Overview

Human civilization is founded on ethical principles, norms of behaviour that have accumulated over time. Perhaps the oldest of ethical principles is the rejection of violence, which includes the respect for life and for the physical and psychological integrity of others. But, in some circumstances, violence itself can be regarded as ethical – for example, when it is used by states claiming to act in self-defence. In these circumstances, the need to defend oneself against an enemy can transform war from an unacceptable act into a necessary, socially shared and morally sanctioned choice. And it is when violence becomes ethical that we must begin to fear for our future. In the wake of the pandemic, we are witnessing the growing prevalence of aggression and emotionality in social and political life. We find ourselves living in an increasingly impatient and insecure society, which is sceptical of scientific thought and which takes refuge in the irrational. The decline of rationality and the growing prevalence of violence are increasingly common features of a society that has lost touch with the great Enlightenment narrative. We need, argues Bordoni, to rediscover the rationality we have lost and recuperate the positive side of technology.

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9781509561018

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Reviews

"""Carlo Bordoni has written a remarkable book. It should serve as a wakeup call to what is happening in terms of our increasing abandonment of science in favor of technology, which, by the very click-of -the-button nature has disastrously changed the perception of knowledge to mere personal opinions. Because of this imbalance, and its pocketbook nature, we are seeing an irrational drift in the nature of our societies democratic responses, and a revival of the predominance of the emotional which is gaining ground and dangerously altering the very nature of social and political life. Bordoni also warns of the difficulties of putting scattergun beliefs and notional opinions back into any agreed and rational collective order in the years ahead. An informed and challenging book."" Mari Fitzduff, Brandeis University ""Bordoni’s search for an understanding of the paradox of ethical violence – and of many other puzzles of human rationality and irrationality – takes him through many times and places of human history, a wealth of philosophers and others from the ancient Greeks to today’s writers, and a myriad of ideas. This is a book that makes you stop and think after nearly every sentence."" Colin Crouch, University of Warwick ""Ethical Violence is a timely book, a theoretical vade mecum for dark times, simultaneously ambitious and cautious, taking the reader on unusual paths from ancient philosophers to contemporary social scientists, questioning what is taken for granted about the distinction between rationality and irrationality. A needed reflection on the crisis of late modernity."" Didier Fassin, Collège de France and Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton"

"""Carlo Bordoni has written a remarkable book. It should serve as a wakeup call to what is happening in terms of our increasing abandonment of science in favor of technology, which, by the very click-of -the-button nature has disastrously changed the perception of knowledge to mere personal opinions. Because of this imbalance, and its pocketbook nature, we are seeing an irrational drift in the nature of our societies democratic responses, and a revival of the predominance of the emotional which is gaining ground and dangerously altering the very nature of social and political life. Bordoni also warns of the difficulties of putting scattergun beliefs and notional opinions back into any agreed and rational collective order in the years ahead. An informed and challenging book."" Mari Fitzduff, Brandeis University ""Bordoni’s search for an understanding of the paradox of ethical violence – and of many other puzzles of human rationality and irrationality – takes him through many times and places of human history, a wealth of philosophers and others from the ancient Greeks to today’s writers, and a myriad of ideas. This is a book that makes you stop and think after nearly every sentence."" Colin Crouch, University of Warwick"

Author Information

Carlo Bordoni is Professor of Sociology at the University Mercatorum of Rome and the author of Post-Society and State of Crisis (with Zygmunt Bauman).

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