The Concept of Violence

In recent years the problem of defining 'violence' has occupied a growing number of political philosophers, political scientists, and peace researchers. Unfortunately, thinking in this field has been vitiated by the methodological shortcoming that none or too little attention has been paid to the problem of clearly stating the conditions of adequacy that, relative to a given context, it is reasonable to demand that a definition of violence should satisfy in order to be acceptable (in that context). In this paper three conditions of adequacy are stated, i. e. a condi tion of normative adequacy, a condition of theoretical adequacy, and a condition of descriptive adequacy. The first one is introduced on the basis of a normative assumption which seems often to be made by peace researchers. The second one is introduced on the basis of some important empirical hypotheses on violence and nonviolence which peace researchers have discussed. The third one is introduced in order to keep in touch with common usage. It is then argued that recently proposed definitions of violence do not satisfy some or any of these requirements. Finally, definitions of violence and nonviolence are proposed which seem to satisfy the stated requirements and therefore to be particularly fruitful in the context of peace research.