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Argument and Rhetoric in the Justification of Political Violence

University of Oxford

Kimberly Hutchings

London School of Economics

In contrast to liberal, Christian and other pacifist ethics and to just war theory, a range of 20th-century thinkers sought to normalize the role of violence in politics. This article examines the justificatory strategies of Weber, Sorel, Schmitt, Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty and Fanon. They each engage in justificatory argument, deploying arguments for violence from instrumentality, from necessity and from virtue. All of these arguments raise problems of validity. However, we find that they are reinforced by the representation of violence in terms of a specific aesthetic, either tragedy or sublimity, and by certain rhetorical textual strategies. We conclude that the persuasive force of these arguments for violence rests as much, if not more, on aesthetics and rhetoric, as it does on argument.

Key Words: Beauvoir • Fanon • justification • Merleau-Ponty • politics • persuasion • rhetoric • Schmitt • Sorel • violence • Weber

European Journal of Political Theory, Vol. 6, No. 2, 180-199 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/1474885107074349


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