Zagadnienie przemocy w filozofii Hannah Arendt

Abstract

H. Arendt analyses the topic of violence using many perspectives. In her books we can find the following threads: violence as a tool of maintaining control, violence as a dominant com-ponent of war and revolution, war and revolution as the two main issues of the contemporary world, wars – justified and unjustified, reasonable and unreasonable violence, violence as a method of solving quarrels involving values. Arendt explains the anti-political character of violence, trying to answer the following question: why is violence a marginal issue in po-litics? Arendt also perceives violence as a challenge for humankind. She analyses the conse-quences of violence for men and women in the world they are placed in. Furthermore, she enquires into the sources of violence in totalitarian regimes as well as into various kinds of violence. It is important to mention that she does not find all of these kinds unjustified. Her further research concerns the antique way of understanding violence as a competition and a form of rivalry through which men and women move towards self-improvement. In this case violence is necessary and death appears as a consequence of weakness. There is always a risk of defeat inherent in rivalry. Last but not least – the philosopher left an insightful study of civil disobedience, which constitutes both a follow-up and a supplement to her considera-tions on the topic of violence. Civil disobedience was construed as an expression of freedom, in which men and women renounce violence. Despite being driven by an urge to rethink everything anew, civil desobedience, is still fundamentally different from revolution, al-though they both share the feature of illegality.