Review of Hannah Arendt's On Violence

Arendt http://www.monitor.upeace.org/archive.cfm?id_article=413 In relation to the justifications and rationalizations that are generally and normatively used to legitimise some forms of violence and delegitimize other forms of violence, Arendt sets out to show in her book On Violence that these traditional justifications and rationalisations are false. She also dismisses the utilitarian arguments that are made for rationalizing violence in relation to its efficiency and the effectiveness of the use of violence in any conflict situation. She identifies as false the idea that no alternative or substitute has yet been discovered for the use of violence. What are the implications of her approach? There are in my analysis two sets of implications. The first set of implications of her belief is the following, she believes that no breakthrough in our understanding of violence will be possible unless and until we face up to these false justifications and false rationalizations. The second set of implications arises from the narratives we tell ourselves about war and violence. For example, the mega-narrative we tell ourselves about the Second World War as a crusade of good versus evil is false. This matters, because most of the justifications that are given by political leaders and their ideologists for the pursuit of the culture of violence in the second part of the 20th century and early part of the 21st century are based on these genuine but false beliefs in such simple mega-narratives. On Violence by Hannah Arendt was published in 1969 and is in many ways a child of its time reflecting the issues of the 1960’s and questions, arising from the cold war, the nuclear arms race and the American war in Vietnam, but it should also be seen as a significant contribution to the debate on the understanding of the question of violence both in society and in man as individuals entities. The work reflects the burning issues of the middle part of the