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Saggio sulla violenza
État, arme, passion, douleur, torture, exécution, combat, chasse, massacre, destruction des choses : en quelque douze courts chapitres, Wolfgang Sofsky traite des formes diverses de la violence contemporaine.
Pour ce faire, il recourt à l'un des procédés classiques de la philosophie politique, de Thomas Hobbes et Jean-Jacques Rousseau à John Rawls : la petite fiction qui dit, en un bref récit imaginaire, l'instauration originaire d'un ordre et de la violence nouvelle dont il est inéluctablement porteur. Car on trouve dans ce Traité la même interrogation – déplacée, élargie – qui anime la réflexion de Wolfgang Sofsky : pourquoi, comment la violence, sous les formes les plus variées, accompagne-t-elle le développement de la culture puisque force est de constater que celle-ci nourrit celle-là ?
Ici, nulle thérapeutique lénifiante n’est proposée. Il y est simplement, uniquement, question d’une clinique : celle, sombre mais décapante, des violences de la culture aujourd’hui.
Pour ce faire, il recourt à l'un des procédés classiques de la philosophie politique, de Thomas Hobbes et Jean-Jacques Rousseau à John Rawls : la petite fiction qui dit, en un bref récit imaginaire, l'instauration originaire d'un ordre et de la violence nouvelle dont il est inéluctablement porteur. Car on trouve dans ce Traité la même interrogation – déplacée, élargie – qui anime la réflexion de Wolfgang Sofsky : pourquoi, comment la violence, sous les formes les plus variées, accompagne-t-elle le développement de la culture puisque force est de constater que celle-ci nourrit celle-là ?
Ici, nulle thérapeutique lénifiante n’est proposée. Il y est simplement, uniquement, question d’une clinique : celle, sombre mais décapante, des violences de la culture aujourd’hui.
- GenresSociology
195 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
3 people are currently reading
60 people want to read
About the author
Wolfgang Sofsky
36 books5 followersWolfgang Sofsky, geboren 1952, lehrte als Professor für Soziologie an den Universitäten Göttingen und Erfurt. Seit 2001 arbeitet er als Privatgelehrter, Autor und politischer Kommentator. 1993 erhielt er den Geschwister-Scholl-Preis für »Die Ordnung des Terrors. Seine Essays sind regelmäßig in der deutschsprachigen Presse zu lesen und im Rundfunk zu hören.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 14, 2017
"Poiché l’uomo può immaginarsi tutto, è capace di tutto. [...] Nonostante tutti gli sforzi morali, tutte le fatiche per domare la brutalità, il male è eterno. Gli strati più primitivi dell’anima sono ciò che è realmente immortale." (p. 194)
April 5, 2020
In this book Sofsky tells a story of violence as a part of culture and human nature. If there is a culture, there is always the urge to be violent. The stronger a culture becomes with its orders, norms and structures, in which you need to fit in, the bigger the urge to liberate yourself with violence from this culture. This means destroying everything that restricted you in the cultural life: destroying houses, symbols, books as bodies of culture, but also bodies of human beings. Nowadays the corona-situation is proofing this right: The rule of not being able to leave your home increases domestic violence. The tighter the net is getting the more you need to break free.
Sofsky has a radical world view of human beings: Civilization is for him not a progress. Even in the best developed cultures and civilizations violence is included. Only the forms and places of violence change, but violence is always there. Freedom and happiness can’t be part of the culture.
Violence is inherent to culture. With the beginning of civilization human beings begin to produce equipment for work, which can always be used as a weapon. The knife to cut your food, is the same knife to kill your neighbor.
Civilization grows to prevent violence. People want laws to prevent violence. There is police to stop violence. At the same time one main part of culture is to produce weapons and means of war to prevent violence, e.g. the atomic bomb can destroy everything, but is meant to be a defense. The progress of technology supports directly the development of new weapons. If you want to defend yourself, you need to create weapons that can destroy others.
So, the conclusion lies near: Violence is not a regression, a relapse to barbarism, but is rather a product of culture, a result of culture.
Culture has the same roots as violence, both try to overcome mortality. Culture with building something that endures the life, with giving your life a sense. While at the same time: During the act of killing, you experience a special sort of passion and freedom: You are like a god: Deciding about death and about life.
It’s important to keep in mind that the book is more a tale than a scientific study of violence so expect more practical examples than arguments for his statements. But this made it interesting at the same time: Sometimes I read statements, I was truly against it intuitively, but explaining why he was wrong, on a rational basis, was challenging.
In every chapter he describes a different aspect of violence: From the spectator to torture to massacre to execution. Some parts didn’t bring up something new to me. Some parts were written that easily and obviously, while at the same time the book’s theme was shrieking, which made the topic even harder.
One chapter that resonated with me was about the victim. Because usually if you read about an act of violence, you always try to understand the behavior of the perpetrator. Our focus lies there instead on the victim. This part is one of the strongest of the book. And this focus proofs our interest in violence itself.
Now I am heading to Hannah Arendt.
Sofsky has a radical world view of human beings: Civilization is for him not a progress. Even in the best developed cultures and civilizations violence is included. Only the forms and places of violence change, but violence is always there. Freedom and happiness can’t be part of the culture.
Violence is inherent to culture. With the beginning of civilization human beings begin to produce equipment for work, which can always be used as a weapon. The knife to cut your food, is the same knife to kill your neighbor.
Civilization grows to prevent violence. People want laws to prevent violence. There is police to stop violence. At the same time one main part of culture is to produce weapons and means of war to prevent violence, e.g. the atomic bomb can destroy everything, but is meant to be a defense. The progress of technology supports directly the development of new weapons. If you want to defend yourself, you need to create weapons that can destroy others.
So, the conclusion lies near: Violence is not a regression, a relapse to barbarism, but is rather a product of culture, a result of culture.
Culture has the same roots as violence, both try to overcome mortality. Culture with building something that endures the life, with giving your life a sense. While at the same time: During the act of killing, you experience a special sort of passion and freedom: You are like a god: Deciding about death and about life.
It’s important to keep in mind that the book is more a tale than a scientific study of violence so expect more practical examples than arguments for his statements. But this made it interesting at the same time: Sometimes I read statements, I was truly against it intuitively, but explaining why he was wrong, on a rational basis, was challenging.
In every chapter he describes a different aspect of violence: From the spectator to torture to massacre to execution. Some parts didn’t bring up something new to me. Some parts were written that easily and obviously, while at the same time the book’s theme was shrieking, which made the topic even harder.
One chapter that resonated with me was about the victim. Because usually if you read about an act of violence, you always try to understand the behavior of the perpetrator. Our focus lies there instead on the victim. This part is one of the strongest of the book. And this focus proofs our interest in violence itself.
Now I am heading to Hannah Arendt.
August 6, 2025
Me aha ayudado a comprender muchas cosas y a tener otra perspectiva completamente diferente sobre la violencia, el porqué existe y la casi nula tolerancia qué le tenemos a ella pero es contraproducente el que siempre sea protagonista en cada etapa de nuestra vida, sin tener evolución en el diálogo y los acuerdos para mejorar la convivencia y existencia humana.
December 26, 2015
violence is not the antithesis of culture, it is part of culture, entangled in the contradictory nature of human desires and and aspirations. it is not nature that fosters cruelty, it is humanity itself, the human condition. sofsky, known for his study on the nazi concentration camps, again uses his preferred medium of "thick description" in order to address the problem of violence on a more general level. if asked, i would describe the book as a phenomenology of autothelic violence.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews