Editing Violence (section)

== Philosophical perspectives ==
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Some philosophers have argued that any interpretation of reality is intrinsically violent.{{efn|name=knowledge|'any interpretation of reality is always a form of violence in the sense that knowledge "can only be a violation of the things to be known" ... Several philosophers following [[Nietzsche]], [[Heidegger]], [[Foucault]], and [[Derrida]] have emphasized and explicated this fundamental violence.'<ref name="foucault">{{cite book|author=Johanna Oksala|title=Foucault, Politics, and Violence|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wQzaok_Y-jgC&pg=PR1|year=2012|publisher=Northwestern University Press|isbn=978-0810128026|pages=1–}}</ref> }} [[Slavoj Žižek]] in his book ''Violence'' stated that "something violent is the very symbolization of a thing."{{Citation needed|date=December 2023}} An [[ontology|ontological]] perspective considers the harm inflicted by the very interpretation of the world as a form of violence that is distinct from physical violence in that it is possible to avoid physical violence whereas some [[Ontology|ontological]] violence is intrinsic to all knowledge.{{efn|"While the ontological violence of language does, in significant ways, sustain, enable, and encourage physical violence, it is a serious mistake to conflate them. [...] Violence is understood to be ineliminable in the first sense, and this leads to its being treated as a fundamental in the second sense, too.""<ref name="foucault"/>{{rp|36}}}}{{Citation needed|date=December 2023}}

Both [[Michel Foucault|Foucault]] and [[Hannah Arendt|Arendt]] considered the relationship between [[Power (social and political)|power]] and violence but concluded that while related they are distinct.<ref name="foucault" />{{rp|46}}

In [[feminist philosophy]], [[epistemic injustice|epistemic violence]] is the act of causing harm by an inability to understand the conversation of others due to ignorance. Some philosophers think this will harm marginalized groups.{{efn|name=epistemic|"Epistemic violence in testimony is a refusal, intentional or unintentional, of an  audience  to  communicatively  reciprocate  a  linguistic  exchange  owing  to pernicious  ignorance"<ref name="Dotson 2011 pp. 236–257">{{cite journal | last=Dotson | first=Kristie | title=Tracking Epistemic Violence, Tracking Practices of Silencing | journal=Hypatia | publisher=Cambridge University Press (CUP) | volume=26 | issue=2 | year=2011 | issn=0887-5367 | doi=10.1111/j.1527-2001.2011.01177.x | pages=236–57| s2cid=144313735 }}</ref>}}{{Citation needed|date=December 2023}}

[[Brad Evans (author)|Brad Evans]] states that violence "represents a violation in the very conditions constituting what it means to be human as such", "is always an attack upon a person's [[dignity]], their sense of [[self]]hood, and their future", and "is both an ontological crime ... and a form of political ruination".<ref>[https://www.historiesofviolence.com/philosophy The Histories of Violence project]</ref>

In a more general sense, [[Robert L. Holmes]] argues that while specific definitions of ''violence'' per se may continue to elude mankind, it is nonetheless apparent that ''any'' appeal to its use is ''morally wrong'' on purely rational grounds in so far as   "it is presumptively wrong to do violence to innocent persons."<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=TBoABAAAQBAJ&q=Robert+L.+Holms''On War and Morality.'' Holmes, Robert L. Princeton University Press (1989) p. 44 "it is presumptively wrong to do violence to innocent persons."isbn 978-1-4008-6014-2 on Google Books]</ref> He further argues that at least one necessary condition for the formulation of ''any'' potential moral alternative to violence in all its manifistations is the exploration of a philosophy of [[nonviolence]] which places a concern for the lives and the well being of individual persons at its moral center.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=TBoABAAAQBAJ&q=Robert+L.+Holms''On War and Morality.'' Holmes, Robert L. Princeton University Press (1989) p. 293 isbn 978-1-4008-6014-2 on Google Books]</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Holmes |first=Robert L. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TBoABAAAQBAJ&q=Robert+L.+Holms |title=On War and Morality |date=24 March 2025 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-1-4008-6014-2}}</ref><ref>[https://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=ti%3A%22On+War+and+Morality%22&so=rel ''On War and Morality'' Holmes, Robert L. Book reviews on JASTOR.org]</ref>