Violence is endemic to our world. It is also political. This class works through both of these claims, and throughout the process, discusses how we ought to respond to them.
We begin abstractly, with a unit on what constitutes violence. This introduces the students to some important philosophical skills, including distinction-making, the use of thought experiments and real-world examples, and various forms of argumentation (deductive, inductive, elimination, reductio, and slippery slope). It also lets them get a feel for the kinds of topics we’ll be discussing throughout the semester without throwing them in the deep end right away, so to speak. We then turn for the reminder of the semester to different forms and kinds of concrete political violence. I deliberately begin with extreme political violence—terrorism, genocide, atrocity—before switching to the use of military force, which then segues into a discussion of violent resistance and community defense, before concluding with pacifism and nonviolent resistance. Throughout, I work to incorporate diverse, non-canonical voices and texts, both contemporary and historical.
This particular ordering of the material is a change from the first time I taught the course. Rather than conclude with crimes against humanity, which is a difficult topic anytime, much less at the end of a long semester, I now tuck it in near the beginning, and conclude instead with pacifism and nonviolent resistance, both of which the students view as more hopeful and uplifting. (Whether this perception is accurate, I cannot say. But they report that they much prefer this course conclusion.)
In addition, I have ordered the other units of the course to deliberately move students back and forth between what they are likely to view as morally unacceptable (Unit 2: mass atrocity crimes, Unit 4: violent protest and armed community defense) and morally acceptable (Unit 3: the use of military force, Unit 5: nonviolent protest and pacifism), to try to draw out some of the common cognitive dissonances that surround our value judgments about political violence. Of course, students are not a monolith, and different students judge differently; however, for the most part, this ordering of the course does in practice have the intended effect of jarring and unsettling their common ethical presumptions.
My general attitude towards my philosophy courses is that if I have enabled at least one student to change their mind over the course of the semester, or even to think more deeply about an issue or two, then I have done good work. That being said, the specific goal of this class is to move students away from the fatalism and realpolitik attitudes regarding political violence that are so common in the public sphere, and encourage them to see that just because things are a certain way, doesn’t mean they have to be that way. Philosophical judgments and ethical decision-making matter, and it is important to do the work to determine how we should view, understand, and respond to a world which is shot through with political violence, much of it oppressive.
As with any philosophy course, there are more questions posed than answers given, and this can be frustrating for my students. Moral and political relativism is a constant specter throughout the course, so I often assign a short reading on relativism for extra credit. (I most commonly assign James Rachels’ “The Challenge of Cultural Relativism.”)
The most common sticking point of the course by far though, is students’ desire to lean on domestic and international law in their discussions and argumentation. Inevitably, I at some point have to stop the class and give a short lecture wherein I explain the pitfalls of leaning on law to either set definitions, provide sufficient determinacy, or determine morality. There is a relationship between violence, morality, and the law, but it is complicated, and so we cannot go from the fact that terrorism is illegal (for instance) to the claim that it is necessarily violent, to the claim that it is necessarily wrong. Much more must be filled in in order to reach any such conclusions. To the extent that students are able to grasp these complications, the course normally proceeds well after this lecture.
The most common complaint I receive from students is that there is not enough time in the course for all of the discussions that they want to have. It is by practical necessity a broad survey/overview course, and so we simply don’t have space to dive into the many, many intricacies surrounding political violence. In response, I am currently considering whether or not to expand it into a two-part year-long course, where each semester would be self-contained, but taken together would provide a more holistic picture of the issues and debates at stake. Expanding the course in this way would also allow me to add more contemporary theorists in the 2nd semester, which I think could be a great boon for students.
There is so much great work being done now on political violence, but in order to understand it, you need a good grounding in the field. So, going forward, that is a possibility for expansion.
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Jennifer Kling
Jennifer Kling is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Legal Studies at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. She is the author of War Refugees: Risk, Justice, and Moral Responsibility (Lexington, 2019), as well as articles in Radical Philosophy Review, Journal of Global Ethics, and The Routledge Handbook of Pacifism and Nonviolence, and is the editor of Pacifism, Politics, and Feminism: Intersections and Innovations (Brill, 2019). She is also the Executive Director of Concerned Philosophers for Peace, the largest, most active organization of professional philosophers in North America involved in the analysis of the causes of war and prospects for peace.
