42-8801-918ae739d2a3
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.