Religion and Violence

Lecture Notes
Charles Taylor on Religion and Violence

• categorical violence - where whole categories are targeted
• marked the 20th century
• Has 3 features
1. excessive
2. language of purification
3. ritual element
• the language of purification and the ritual element serve to remind us of an earlier history

• One view is that this rises from religion, for example
• Within the context of current events, our secularism blames
Islam, which is wrong
• The 20th Century atrocities by militant atheists
• Purification: deep roots in human religious life

• certain forms arise is religious context
• why survive?
• the idea that this thing is atavistic, a throwback from something we put behind us. Our civilization is an inhibitor, which Taylor argues is wrong; this in general is the sociobiological account
• that it only arises in certain forms but not in others
• the kind of metaphysical meaning occur in history
• meaning to suffering and destruction
• reoccurring theme in religion to give suffering meaning
• the benign and malign spirits
• warrior cultures
  • a way of dealing with violence and destruction, the warrior response where you face down the fear be throwing yourself into violence - playing 'god in control'
  • the exhilaration of living on the edge
  • the god-like empowerment over human lives
  • quoting Hedges book, War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning and another book, The Colours of Violence
  • Violence "confirmation one is alive"
  • Warrior high given metaphysical and religious meaning
  • "Holy war"
  • crusades
  • sacrifice
  • For Girard,
  • scapegoat/projected onto victim, bears want you want to get rid of
  Scapegoat
  • "at least I'm not it"
  • seeing oneself good through a contrast one which can be relatively harmless but this can rise to a notion of threatening
  • the notion of society, something going wrong, anxiety creating not to have a definition, and find a 'scapegoat' to give the problems a face - anti-Semitism, witchcraft, The Terror of the 1790s.
  • // Including "fuck the right wing"
  Scapegoat operation
  • The contrast can not only define the problem but reaffirms one's self worth, makes you feel positive and strong about yourself, involves targeting another - internal/external other - the scapegoat, holy war
  • The violence of pre-axial religions
  • defined Good and Evil
  • Polytheism
    • benign and malign in the universe
  • moralization of the godly/define
  • scapegoat operation occurring
• rationalization
• 'we'll be violent only where we need to'
• but this actually increases violence
• higher religion did not lead to a reduction
• secularism neither
  • The French Revolution
    • 'the country or death'
    • The Terror had the 3 features
    1. moral enemies that don’t need to be
    2. purification
    3. guillotine and drumroles
    • a tradition of rebellion in France involving ritualisation
    • the invasion of the Bastille, with the governor's head on a spike
    • at first, horrified than written as a noble popular uprising
    • The revolution depended on popular violence based on the idea that nothing happens by accident - there's always someone to blame
    • The Terror
    • the leaders felt they had to go along
    • Danton - 'we'll take over the violence so the people won't be doing it'
    • popular revolt with a rationalization by the leaders
    • the guillotine sanitizes the violence
    • cleaned up the ritual and the carnival aspect of it
    • Robespierre once voted against the death penalty for the new republic
    • then, Napoleon's 'Liberation of Europe'
• Nations and Ethnic Cleansing
  • the nation as the idea of popular society
  • the people on a territory
  • new legitimacy challenge
  • the existence of an important minority challenges the legitimacy of the sovereignty 'of the people' as opposed to 'an empire who dominate and rule'
  • so there's trying to force assimilation or an ethnic cleansing
  • the idea that we all respect nations identity and sovereignty legitimizes the 'problem of the minority' sowing the seeds for ethnic scapegoating
  • The higher the goal, the higher the stakes - so if you're working for the 'perfect pure nation' you accept extreme measures
  • all national identities are safe and identity creates the condition for wars which rationalize the killing but that's not the whole story = scapegoating creates our sense of power and goodness
  • the 'virus' of anti-Semitism and others; // the minority 'as a virus', also the viral idea that you're working for a higher good and will accept extreme measures
  • kill 'the virus' through 'purification'
  • colonizes the new form now in ideological frameworks
  • Robespierre/Stalin had "like religion" ideologies that rationalizes "the stakes were so high we cannot flinch from attacking enemies"
    • Bolshevik - looked at their enemies as evil and peasants as lower-forms, needing to be educated, worthless distancing
      • based on objectification rather than good vs. evil
      • us vs. them through degradation
      • the scapegoating self-boasting
      • the talk of good and evil
      • the ideology can be colonized by murdering scapegoating

Against violence:
• the insight of shared imperfection
• we all created this predicament
• Nelson Mandala renounced 'the right of the victim', to get beyond it, 'we have to work together'
• the 9/11 fallout and example of 'us being perfect'
• 9/10ths of the war on terror is changing hearts and minds
• war on terror is "biggest shooting yourself in the foot"
• "reality is not allowed" only the moralistic is allowed
• Not a sane moral judgement
• not religion and violence by the deep seated psychology that colonized the new parameters

Q&A

• The 'virus' poses problems for human rights discourse