"Oh my God! They've killed Kenny."

Fans of the popular television series South Park are familiar with Kenny McCormick and his perpetual misfortune. So far, as I can recall, he has been:

• killed by a blue fireball from Santa Claus
• trampled by cows
• run over by a police car
• accidentally shot
• impaled on a flagpole
• decapitated in a football game
• microwaved to a crisp
• touched by death
• crushed by the Mir space station, a statue, a plane, the number 7, and a bust of George Washington
• cut in half with a chainsaw
• attacked by mutant turkeys
• electrocuted while fixing an antenna
• butchered by an Iraqi sword
• strangled by a tether ball
• and, after being dragged in a runaway go-cart, was run over by a train

The bastards.

Here's a question: Why? Why is Kenny killed? Why is he the victim of violence, over and over again? The answer: Because he's different--quiet, simple-minded, small, pathetic, little Kenny McCormick.

There are all kinds of questions we could go on to ask about this:

• Why is South Park so popular?
• Why is Kennys death so funny?
• Do we just have a taste for violence?
• Or do shows like this make people more violent?
• Or do such shows simply provide a humorous way to try to cope with violence that is already present in our society?

Then, you ask, why mention Kenny?

I want to talk about the basic issue of whether or not violence is inherent in the world. Must it be part of the ways things are? It is essential to the human condition? Is violence woven into the very fabric of reality?

Consider some statistics. A young male resident of Harlem is less likely to live to age 40 than the young male residents of Bangladesh. They also face a higher risk of being killed by age 25 than the risk faced by US troops during a full combat tour in Vietnam. Or consider the recent shootings in Colorado or those in Arkansas, Kentucky, and Mississippi.

How do we explain the pervasiveness of violence and conflict? Is it in our genetic make-up? Is it simply what's to be expected given economic conditions in society? Is it purely a matter of lack of education--not knowing any better or seeing any alternatives? Is it a fear of difference or the outworking of negative relationships of power?

For a lot of philosophers this question is not merely a question about ethics--how we should live our lives. Nor is it merely one of politics--how society ought to be organized. Rather it is very much a question of fundamental ontology--the nature of reality itself, including, but not limited to, the reality of the human condition.

I want to focus here primarily on Western Philosophy, not Buddhism and the like which raise special problems of their own. Let's begin with what I will call "systems of primordial violence."

This is where Kenny comes in. Let's suppose the reason we find Kenny's repeated death to so amusing is he is different--unlike any of us, he's a pathetic little shit. There's a part of us that wants to bully and hurt anything that is different from us or at least different from the way we want to be or want other people to think we are like. Somehow the establishment of difference--the fact that someone or something else is Other than we are--somehow this involves the perpetuation of violence and conflict.

In the history of philosophy the question of things being different from one another has been a central question. We look out in the world and see various things. This table, that lollipop, a pet iguana, a trash heap, you, me. Certain of these things have something in common. For instance, you and I are both human beings. But all objects have one thing in common--they all exist. They all have "Being" in common (or so philosophers are apt to say). They are all "Something" rather than nothing. So, underneath all appearances and differences, everything is basically one--or so many philosophers have thought.

In Ancient Philosophy (Platonists and Manichees)

Among the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers it was assumed that whatever things have in common is more important than what is different about them (in part, a reaction against the polytheism of the culture). Differences were ultimately more a matter of appearances than reality; the temporary rather than the eternal; the changing rather than the stable. Thus the fundamental unity of all things as existing, as part of "Being" itself, was thought to be the most important reality of all. And ultimate reality is, somehow, in itself "Good" in virtue of its unity. Any kind of difference must have arisen from the One and thus from within the unity of being.

But how?

The answer of the ancient philosophers always involved some kind of violence and conflict, since any difference introduced within the unity of being, must also disturb the goodness of being with the threat of "non-Being." This introduction of difference is, in fact, an unexplained violent rupture or event that introduces change and limitation into the very nature of things. Moreover, the reality of finite, changing things, each of which is different to some extent from all others, must somehow involve a material, limited realm of chaos, shaped and ordered by the imposition of eternal Form (order) which is itself derived from the One. Thus the world of changing things around us, insofar as it is taken to be ultimate, is an illusion to be discovered and overcome through some kind of direct experience of the One. And so we are left with an everyday world of change and difference which is inextricably bound up with violence and which is to be abandoned for the sake of a world of unity which, nevertheless, is ultimately impersonal. Furthermore, the reality of conflict and violence while subordinate to the ultimate reality of the One, is itself a true reality that becomes the location of the work of the One. Though it involves the intrusion of non-Being, non-Being for the ancients was not so much an absence or a lack, but another kind of stuff coordinate with, though subordinate to, Being itself.

While for the Manichee sect this meant that this world around us is inherently evil and to be rejected, Plato and the Platonists attempt to assert the possibility of a kind of peace that is rooted in the contemplation of the One and yet has tangible effects in the world.

For instance, in the Republic, Plato proposes a parallel between the individual soul and the city-state. As it is possible for the individual to be characterized by virtue and justice, so too the city-state. In either case a kind of peace can be maintained.

But there are difficult problems. Peace, itself, can only be maintained through conflict. In the individual it is through the practice of self-control in which the material life of the passions is forcefully contained through the imposition of form by the intellect. After all, it is the intellect alone which can come to know and contemplate the goodness of the One. And so goodness is a matter of knowledge--knowing something--and wrongdoing a matter of lacking knowledge, a matter of ignorance. The path to peace is simply one of correct self-education. The intellect is in itself Good and knows all things and falls into wrongdoing and conflict only through the encroaching forces of non-Being in the world and in the lower nature of the body--forces which cause forgetfulness and the wrongdoing that arises from ignorance.

Like the individual, the city-state with its economy based on the lower classes and power based on the military classes needs to use coercion in addition to reason into to maintain order. Furthermore, it is through the education of the various classes in their particular roles that peace will be able to be maintained.

In both the individual and the city-state, however, there are regions that lie beyond the reach of reason and intellect alone. While all is good in the closed inwardness of the intellect that controls the body, the danger of uncontrollable outside forces remains. In the city-state in particular, safety and peace is only possible within the city walls that seal it from the world. Yet the danger of invasion always remains.

A further difficulty arises in that the city-state as a whole lacks a soul and thus it is ultimately only the individual in his own internal unity of intellect that can come to contemplate the One (and thus the individual is himself, like the One, ultimately impersonal). But it is also only the individual who can fully embody virtue and justice. This, then, leads to a split between the realms of theoretical virtue of the intellect and practical virtue in society. Likewise, one soul can communicate with another on the level of the intellect sharing the vision of the Good in its unity, but such communication does not take place between city-states which communicate only in trading and in warfare.

In any case, within the logic of many ancient philosophical systems, conflict and violence are inherent and necessary to the construction of any kind of differences, are embedded within the realm of interpersonal relationship, and are necessary to the life of the society as a whole.

In Modern Philosophy (Hegelians)

I'm going to skip over most of Hegel in the interests of time. What I will say is that Hegel in some ways is similar to the Platonists. Nevertheless, for Hegel the process of difference becomes one of absolute negation (thesis and antithesis) and not the mere unfolding of the unity of Being. Moreover, such negation is absolutely necessary as part of the self-realization of God (the Absolute Spirit) in his manifestation in and through the universe. In that case, suffering, violence, and conflict are needed by God in order to express himself as truly God. So, violence is inherent within a Hegelian ontology.

Let's now turn from philosophical systems that place the origin of violence in some primordial event that lies beyond and behind the world as we know it, though coming to expression within in present moment. Instead we will examine systems that see violence as inherent in the sustained and continuing order of things.

In Descartes and Modern Science

The Cartesian empirical-positivst outlook is plagued by series of splits, bifurcations, dichotomies, and external relations (though Descartes himself is more a symptom of his age than a cause of the malady). It posits a mechanistic universe in which the relationships between objects are seen atomistically, as purely extrinsic and fundamentally unrelated and in which they are governed by relationships of force and conflict. In parallel, there is a distancing between subject and object, the knower and the known, in which there is a privileging of the control of the knower over the object of knowledge in the process of knowledge. Thus power and knowledge become connected in a way that an Other can be known only with some degree of violence.

There are parallels to this outlook to be found in the social developments within the early modern period. I cannot possibly argue the following points, but will outline what are taken by many theorists to be significant features of the age. It was an age of exploration/imperialism, in which the knowledge of distant lands was accompanied by their control and exploitation. It was time in which modern politics arose, theorizing rights in indvidualistic terms and in the procedural control of social space. There was a growing disconnection between a privatized, subjective faith and public, objective reason, thereby constructing the secular as something separate from the sacred (which was meant to alleviate the wars of religion but simultaneously made them worse). In terms of ethics, according to Foucault, this empirical-postivist outlook has led to the isolation of bodies as a means of control and the coercion of bodies in order to discipline and reform the soul.

At any rate, the overall spirit of the age is one that sees the world in terms of relationships of power, conflict, control, and violence which are presupposed as inherent to the nature of things as part of the impersonal processes of the cosmos. This also carries on into the next topic.

In Socio-biological Theory (e.g., Dawkins)

Another approach that often seems to assume that a kind of sustained violence is intrinsic to the nature of reality, particularly human reality, is that of socio-biological theory which urges the explanation of human behavior in almost purely evolutionary terms.

As an example let us consider the thesis of Thornhill and Thornhill that human male proclivity towards rape is genetically and evolutionarily determined. The argument goes like this.

First, let us assume that all human behavior is explicable in terms of the processes of evolutionary theory, involving natural selection (survival of the fittest; the selfish gene). Take for example the propensity towards rape on the part of human males. Given our assumption, this means that at some point in human evolutionary history only males whose psychological make-up motivated them to engage in coercive sex produced significant numbers of offspring (i.e., survived).

A second point. There is, obviously, an asymmetry between males and females in terms of human sexuality--males need only contribute several minutes to the process while females contribute at least nine months and usually up to several year of lactation (especially before the invention of modern formula, baby food, etc.). Thus in past evolutionary history there must have been competition for sexual access to females among males because there would be far too many more males ready for reproductive activity than there would be females.

We can conclude, therefore, that the most coercive males would have more offspring and so the tendency towards coercion would survive among human males. Thus natural selection has selected this kind of violence for human males. This would explain, for example, why males tend towards promiscuity and aggression more than females. Moreover, this theory has been confirmed by studies of positive sexual response to rape scenarios on the part of human males.

It seems then, that violence of certain sorts, given this theory, is shown to be inherent to the human condition and is, perhaps, presupposed by the process of selection itself, given that all human behavior is to be explained in terms of that process. Thus violence is woven into the blind, impersonal processes of nature itself.

In Postmodern Philosophy (e.g., Nietzsche, Foucault)

Unlike the ancients, many "postmodern" theorists see difference as more important than unity--the reverse of Platonism. On such a view, all unities, systems of language, concepts, signs, symbols, etc. function through the way each component works differently from all the rest. Yet each system seeks to assert itself as complete and final and as somehow capturing the true reality of things. Still, every attempt to do this asserts a violence on the particular and different, attempting to subsume it under a greater reality (the failure and violence of "grand metanarratives"). Thus we are left to recognize the shifting and indeterminate nature of what we say and signify. Even with this recognition, however, the violence remains.

According to John Milbank, the postmodern is likewise a backward reading of Augustine's City of God. Augustine read the history of the ancient pagans as one that turned continually to violence and he offered the City of God as an alternative structure of peace. But the postmodern from Nietzsche onward has read Christianity itself as a structure that is designed to mask and hide its own inner movement of power and violence summed up in Nietzsche as "resentment." But in this analysis of Christianity, postmoderns reassert the ancient paganism in a new form along with the ontological necessity of violence within any system of knowledge and practice.

As an example, one might consider a film such as Pulp Fiction. With its shifting, indeterminate plot, the impossibility of pinning down truth, the play between realism and fiction, its ironic critique of violence by a humor that perpetuates the very same, Pulp Fiction is, by all accounts, a postmodern film. Yet, not quite. After all, it ends with an interruption in the structure of violence by an "act of God". And thus the film opens the possibility of a new way of narrating events, the possibility of a new kind of myth in which violence has no basic ontological status, and of intrusion of an ultimate Person into the nature of things.

This, therefore, brings us finally to an alternative to the ontology of violence. But first let's sum up.

All of these philosophical systems presuppose that violence is somehow necessary to the way things are, to the fundamental structure of the cosmos, or at least the functioning of human society.

But in every case this presupposition remains fundamentally unargued, ultimately groundless, and, very often, problematic. It serves as a part of the underlying narrative which defines the view in question and presents it as a plausible story and explanation of the world.

Let's begin sketching an alternative by examining some of the suggestions and presuppositions of two Christian philosophers and saints--Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Then we will consider some considerations of a contemporary Christian philosopher--John Milbank.

Augustine

The fundamental presupposition of Augustine is that the material world is a result of free creation by God--as opposed to violence. Since, for Augustine, God is a Trinity of persons in a relation of love, freely shared, God is free to create a reality that may enter into that love. Futhermore, human beings who are in the image of God possess free will by which they do wrong--as opposed to find evil's source in mere ignorance. Moreover, evil has no ontological purchase on Augustine's view. It is defined negatively as the choosing of lesser goods over greater goods and so evil is seen as a privation--as opposed to an ontological reality.

In his Confessions Augustine presents the history of his person, lived before the face of God and offered up to God, redeeming his painful memories of the past. Thus, Augustine can be credited with the first deep theorization of psychology and personality as we know it--as opposed to the ultimate impersonalism of the Greeks.

Finally, in his City of God Augustine proposed an alternative city, a re-telling of the pagan myths which unmasks their inherent violence. Moreover, it is the proposal of a new narrative that is plausible by out-narrating the alternatives.

Let us turn then to Thomas.

Thomas Aquinas

For Thomas the fundamental nature of the world is to be understood by means of the analogy of being (analogia entis) in which the relations and reality of creation find an analogy in the very life of God. Thus being and difference must be seen in the final context of relation and love within the Trinity. God is who he is--both in the unity of the Godhead and in the differences between the Persons--only in virtue of his internal relations of love.

By the analogy of being we can then also see that the ultimate nature of things is love. Difference within the creation is established in love. Moreover, being unveils itself to me and so knowledge is a gift of love, but since love is fundamental to knowledge reason and faith are not extrinsically and externally related to one another and to knowledge, but are mutually and intrinsically related. This ontology and epistemology provides an alternative to empirical-positivist model of science by invoking formal and final causality, intrinsic relationality, and gift--as opposed to a privileging of control, atomism, and force.

John Milbank

Augustine and Thomas show us, then, that it is possible to narrate reality in a way that does not presuppose and perpetuate violence either as a primordial condition of ontology or as a sustaining event within the world and human practices and discourse. There is an alternative within the Christian message.

For Milbank, the Christian message is not to out-argue the ontology of violence by an appeal to some supposedly neutral and universal discourse of rationality. Rather, Christian belief claims to out-narrate and out-practice any alternatives. Part of that narrative is the example of Jesus who embodies the ultimate rejection of violence by refusing to play the game and answering conflict with transforming love. In him, the church is to be the space in which the alternative world is manifest with its alternative narrative and counter-history. Thus the ontology of violence is to overcome with a lived narrative and ontology of peace.

The Christian ontology of peace has traditionally offered two alternatives for how that peace is to be manifest in a world of violence. These alternatives are found within the theorization of conditions for just war and within the insistence upon pacifism. Let's consider each alternative in turn.

Just War Theory

The theory of just war finds its origins in the Hebrew Scriptures which outline conditions under which Israel may exercise violence outside of the parameters of holy war (Deuteronomy 20). It also finds support in the New Testament which allows that the civil magistrate bears the sword for good as a servant of God, restraining evil and thereby executing divine vengeance (Romans 13). In addition, there are some precedents for the theory within the Greek and Roman philosophers (e.g., Plato, Aristotle, Cicero) as well as various Church fathers and theologians (e.g., Ambrose, Augustine, Aquinas).

The traditional criteria under which the exercise of violence may be deemed just have been outlined in the following way:

First, there must be a just cause and intent. The violence may only be exercised in a defensive manner. The initiation of aggression is not permitted. Furthermore, the goal is the restoration of peace and protection of the innocent. Personal, ethnic, or national vengeance is not an appropriate intent.

Second, the violence must be carried out by a proper authority. It must fall within the jurisdiction of that authority and be initiated by a formal declaration. Private warfare, feuds, and vigilante justice are not permitted.

Finally, the violence must not exceed the limitations of proportionality. It must be used only as a last resort when all other attempts at peace have failed. Its objectives must be limited. The violent means must be proportionate to their ends and the forces which they are intended to repel. The benefits of violent resistance must outweigh the costs of non-resistance. And there must be reasonable hope for success.

It is clear that the just war ideal see very limited uses for violence. Moreover, it presupposes the possibility of peace since, if the theory were followed by all, it would entail an end to violence. Thus it grants violence no intrinsic or inherent place in the order of things.

Still, pacifism provides another perspective.

Pacifism: overcoming evil with good

Like just war theory, pacifism can claim biblical origins, particularly in New Testament teachings (e.g., don't resist evil; turn other cheek). In history, certain early church documents lend support to the pacifist view as well as certain streams of monasticism (e.g., some Franciscans) and the witness of various modern groups (e.g., the Catholic Worker; Pax Christi)

An argument for pacifism in terms of what we have said so far might go like this. If evil is privation, then how can it be punished by positive means? Rather, one might argue, sin brings its own self-inflicted punishment (a privation of the humanity that sins). By the proclamation of the Gospel the sinner must be brought to see the conditions which sin engenders by a combined witness of hatred of the effects of sin and love for the sinner. Thus evil may be overcome by good. There is no place, then, for meeting violence with violence.

In response, the just war theorist can indeed value the insights of the pacifist and the ultimate and final necessity for Gospel proclamation and the overcoming of evil by good. Nevertheless, it might be argued that while evil is a privation, it is also parasitic upon lesser goods. Thus by depriving the perpetrator of violence of those lesser goods in a specific way and by limited means, a strategic intervention is accomplished. In this way a place may be opened in which the pacifistic program can be carried out. In any case, it is not clear that the pacifist ideal is decisive against theories of just war.

With all this in mind, let's go back to Kenny.

Perhaps we can consider Kenny as a Christ-figure. He doesn't deserve what happens to him and never complains. Perhaps we can defend Kenny with force, but that will not end the cycle of violence, especially since he is usually the passive bystander who gets caught in the violence of others. An alternative is needed--a new way in which those who hurt Kenny are shown goodwill and made to see the self-destructiveness of their own behavior. If we are correct, then this might be accomplished through the elaboration of an alternative narrative and practice that is appealing on its own merits. And that narrative, I would suggest, can only be found in the Gospel of God's grace in Christ Jesus, manifest in his living body, the Church.