The ontology and ethics of violence: theory

The aim of this chapter is to start laying the foundation for a comprehensive account of violence.In order to build such an account, I will start by examining the most minimal definition ofviolence, which I call the physicalist account,1 and test it against some problematic orambiguous cases to see if it is solid enough to account for them. The following discussion willshow that, if we aim for a coherent theory of violence, we need to broaden the scope of, andcomplicate, our explanation of the nature of violence.