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A review by books_ergo_sum
The Force of Nonviolence: The Ethical in the Political by Judith Butler
relaxing
5.0
There is nothing more satisfying to me than reading a philosophy book that this accurately explains the messy thoughts I’m trying to grapple with.
And this one was all about explaining: what exactly is happening when something violent happens and my heart screams that it’s wrong but others disagree.
And idk. Butler’s book just blew my mind. Because their argument wasn’t that some people are pacifists and some people are basically Thrasymachus from Plato’s Republic…
The starting premise was that pretty much everyone agrees—violence is wrong. ✨Except in self-defense✨ And it’s this teeny tiny exception that legitimizes all violence. Because of who gets included in that self and what counts as defense.
And the arguments in here were just excellent. So clear, so pointed, so philosophical. We had:
▪️ god-tier critiques of liberal individualism and the “self” we’ve inherited from different European Enlightenment philosophers (I could listen to arguments that the liberal subject is gendered male all day long)
▪️ Freud and Lacan on the death drive and unconscious judgments that we don’t even realize we’re making about self-defense
▪️ Foucault and Fanon on the structures of power that permanently Other certain groups and exclude them from the in-group being defended
And the book had an actual solution! (you know how rare that is in philosophy? 😆) And it was linked to some of my favourite Butler-ideas: their stuff on grievability and equality.
And this one was all about explaining: what exactly is happening when something violent happens and my heart screams that it’s wrong but others disagree.
And idk. Butler’s book just blew my mind. Because their argument wasn’t that some people are pacifists and some people are basically Thrasymachus from Plato’s Republic…
The starting premise was that pretty much everyone agrees—violence is wrong. ✨Except in self-defense✨ And it’s this teeny tiny exception that legitimizes all violence. Because of who gets included in that self and what counts as defense.
And the arguments in here were just excellent. So clear, so pointed, so philosophical. We had:
▪️ god-tier critiques of liberal individualism and the “self” we’ve inherited from different European Enlightenment philosophers (I could listen to arguments that the liberal subject is gendered male all day long)
▪️ Freud and Lacan on the death drive and unconscious judgments that we don’t even realize we’re making about self-defense
▪️ Foucault and Fanon on the structures of power that permanently Other certain groups and exclude them from the in-group being defended
And the book had an actual solution! (you know how rare that is in philosophy? 😆) And it was linked to some of my favourite Butler-ideas: their stuff on grievability and equality.