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The concept of violence in international theory: a Double-Intent Account

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 February 2017

Christopher J. Finlay
Christopher J. Finlay*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
*
E-mail: C.J.Finlay@bham.ac.uk
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Abstract

The ability of international ethics and political theory to establish a genuinely critical standpoint from which to evaluate uses of armed force has been challenged by various lines of argument. On one, theorists question the narrow conception of violence on which analysis relies. Were they right, it would overturn two key assumptions: first, that violence is sufficiently distinctive to merit attention as a category separate from other modes of human harming; second, that it is troubling in a special way that makes acts of violence peculiarly hard to justify. This paper defends a narrow understanding of violence and a special ethics governing its use by arguing that a distinctive form of ‘Violent Agency’ is the factor uniting the category while partly accounting for the fearful connotations of the term. Violent Agency is defined first by a double intention (1) to inflict harm using a technique chosen (2) to eliminate or evade the target’s means of escaping it or defending against it. Second, the harms it aims at are destructive (as opposed to appropriative). The analysis offered connects the concept of violence to themes in international theory such as vulnerability, security, and domination, as well as the ethics of war.

Keywords

violencejust war theoryvulnerabilitynon-dominationrepublicanismfeminist international relations theory
Type
Original Papers
Information
International Theory , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , March 2017 , pp. 67 - 100
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2017 

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