CHAPTER III

VIOLENCE, JUSTICE AND HUMAN DIGNITY

M. SASTRAPRATEDJA

            The warning of J.B. Metz, "never again to do theology in such a way that its construction remains unaffected, or could remain unaffected, by Auschwitz," is appropriate not only for theologians but also for philosophers.1 Auschwitz is not only a past historical fact, but also a symbol of the possibility of human destruction which may happen now or in the future. Metz’s statement suggests Auschwitz should influence our understanding of understanding and of philoso-phical reflection. History then is not just an object for us, but is constitutive of reflection itself; in other words, historicity is constitutive of our hermeneutic undertaking.

            Auschwitz, which manifested and has come to symbolize the various forms of violence, should change our views about human beings, society and state. This means that political philosophy should take into consideration the present day phenomenon of violence. In many cases ethical imperatives cannot be deduced simply from already formulated moral norms which are universal in nature. There are many conflictual cases today which cannot be solved by referring to general traditional moral principles, especially if we deal with very complex problems of justice and injustice.

            The traditional concept of justice is not sufficient to judge whether a condition is just or not. Moreover this concept is inade-quate for understanding the scope of our responsibility. Traditional ethics distinguishes three kinds of justice:

            (a) Commutative justice is formulated as ‘to each his own,’ (suum cuique; it supposes the subject and the terminus to be equal. However, the problem today is precisely the absence of social parity.

            (b) Distributive justice is understood as the duty of the whole (society or state) to administer the ‘bonum commune’ to its parts (citizens). However, in many countries human rights are denied pre-cisely by the ‘whole’, i.e., by the state or by society, as in the case of racial discrimination.

            (c) General justice deals with the duty of citizens to make their contributions to the entire community and is called legal justice if it is supported by the positive juridical order. However, the question is whether the law itself is just or not, for in many countries the law be-comes an instrument for obstructing justice. The traditional concept of justice presupposes criteria for identifying the rights and duties of both the state and the citizens.

            This paper tries to examine the relationship of violence and justice, and the related ethical imperatives. This may open dimensions for the image of the human and society.

THE PHENOMENON OF VIOLENCE

            Violence is as old as humanity itself and is recounted in various mythologies and legends. Javanese shadow play or wayang provides us with rich description of violent acts done by human beings and by gods. Hannah Arendt says that although it has always played an enormous role in human affairs, "It is . . . rather surprising that violence has been singled out so seldom for special consideration."2 J.M. Do-menach reiterates this judgment by saying that violence, which is so much discussed today, "had never been taken as a theme in itself for great thinkers of the Western philosophic tradition before the nine-teenth century, and had to wait for a George Sorel to make it the centre of his studies."3

            Johan Galtung says that "Violence is present when human beings are being influenced so that their actual somatic and mental realizations are below their potential realizations."4 In another place he describes violence as "any avoidable impediment to self-realization."5

            He stresses that one of the features of violence is that it is avoidable. In the words of Erich Fromm, violence is an ‘historical dicho-tomy’ which is the opposite of "existential dichotomy". Existential di-chotomies are fundamental facts of existence: that we are born without choice and ultimately die; that our abilities are limited while our desires are unlimited. Historical dichotomies are historical contra-dictions which can be overcome by human efforts, such as the prob-lems of war and hunger in the midst of the progress of technology. All these are instances of violence which can be avoided. Those who be-nefit from these historical dichotomies try to convince others that they are unavoidable existential dichotomies.6

            Violence, especially in developing countries, is manifested in at least two forms: personal or direct and structural or indirect. Both types can be physical and psychic and may be related to each other. Vio-lence can be so structured that it engenders direct or personal violence within or between communities. There are cases where crossbreeding between the two exists, for example in the caste system.7

VIOLENCE AS THE NEGATION OF FUNDAMENTAL

            HUMAN NEEDS

            Violence directed towards human beings can be seen as the negation of basic or fundamental human needs, of which we can identify three clusters:

            (a) Subsistence. There is need for each human being to maintain his or her existence and individuality, both at the physical and the psychical level. The negation of subsistence needs is manifested in extermination (direct violence) and in misery or poverty (structural violence).

            (b) Growth. This is the need of every human being to unfold his or her potentialities. We can distinguish two kinds of growth: primary growth which refers to the basic psycho-physical growth in the first years of human life, and maturity growth which is a continuous psychic growth till the end of life. Historically, this is expressed in human rights; its denial is repression.

            (c) Transcendence. This can be defined as the force which moves the person to go beyond his or her individuality to unite with other natural or meta-empirical entities. The need of transcendence includes also the need to give meaning to life; its denial is alienation.8

            The relation between human needs and various forms of violence is reflected in the following chart:

Fundamental needs Structural violence Main areas

SURVIVAL POVERTY ECONOMIC

Necessary means to MISERY

remain or survive           

GROWTH REPRESSION POLITICAL

Human rights

TRANSCENDENCE ALIENATION CULTURAL

Community, identity,

meaning                       

Since the three fundamental needs are interrelated with each other and overlap, the negation of one of the three needs may imply an obstacle to the realization of other needs. Moreover, these funda-mental needs are developed into derived needs which are culturally determined.

Poverty as Violence

            Poverty or misery is institutionalized violence. The specific fea-ture of present day poverty is that it occurs in the midst of progress and is, therefore, also a form of injustice. It is widespread in the Third World where there is a huge gap in wealth and income when compared with the rich countries. This can be illustrated as follows:

Four-fifths of the world’s income is earned by the industrialized nations of the world -- North America, western and eastern Europe -- where only one-quar-ter of the world’s population lives. Amidst mass pro-vision of basic services of education, health and social security, average life expectancy in these countries, often referred as the ‘North’, is about 70 years. In contrast, average life expectancy among the poor nationals of the world--the ‘South’--is less than 50 years. In the South’s poorest nations, 1 child in 4 dies before reaching the age of 5 and over 50 per cent are destined for lifelong illiteracy. (In the South today, 800 million people live in conditions of absolute poverty or destitution, with some 500 million suffering from a severe degree of protein malnutrition. But not all those living in the South are poor and inequalities within these countries are large: in most less de-veloped countries, the richest 10 per cent of house-holds receive 40 per cent of national income and the poorest 40 per cent receive less than 15 per cent.9

Numerous studies have been written on the above topic and its related problems. The above situation is a form of social injustice which is a human responsibility. However, this is not an individualistic respon-sibility but a social one to create a just system. Since the injustice is rooted in the social structure, it calls for reform in the structure itself.

Repression

            Repression is the negation of the fundamental needs of a per-son to realize his or her potentialities. Historically, these fundamental needs have been expressed in various declarations and charters of human rights. There are at least three basic rights: freedom, partici-pation and equality. Freedom refers to the inviolability of the human person and his or her right to self-determination. Participation is the right to political involvement, especially the right to decision making. Equality is the right of the person to be treated equally before the law and to have the same opportunity in acquiring the necessary means to live in accord with his or her dignity as a human person. These include among others the right to work and to choice of employment, to an adequate standard of living, to education and to free access to culture.10

            Although human rights are contained in many State Consti-tutions, they are still far from being concretely realized because their realization depends also on the social, political and economical struc-tures of a given society. The repression of human rights in most Third World countries is concomitant with their national development. In 1980 Herbert Feith identified the emergence of the so-called "repres-sive-developmentalist regimes".

Alienation

            Many ideas about alienation are intellectually indebted to Marx’s analysis of the position of the worker in capitalist society. Marx re-minds us that industrialization creates an alienation of workers from their product, their work and from one another. This kind of alienation is a common phenomenon in many countries in the Third World which are entering the era of industrialization. The low wage of the workers, the exploitation of female workers and of children, make this kind of alienation a form of violence.11

            Moreover, technology has a twofold effect on work. On the one hand, technology creates enrichment and reduces the human burden, on the other hand, it engenders constraints. Industrial development has transformed the relation between humans and between human’s and nature into a mediated relationship. Three systems of relation suc-ceed each other: the ‘man-product’ system, the ‘man-machine’ system and the ‘machine-product’ system. Each stage of development en-genders a higher degree of alienation.12 Automation, which is be-coming more sophisticated, creates a sense of dehumanization in that one feels himself to be only a part of the machine. This makes the need for transcendence difficult to fulfill.

IS VIOLENCE ROOTED IN HUMAN NATURE?

            Violence is a specifically human phenomenon; the question is whether it is innate or accidental? It is rooted in human nature in so far as violence consists in the freedom of one person to encroach upon the freedom of another.

Animals seek their prey. Man’s prey is freedom. Vio-lence also seeks freedom. Love and sadism, demo-cracy and tyranny, honest reasoning and sophistry --there are always two rival courses of action, one gentle, the other violent. They are mutually antago nistic, but their respective proponents have one point in common where their objective is concerned: in both cases, they are striving to obtain that most precious of indispensable possessions -- the innermost being of the Other, so as to win his good will or force him to submission.13

            Violence has many dimensions, for instance:

            - Hegel shows that consciousness can emerge to become ‘for-itself’ in negating the Other, an idea continued by Sartre.

            - Freud maintains that the Oedipus complex leads to violence towards the father as a necessary factor in order to achieve autonomy.

            - Many thinkers show that technology has subjugated nature to humans, and in turn subjugated humans to themselves.

            - The State is formed to hold a monopoly of the legitimate use of power.

            - Alvin Toffler shows that, compared with other sources of power, knowledge:

Is the most versatile and basic, since it can help one avert the challenges that might require the use of violence or wealth, and can often be used to persuade others to perform in desired ways out of perceived self-interest. Knowledge yields the highest-quality power.14

There are many theories explaining causes of violen-ce. According to Robert Gurr there is a linear relation-ship between the frustration of goal-directed activity and violent acts. The discrepancy between people’s expectations is a necessary precondition for violent civil conflict.15

            A second theory proposes that violence is biological-instinctual. Konrad Lorenz has worked out a biological analysis of aggress-iveness: it permits the survival and the improvement of the species; it also plays a major role in the structuring of society among more highly biologically developed animals; and it is an essential component in the vital organization of instincts. Some critics reject this theory on the ground that the role of instinct in humans is very low: recent philoso-phical anthropology argues that it is the deprivation of instinct and con-sequently also the possibility of culture which distinguishes humans from other species. Ignacio Ellacuria, however, reminds us that Lo-renz’s critics fail to recognize the positive value of aggressiveness, which should be given direction and sublimated, but definitely not eliminated.16

            A third theory emphasizes the role of culture in shaping human characters and violence.

            In conclusion, we can say that there are to some extent psy-chological and biological bases of violence in human nature. However, humans are endowed with the freedom to order their own tendencies. Culture is the expression of human freedom ordering chaos into cos-mos. In a broad sense it includes state, society, arts, science and technology, all of which are human creations and in turn shape human behavior and character.

            It pertains to human dignity, however, to be able to transcend cultural determination. As institutionalized or structural violence are products of human beings it is their responsibility to change structural violence.

SOME MORAL NORMS

            Having considered the dimensions of violence in the present day world we can come to a tentative formulation of moral principles:

            1. The basis of any moral principle is the dignity of the human person endowed with reason and freedom of self-determination, but the human person also is vulnerable by nature.

            2. Individual freedom and self-determination must be related to the common good.

            3. One can realize his or her dignity as a person if one is able to fulfill his or her basic human needs. Hence, the suppression of the fulfillment of basic human needs is violence and is called also injustice. It is manifested in poverty, repression and alienation, which are against human dignity.

            4. The main factor of violence is unequal distribution of power. It is imperative to eliminate inequalities by changing unjust structures or by creating institutions which secure the equality of all.

            5. The state and society are not identical. The state constitutes the political aspect of society and is dependent upon, and limited by, people whose human dignity it must respect. This distinction is neces-sary in order to secure the freedom of the people and to prevent tota-litarian tendencies.17

Semarang, Indonesia

NOTES

            1. J.B. Metz, The Emerging Church: The Future of Christianity in a Post-bourgeois World (New York: Crossroad, 1981), p. 28.

            2. Hannah Arendt, On Violence (New York: Brace and World, 1970), p. 8.

            3. J.M. Domenach, "The Ubiquity of Violence," International Social Science Journal, 30 (1978), 717.

            4. J. Galtung, "Violence, Peach, and Peace Research," Journal of Peace Research, 6 (1969), 76.

            5. J. Galtung, The True World, A Transnational Perspective (New York: The Free Press, 1980), p. 69.

            6. J.A.C. Brown, Freud and Post Freudians (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1983), p. 153.

            7. J. Galtung, The True World, p. 68.

            8. On the theory of fundamental needs, see Oscar Nudler, "On Types of Civilizations: A Comparison Through Three Dimensions," Visions of Desirable Societies, ed. Eleonora Masini (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1983), pp. 245-261.

            9. Roger Riddell, "Transnational Corporations and Technology and Their Effects on Poverty, Income Distribution and Employment in Less Developed Countries," Concilium, 140 (1/1980), 24.

            10. Cf. Wolfgang Huber, "Human Rights - A Concept and Its History," Concilium, 124 (1979), 1-9.

            11. Cf. The report of Hans Borkent, et al, Indonesian Workers and Their Right to Organize (Leiden: INDOC, 1981), pp. 116-119.

            12. Hagues Puel, "New Technical Conditions of Work and the Problems of Employment," Concilium (1977), 1-9.

            13. J.M. Demenach, art. cit., p. 720.

            14. Alvin Toffler, Powershift, Knowledge, Wealth and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century (New York: Bantam Books, 1990), p. 474.

            15. Ted Robert Gurr, "Psychological Factors in Civil Violence," Conflict and Violence in Latin American Politics, A Book of Readings, eds., F. José Moreno and Barbara Mitrani (New York: Thomas Y. Cromwell, 1971) pp. 372-407.

            16. Ignacio Ellacuria, Freedom Made Flesh. The Mission of Christ and His Church. (New York: Orbis Books, 1976), pp. 167-205.