Virtuous Violence: Hurting and Killing to Create, Sustain, End, and Honor Social Relationships

What motivates violence? How can good and compassionate people hurt and kill others or themselves? Why are people much more likely to kill or assault people they know well, rather than strangers? This provocative and radical book shows that people mostly commit violence because they genuinely feel that it is the morally right thing to do. In perpetrators' minds, violence may be the morally necessary and proper way to regulate social relationships according to cultural precepts, precedents, and prototypes. These moral motivations apply equally to the violence of the heroes of the Iliad, to parents smacking their child, and to many modern murders and everyday acts of violence. Virtuous Violence presents a wide-ranging exploration of violence across different cultures and historical eras, demonstrating how people feel obligated to violently create, sustain, end, and honor social relationships in order to make them right, according to morally motivated cultural ideals.

Author: Alan Page Fiske, Tage Shakti Rai
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 11/30/2014
Pages: 384
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.15lbs
Size: 8.90h x 5.90w x 0.90d
ISBN13: 9781107458918
ISBN10: 1107458919
BISAC Categories:
- Psychology | Social Psychology
- Social Science | Violence in Society