Brenan Cavish: Violence and Ambiguity

Violence appears to be a human reality. Though generally humans try to avoid it, thus far they have been unsuccessful. It often arises as a result of interpersonal conflicts, value conflicts, out of a life and death need to survive. Violence takes the world as pure object, something that is purely matter, and seeks to force it to be something else. It ignores or seeks to destroy the thoughts, ideas, or way of life that it opposes. This expression of human will has shaped our history with its ability to force the world to be different. However, some ask whether or not violence is necessary, and whether it can be significantly reduced. Judith Butler argues that resignification(1), a process which involves critically reexaming what it means to be human for myself and others, is one way to oppose violence. According to Butler, we are inextricably bound to others so closely it is hard to tell where I stop and you being. In the following passage, Butler asks what is left of "I" if "you" are gone:

It is not as if an "I" exists independently over here and then simply loses a "you" over there, especially if the attachment to "you" is part of what composes who "I" am. If I lose you, under these conditions, then I not only mourn the loss, but I become inscrutable to myself. Who "am" I, without you? (2)

Her question "Who "am" I, without you?" is important. She seems to suggest that my very identity is put to question when I lose the other. When using violence, we sometimes annihilate this very part of ourselves. Who do I become if I kill "you?" What is left of me if I destroy your way of life? Though Butler never commits herself to idea of a utopian world, her comments seem to suggest that is where she is aimed.(3) Simone de Beauvior sees violence as an act of human will that ignores the consciousness of the Other and instead treats her like a purely physical object. For her, all action whether it is violent or not, depends on our putting meaning forth into the world. Beauvior believes that each man comes into the world with a nature that is a lack. This means that our actions are given meaning by our negative capacity to subjectively disclose or put meaning on the world. However, this does not happen without the influence of others. As she states in the following, we live in a world where the freedom of others is a reality:

Wars, unemployment, crises plainly show that there doesn’t exist any pre-established harmony between men. Initially, men do no depend on one another because initially they are not: they have to be. Freedoms are neither unified nor opposed but separated. In projecting himself into the world, a man situates himself by situating other men around him. So solidarities are created, but a man cannot enter into solidarity with all the others, because they do not all choose the same goals since their choices are free. (4)

Beauvior thinks that violence is most likely inevitable because each man is distinctly his own person projecting himself and his values into the world. If each person is there own distinct person, it would be very hard for them to all make the same decisions. Each person's goals are distinct from one another and have a potentiality for collision. Also, she thinks that violence isn't necessarily evil, since it is man himself that is disclosing or making the violent act meaningful. It is only when a man recognizes an act as evil, that the act becomes evil. In this paper, I will examine both Beauvior and Butler's discussions of violence, which both involve their conception of the subject, and then I will argue that Beauvior's account of violence is accounts for a few subtleties that Butler does not account for, and that Butler's discussion, though in some ways limited, is helpful for the end of stopping some violence.
A discussion of what violence is, for both Beauvior and Butler, begins with a discussion of what violence means for humans, in a human context. This means that in order to understand how violence works between people, one must know what a person is. For Butler, the individual is never reducible to a single set, an individual away from others. The "I" or the subject, is defined by its relationship both with and away from others. If I try to separate myself from my relationships, I end up extinguishing myself since their existence is part of what makes my existence mine. Anika Thiem explains this part of Butler's theory of subject formation:

...the name of the "we" is not excluded from never quite fitting the I, which means that the I is not fully coextensive with or reducible to that we. Subject formation involves a certain individuation that is a certain separation and a becoming aware of a differentiation between self and other. There seems to be an awakening to otherness in emerging as "I." There can be no subject without the other and also never a fully separation...(5)

Thiem explains that the "I" is not something that can be thought of without the "we," but it is also something different than the "we." The very awareness of an "I" implies that there is more than a collective "we." Self awareness implies individuation and individuation implies being among others. Familial or peer relationships are a good example of this. Thinking of myself as a mother shows that I am thinking of myself as both an "I" and as part of a group. This self identification as mother, implies by its very name others. If I were to lose my child, I would lose this part of my identity because I would no longer have a relationship with my child. Though it is true I am separate from the other for whom I am mother, it is at the same time not true. My identity is possible only through my being with others in the world. A result of my identity being my being among others is that my identity is something which is always coming into being. There is no static "I" which can be pointed at. By being in the world, I continuously find out what kind of person I am. I am a person who lives in a specific culture among people, who has relationships, interests, and goals, all of which are defined and given meaning in the context of others.
What I find out about myself is never fixed, even by others. Being an individual means that who I am is always being "re-inaugurated."(6) Saying something like, "This is who I am" fails because this definition is already left. As I say "This is who I am," I am already engaged in surpassing this self who I am. My identity is constantly reasserting itself , and it is never the same. Anika Thiem explains that:

The individual, however, does not at one point assume its position as an intelligible agent -- it is not at one point in time inaugurated as a social subject and then thereafter retains that status-- but it needs to be re-inaugurated time and again through the repeated enactment of oneself. Because the individual is a discursive position, it is dependent on being sustained through the practice of self-formation....Butler emphasizes that "subject," as well as "individual," and "person," is to be understood as "a linguistic category, a placeholder, a structure in formation.(7)

As humans, we have the ability to assert ourselves as some sort of individual in the world. We must continuously reassert our identity. This re-inauguration is the process by which we say I am a some type of person to the world. Since I can never be what I was, my identity must always be reestablished through this re-inauguration process. The individual asserts herself by a continuous reenactment of the self.. It is up to her to decide what she is, what she engages, and what is real. If she claims to be a student, she asserts that being a student is meaningful, and that for her being a student has specific properties. In order to continue to be a student, she must constantly reassert herself as such.
But what am I establishing my identity as? With what tools? Butler claims that a part of what we claim to be has been or is being foreclosed by the world in which we exist. For Butler, foreclosure can be thought of as the societal limitations, exclusions, or norms that constitute a large part of what society expects from us. As we become a reflexive or conscious subject, we begin to internalize these norms. If I am a boy, certain things are expected of or hoped for my life. I am expected to have a certain lifestyle, to love a certain way, to play with certain toys. I slowly internalize these expectations and they become my own. If I am a homosexual, I am seen as a specific type of person by the rest of the world. The word homosexuals, forecloses a complicated set of ideas that define what it means to be a homosexual for people in this world. We are not forever trapped by societal foreclosure, however. With the ability to reflect on our the norms that we have internalized, we can begin to reject some those norms that we deem harmful. I can assert my homosexuality as being or not being what the rest of society claims it to be. Butler says that, "...while we are constituted socially in limited ways and through certain kinds of limitations, exclusions and foreclosures, we are not constituted for all time in that way; it is possible to undergo an alteration of the subject that permits new possibilities that would have been thought psychotic or "too dangerous" in an earlier phase of life."(8) We are able to assert ourselves as subjects that are different from what we were expected to become. The boy who internalized certain expectations, can grow up and reject some of those expectations. If he is expected to one day get a job and take care of a family, he may instead choose to be without a job and celibate. If a person is inculcated into racism, it is possible through reflection that she may choose to reject this conception of the world and reject racism.
Butler thinks that much of the violence and conflict in the world might possibly be arrested if we were to adequately examine the internalized norms that have been foreclosed upon us. In her book "Precarious Life," two of the questions she asks might be put as "What does the Other mean to me?" and "What does seeing the face of the Other mean for me?" Both questions ask about the relation of the self to the Other. The subject is an entity individuated away from and also exists as a part of society. But who the subject considers another human might already be foreclosed. For an American in a certain social class, other Americans in the same social class might be the only other people who are considered as other humans. A poor immigrant Chinese worker might not be what most upper class Americans consider as human when they think about other humans, and these Americans probably are not terribly upset to hear about Chinese oppression. However, a minuscule happenstance to someone of their own social status might fuel outright indignation. There seems to be a link between care and identification of the Other as human.
In Violence and Mourning, in "Precarious Life," Butler shows what the loss of someone can do to our identity:

When we lose some of these ties by which we are constituted, we do not know who we are or what to do. On one level, I think I have lost "you" only to discover that "I" have gone missing as well. At another level, perhaps what I have lost "in" you, that for which I have no ready vocabulary, is a relationality that is composed neither exclusively of myself nor you, but is to be conceived as the tie by which those terms are differentiated and related. (9)

When we grieve at the loss of another, it is partially we are missing a part of ourselves. Without you, part of me is missing. The part of my identity that I identified as in relation with you has ceased to be what it was. When a mother loses her children, she becomes something less. Whereas she asserted herself as a mother before, if she was to do this in the now, it would not mean the same thing. "I am a mother," she might say, but she will not be able to say it in the same way as other mothers. What she previously meant by mother, no longer can ever be the case again. In this case, the mother grieves the loss of her child, and she grieves the loss of herself. It is because she is inextricably bound to her child that she is able to grieve. Her child is important to her because she loves it, but she loves because she sees this relationship as important and meaningful to her life. Without the tie between the child and herself, she would not grieve its loss. When she finds herself alone without the child, she finds herself as a person who is not quite the same.
We do not grieve for everyone. We grieve for our family, our friends, our neighbors, or our soldiers. It is when we experience the loss of those that we are tied to that we grieve. Depending on the strength of the tie, our grief is magnified. My grief for the loss of a parent does not compare to my grief of the loss of a co-worker. Our grief is related to the degree in which we are tied up in the other person. On September 11th, 2001, the United States experienced a terrible loss of life as a result of terrorist attacks. Most of the country mourned or grieved in some way to deal with the loss. These people should be grieved, what happened to them was terrible. But, why should they be grieved and not the 200,000 Iraqi children who died during the Gulf War and the aftermath not be grieved? Why do we not grieve for the Palestinians who die as a result of Israeli incursions? Why do those we bombed in Afghanistan not count as grievable? Butler thinks that the answer to this question is that if we were to grieve for these people, we would have to value their lives as much as those we consider like us. The terrible nature of war would be seen for what it is in reality, horror. War and violence, is "an exploitation of that primary tie, the primary way in which we are, as bodies, outside of ourselves and for one another."(10) When we commit a violent act or war against one another, we are usurping the other's right to self determination. Instead, we are treating the other as an object in the world, something that can be forcibly moved, changed, or eradicated. We ignore the other's basic tie to our own identity, we forget that they are constituted by us and we are by them. To do this we have to forget that they are human, that they are someone like us. Butler explains that:

There are no obituaries for the war casualties that the United States inflicts, and there cannot be. If there were to be an obituary, there would have had to have been a life, a life worth noting, a life worth valuing and preserving, a life that qualifies for recognition. Although we might argue that it would be impractical to write obituaries for all those people, or for all people, I think we have to ask, again and again, how the obituary functions as the instrument by which grievability is publicly distributed. It is the means by which a life becomes, or fails to become, a publicly grievable life, an icon for national self recognition, the means by which a life becomes noteworthy. (11)

Butler thinks that the casualties of war that we inflict are not grieved simply because they are not human like us. These casualties are the "unreal,"(12) or humans that are not regarded as human. They obtain this status by being perceived as different from those who are considering them. The strange, the different, the far away all obtain this status. To middle class Americans, some of the "unreal" might include people from any non western country, homosexuals, or migrants. The larger the perceived difference between the two, the more unreal the other seems. Butler uses the example of the brutal murder of Danny Pearl, a journalist for the Wall Street Journal, to support this point. (13) During the Afghan war, journalists reported progress of a war that obliterated nameless Afghans without any emotionality, but it was when one of their own, our own, died that we were asked to grieve, and grieve we did. Danny Pearl was a figure that could be humanized, he was someone who could have been a brother of a cousin, he belonged to a conception of humanity that other Americans could relate to, and so he was grieved.
We know and grieve about the death of Danny Pearl because his death was publicly announced. He was someone like us, someone with a human face. In the essay entitled Precarious Life, Butler examines what the human face has to do with the grievability of another. In this essay, Butler uses the concept of the "face" as presented by Emmanuel Levinas to explain how some humans are represented as grievable and how others are not.(14) To see the face of another, according to Butler, is to become aware of both our own and the other's precariousness or vulnerability in the world. The face, is not reducible to the physical characteristics of the face, but it is rather the understanding that the other is both engaged in a discourse with you and is bound to the world and vulnerable. To see a face is to understand that at any moment you or the other can be killed. This precariousness can be understood as the basic tie that is between all humans. When we look at each other in the world, we realize that we are vulnerable to be killed by each other. To look on the face of the other is to engage in ethics. Implicit in the face of the other is the statement, "Thou shalt not kill."(15) Butler explains that this happens in the following:

More generally, discourse makes an ethical claim upon us precisely because, prior to speaking, something is spoken to us. In a simple sense, and perhaps not quite as Levinas intended, we are first spoken to, addressed, by an Other, before we assume language for ourselves. And we can conclude further that it is only on the condition that we are addressed that we are able to make use of language. It is in this sense that the Other is the condition of discourse.(16)

Butler uses this description to suggest that there is a basic ethical request that all humans make to one another, namely not to be killed. Each individual has a basic desire to live and makes that request known to one another. When I see a friend, I recognize in the friend a life that is like my own. We share a mutual vulnerability and also a desire to live. According to Butler, when we do violence we often render the other's face as unreal or occlude the other's face from sight. This is not another face we are killing, but rather it is something that is not like us. She says that this seeing the other as unreal operates through first:
producing a symbolic identification of the face with the inhuman, foreclosing our apprehension of the human in the scene; the other works through radical effacement, so that there never was a human, there never was a life, and no murder has, therefore, ever taken place. In the first instance, something that has already emerged into the realm of appearance needs to be disputed as recognizably human; in the second instance, the public realm of appearance is itself constituted on the basis of the exclusion of that image.(17)

If the other is represented as inhuman, if we fail to see the mutual vulnerability that we share, if we fail to see the other as grievable, we succeed in hiding from the ethical claim that the other makes on us. In American society, our government and our media often show us which faces they think count as representable, which faces we can see, which faces are inhuman, and who counts as human. Excluding others from being counted as human justifies or perpetuates some of the violence done to those who are its recipients. Butler explains that it was only when the victims of the Vietnam war were given human faces, and considered grievable, that America was able to come to a consensus against the war. (18)
Resisting violence and its causes, for Butler, involves a reconsideration of what it means to be human. To do this, one must be willing to critique the hegemonic view of humanity that currently prevails in the western world. According to Butler, humanity shares a mutual vulnerability which ties us together ethically. The face of the other, who is at once partially me and not me, asks not to be harmed. This request and this face reminds us of our own vulnerability and suggests that we are as vulnerable to the other as she is to us. When the other dies, our tendency is to grieve for the other. Other people constitute part of our own identity since our social relations are inseparable from our identity. When we do not grieve for the Other, it is because we do not view the Other as human. Violence against those we would grieve for is insufferable, we resist it just like we resisted the violence in the Vietnam War and the violence on September 11th. In order to arrest violence, according to Butler, we must critically examine our conception of humanity and broaden it to include others.
Simone de Beauvior's conception of violence is similar to Butlers, but she does resist it in all of its forms. In order to understand Beauvior's description of violence, it is important to understand some of the basic tenants of her philosophy. Beauvior's philosophical project is partially informed by Sartre's existential view of man. In an Intro to the Ethics of Ambiguity, Beauvior explains the starting point of her existential philosophy in the following passage:
Man, Sartre tells us, "is a being who makes himself a lack of being so that there might be being. This means first that his passion is not inflicted from the outside. He has chosen it; it is his very being and as such it does not imply the idea of unhappiness. If this choice is qualified as useless, it is because there exists no absolute value, before man's passion or outside of it, in relation to which on could distinguish the useless from the useful.(19)

When Sartre tells us that man is a being that makes himself a lack of being so that there might be being, he is referring to mans ability to negatively consider his situation in the world. Unlike animals, man is self aware and creates being for himself. Man's negativity is expressed as man divides up the world and decides what is meaningful. Nothing has meaning independent of a human deciding something is meaningful. Value, meaning, and differentiation all spring up from man's ability to reflect. Man is a creature who is in the world as a being in-itself but experiences consciously as a being for-itself. We do create the actual world around us, it exists whether or not we are here to experience it. Instead, our consciousness of the world exists as a sort of emptiness. We take in the world, which we are a part of, and negate unadulterated being and make it for us. In other words, the for-itself takes apart the pure being that is the in-itself and makes it mean something. The for-itself has no positivity, it nihilates the world and expresses meaning positively. In doing this it takes in the world and makes the world some thing. This positive assertion is the for-itself trying to fill itself with being, but this attempt is destined to fail because the for-itself is always a nihilation of being. What is expressed as meaning can only be surpassed, negated, and evaluated, it never succeeds in filling the being for-itself with being. When I look at the world, I do not see it as it is, rather I see it with an eye to the things that are important to me. If I walk into a bar where I am supposed to meet a friend, and that friend is late, I notice that the bar has an emptiness. This emptiness is not an actuality, it is rather a perceived lack of my friend. The bar could be packed shoulder to shoulder, but since my friend is absent the others in the bar are just seen as obstacles to my desire. They are not my friend, their presence makes her absence that much more apparent to me. The bar exists to me as a bar without my friend for whom I search.
This negativity which makes the world, that was already, into a world that is meaningful for me is my freedom. There are no ready made objective values, there are no attachments previous to those that I create, there are no ends that I do not first choose; instead I create meaning, value, ends, and attachments as I engage the world. The subject identifies and recognizes the world, she thinks about the world and knows different things about it. When entering a situation in the world, a subject might claim "This is what I think about this." This claim is an assertion of the subject’s freedom in the world. The subject takes apart being and posits it as being for itself. When a subject exercises her freedom, she creates something in the world that is completely her own. She creates an action in which she has posited some sort of value or meaning. Beauvior explains this tendency in the following:

In order for an object to belong to me, it must have been founded by me. It is totally mine only if I founded it in its totality. The only reality that belongs entirely to me is, therefore, my act; even a work fashioned out of materials that are not mine escapes me in certain ways. What is mine is first the accomplishment of my project; a victory is mine if I fought for it. (20)

She explains that these acts that I involve myself in the world with are the only things that come entirely from me. These acts or ends at which I aim are referred to as projects. When I assert something, when I choose to act in the world, it is because my action in the world has some end. Beauvior thinks that man defines himself through these projects. Any act in which the subject aims or asserts anything is a throwing of the subject’s freedom out into the world in the form of one of these projects. Every act, every emotion, every thought is an expression of man's freedom through project. Beauvior says, "To live a love is to throw oneself through that love toward new goals: a home, a job, a common future. Since man is project, his happiness, like his pleasures, can only be projects."(21) Man's action in the world is a throwing of the ends of his freedom into the world. If I have feelings about something, it is because I was engaged with that thing as a project of my own. Any emotional engagement depends on whether or not I identify myself with a project.
Projects, free actions which aim at our end, always occur in the context of others. In fact, any project in the world is a project that is made with others in mind. To value something, to assert oneself in the world, is to make an appeal to someone else to engage the project as something necessary or meaningful. I assert something as valuable in the world, but since I always surpass myself, this assertion would fall back inert on the world if it is not taken up by someone else's freedom. If someone else makes my good their own good, my good is now justified in the freedom of this other person. Beauvior says:

Only the other can create a need for what we give him; every appeal and every demand comes from his freedom. In order for the object that I founded to appear as a good, the other must make it into his own good, and then I would e justified for having created it. The other's freedom alone is capable of necessitating my being. My essential need is therefore to be faced with free men.
Thus it is not for others that each person transcends himself one writes books and invents machines that were demanded nowhere. It is not for oneself either, because self exits only through the very project that throws it into the world. The fact of transcendence precedes all ends and all justification, but as soon as we are thrown into the world, we immediately wish to escape from the contingence and the gratuitousness of pure presence. We need others in order for our existence to become founded and necessary.(22)

We act in the world creating our justification for our actions as we proceed. However, we act in a world where we act largely with the other in mind. In order for any project to be seen as more than just something I am done with, I want an Other who is free to take up my project as something worthwhile. In the Other I find something that I can never transcend, namely a freedom which I cannot ever surpass. This person who takes up my project is like me, a freedom which makes itself a lack in order for their to be being. My project is a proposal that someone takes up my end as their own. It is an appeal to others. If I write a paper for others, it is in order to appeal to their freedoms. If I denounce a book, it is so that others may denounce the book as well.
Sometimes a tension arises between projects. Beauvior thinks that, "what is good for different men differs. Working for some often means working against the others." (23) In these cases, wanting the good for all men might be impossible. There are different projects that exist that contain oppositional goods. A tranquil solution, one that ends with both sides goals met, might not be an option. If we both need the same bread to live, should I allow you to take it from me? Should I value your life over my own? Should I fight to keep on living? In this case whose freedom is more valuable, my own or yours? If you are my brother, should I give you the bread or should I keep it for my self? Denying you the bread will surely kill you, denying myself the bread will surely kill me, either way there is violence. I make these decisions based on what on the values the spring forth from me. If I allow you my bread, it is because I am such that I would allow myself to die in order for another to live. But, I am only like this because I choose to be.
Violence is an attack against the same kind of physical "being in the world" for Beauvior as it is for Butler. A violent act is an act that is directed towards the Other's situation as object in the world with an eye looking away from the Other's freedom. It is easier to commit these acts if we do not see the Other as a person. If the Other is an object, an obstacle, someone who is not my peer, I do not need them for my project, they are unessential for me. Beauvior says:

To bring a child into the world is not to found him; to kill a man is not to destroy him. We never reach anything but the facticity of others. But precisely in choosing to act on that facticity, we give up taking the other for a freedom, and we restrict, accordingly, the possibilities of expanding our being. The man to whom I do violence is not my peer, and I need men to be my peers. The resort to violence arouses correspondingly less regret in cases where it seemed less possible to appeal to the freedom of the man to whom violence has been done.(24)

Violence cannot destroy a man, since a man is not his physical characteristics. Man is project, so violence attacks the facticity of man, but not the man itself. However, violence often excludes the possibility of the other taking up your project as their own This existential analysis of projects brings about a paradox that Beauvior is quick to point out. If I am a lack in the world and I must always assert my being through projects, then I am always transcending projects. Every project I take on is by nature something that I will surpass. Man's freedom is a lack that makes itself a lack in order for their to be being. But when man discloses or creates being in the world, man must again and again disclose being. Beauvior describes this paradox with the following quote:
Man is only by choosing himself; if he refuses to choose, he annihilates himself. The paradox of the human condition is that every end can be surpassed, and yet, the project defines the end as an end. In order to surpass an end, it must first have been projected as something that is not to be surpassed. Man has no other way of existing.(25)

My project is a choosing of myself as a complete and final end. However, as soon as I choose myself, I must again take up another project since I am not what I choose, but rather I am a lack of being that creates being. I am not the created being, but instead a being who is constantly moving forward in action. My freedom is expressed through my movement from one disclosure of being to the next. This means I constantly transcend or surpass what I was previously as I redefine my identity through another project. This movement or action of freedom is referred to as the ambiguity of man's situation by Beauvior. For Beauvior, action is not something that is purely a transcendence or purely being. In other words, when man discloses meaning, he does not ever become being in the world or become a pure freedom. He is not Cartesian soul away from body or reduced to physical being. Rather, he constantly creates meaning in the world. She notes that most ethicists have tried to eliminate ambiguity by identifying action with pure interiority or pure exteriority, pure freedom or pure being in the world. This is an inaccurate depiction of action according to Beauvior. If ethics is about action, then an adequate ethical theory should not shy away from the ambiguous nature of man's freedom. Meaning is constantly won for man, there is no justification for actions other than that which springs forth from man. Her ethic is an ethic that acknowledges man's freedom and recognizes man's need for other freedoms.
But, what happens if someone can interpret violence as an embracing of freedom? What happens if what people normally interpret as violence is argued to be a purely free act against a violent and oppressive system? Judith Butler argues that in "Shall we Burn Sade," Beauvior sees Marquis de Sade making the argument that his actions were, in fact actions, done under the banner of freedom.(26) He was responding to what he called the Reign of Terror, a time where the aristocracy had fallen and the government had been turned into an impersonal machine with universalized, inhuman rules. His sexual violence is seen as a revolt against the prevailing morality of the time. However, even if this was true, even if his violence was a revolt against another form of violence, de Sade was not acknowledging the freedom of his victims. This brings up an interesting dilemma, one that Beauvior acknowledges throughout her philosophical works, and one that I do not see Butler accounting for in "Precarious Life".(27) When do the ends justify the means, and do the means ever justify the ends? In this case, Marquis de Sade was using a violence in which he refused to experience the other as free in order to take a stand against what he perceived as an inhuman violence. Did his means justify his ends? Why or why not? Beauvior asks the question, "For what is the point of fighting if doing so one destroys all reasons for which on chose to fight? No doubt, French pacifists in the 1920s and 1930s served the cause of peace poorly. It is absurd to ensure the defeat of those values that one wants to triumph, one of respect for them. But it is no less absurd to renounce an idea under pretext of ensuring its effectiveness."(28) Often, situations in the real world are morally ambiguous. It doesn't make sense for me to kill in order to maintain peace, the very means of my project destroy my end. But, at the same time it does not make sense for me to be a pacifist if there is going to be war anyways. In this case my project fails, I accomplished nothing. Situations may arise in the world that call me to make sacrifices. Do I sacrifice one man in order to save millions? Is this justified? In sacrificing this one man, I am treating a freedom as a means, but I am treating other freedoms as ends. Why do I choose his to treat as a means and not theirs? Beauvior explains that this answer is made by each individual. She says "If man is finally nothing but himself, then for whom are a thousand men worth more than a single one? The only possible answer is: for himself."(29) We are the arbiters of value, we decide if one man is worth a million, or a million is worth one. In situations of conflict, do the means justify the ends? This judgment is something that we can only decide for ourselves. Even if I am tied to others through my relations, even if the other is indistinguishable from me, I still am the person who judges worth in any situation.
Beauvior leaves us in a position of acknowledging the ambiguity of a situation where violence might possibly occur. Though violence is an ethical breach of freedom, it might be justifiable if it aims towards freedom. Butler on the other hand shows us violence as something which often occurs because the other is not recognized as human. She suggests that if we have a broader understanding of ourselves, if we critically reflect on what is human, we will be moved to arrest much of the violence in the world.
Butler's suggestion is interesting, she outlines a view of the human that experiences a shared vulnerability when exposed to another human. This humanity is a humanity that is inseparable from each other, so much so that to do violence to one is to do violence to another. Her proposal suggests that people will hesitate to do violence if they view the Other as someone who is like them. What she says here has merit, Beauvior also suggests that it is easier to do violence to people that we do not perceive as similar to us. However, this is does not suggest that violence will be arrested or that there is not cases where it is justified. If I support human rights and non violence, should I kill the rapist in Sudan? If I do not want anyone harmed, do I defend myself from attack? Moral situations have the uncanny ability to defy neat philosophical boundary lines. In these cases I would be violating my end and achieving my end if I was to carry out my action, but I would win and lose if I did not act. To kill the rapist, I arrest violence and cause violence. To not kill the rapist I do not perpetuate violence, but I let it happen. In the world, there are many causes of violence. I am sure that Butler is right, violence is often made easier by the derealization of other men, but there are many other reasons that violence occurs. If I need bread to survive, do I fight for the same bread that you need to survive?
I think that Beauvior's depiction of the ambiguity of action rightly describes what is perhaps the inevitability of violence. In order for all violence to subside, all people would need to take up a project that shared a similar direction. If I posit a good for all men, it is my good that I am positing. Often, others have different conceptions of this good. Butler's conception of vulnerability was a good attempt to bridge this gap between myself and the Other. We all share, according to Butler, an ethical concern about the precariousness of our situation in the world. This precariousness has a backlash though, with it comes the knowledge that if I need to, I can kill the Other. If my survival is contingent on the Other's annihilation, even if I am aware that I am in part annihilating myself, annihilating the Other might be a viable consideration. If I had to commit this violent act, and the Other was someone I identified with, I might still act violently even knowing I would regret the Other's loss.
I think one of the positive things we can gain from Butler's account of grievability is an account of cases where we regret a violent act. I might strike out at my friend, I smack my son's bottom, or in a rage I might abuse my partner. In all of these cases I will probably regret the violence I commit against those who are close to me. However, maybe I tried smack my son's bottom in order to keep him safe or maybe I strike out at a friend who is about to hurt himself. With the others well being in mind, I might still commit violence for what I perceive as a benefit for the Other. I do not want to hurt my friend or my son. Perhaps I wish there was another way to help the one who is close to me. But, perhaps I do not see another way to act in this situation, maybe time is short and the Other is in danger. This act is regretted though, I grieve for the violence done against my own.
However, this all said, I do believe that Butler's solution would help sedate some of the violence in the world. If an American public was to grieve for each Palestinian’s death like they grieved for Danny Pearl, America would have a different stance towards violence in the Middle East. If the grief we felt towards the 3000 dead on September 11th was proportionate to the grief we felt towards the 200,000 Iraqi children who died from the Gulf War or the aftermath, our attitude towards violence in the Middle East would probably not be as conciliatory. In situations where a public is ill informed, or deliberately misinformed, critical thought might be able to stave off some of the terrible violence in the world. However, in situations like with the 1930's French pacifists, critical thought and non-violence did nothing but help usher in a German invasion. (30)
Both Beauvior and Butler see violence as something that acts upon the Others pure physical being in the world. Beauvior thinks that this happens because sometimes projects crash into each other head on. This thought is helpful for seeing why violence persists, even among those who are close to us. Butler's solution to violence, on the other hand, might be helpful in arresting many cases of violence in the world, even if it is not helpful in many ambiguous situations where action is necessary. Critical thought is good for reevaluating my place in the world and might lead to a reduction in violence, but in a situation where I must act and I lose no matter how I act, violence might be my only recourse.
















Citations

1. Salih, Sara, "Introduction" The Judith Butler Reader, ed Sara Salih (Malden: Blackwell Publishing) 12.

2. Butler, Judith. Precarious Life. (New York: New Left Books, 2004) 22.

3. "If we are interested in arresting cycles of violence to produce less violent outcomes, it is no doubt important to ask what, politically, might be made of grief besides a cry to war." She continues on to discuss how, if realized, our interdependency might be acknowledged as a basis for a global community. Butler, Precarious Life XII.

4. De Beauvior, Simone, "Pyrrhus and Cineas" Philosophical Writings, ed Magaret Simons (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004) 108.

5. Thiem, Anika, Unbecoming Subjects: Judith Butler, Subject Formation, and Responsibility. (UC Berkeley, 2005) 7.

6. Ibid 13.

7. Ibid 13.

8. Olson, Gary and Worsham, Lynn, "Changing the Subject: Judith Butler's Politics of
Radical Resignification," The Judith Butler Reader, ed Sara Salih (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004) 333.

9. Butler, Precarious Life 22.

10. Ibid, 27.

11. Ibid, 34.

12. Ibid, 33.

13. Ibid, 37.

14. Ibid, 131.

15. Ibid, 138.

16. Ibid, 138.

17. Ibid, 147.

18. Ibid, 150.

19. De Beauvior, Simone, "Intro to the Ethics of Ambiguity," Philosophical Writings, ed Magaret Simons (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004) 292.

20. De Beauvior, Simone "Pyrrhus and Cineas" 93.

21. On this page there are also the following relevant passages: Man has to be his being. Every moment he is seeking to make himself be, and that is the project. The human being exists in the form of projects that are not projects toward death but projects toward singular ends. He hunts, he fishes, he fashions instruments, he writes books: these are not diversions or flights but a movement toward being; man makes so as to be. He must transcend himself since he is not, but his transcendence must also grasp itself anew as a plenitude since he wants to be. Ibid, 98.

22. Ibid, 129.

23. Ibid, 129.

24. Ibid, 138.

25. Ibid, 113.

26. Butler, Judith, Beauvior On Sade: making sexuality into an ethic. (Lecture, 2005) 180.

27. Butler does not claim to be solving all the world's violent problems, I am trying to show some things that Butler does not account for.

28. De Beauvior, Simone, "Moral Idealism and Political Realism," Philosophical Writings, edited by Magaret Simons (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004) 185.

29. Ibid, 187.

30. De Beauvior, Simone "Pyrrhus and Cineas" 138.













Bibliography


Butler, Judith. Precarious Life. New York, NY. New Left Books, 2004.

Butler, Judith. Beauvior On Sade: making sexuality into an ethic. Lecture, 2005.

De Beauvior, Simone. "Ethics of Ambiguity" In Existentialism and the Philosophical Tradition, edited by Diane Raymond, pp. 458-473 & pp.492-504. Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Prentiss-Hall, Inc, 1991.

De Beauvior, Simone. "Intro to the Ethics of Ambiguity" In Philosophical Writings, edited by Magaret Simons, pp. 281-298. Chicago, IL. University of Illinois Press, 2004.

De Beauvior, Simone. "Moral Idealism and Political Realism" In Philosophical Writings, edited by Magaret Simons, pp. 175-193. Chicago, IL. University of Illinois Press, 2004.

De Beauvior, Simone. "Pyrrhus and Cineas" In Philosophical Writings, edited by Magaret Simons, pp. 92-149. Chicago, IL. University of Illinois Press, 2004.

Olson, Gary and Worsham, Lynn. "Changing the Subject: Judith Butler's Politics of Radical Resignification" in The Judith Butler Reader, edited by Sara Salih, pp. 325 - 356. Malden, MA. Blackwell Publishing, 2004.

Salih, Sara. "Introduction" in The Judith Butler Reader, edited by Sara Salih, pp. 1- 14. Malden, MA. Blackwell Publishing, 2004.

Thiem, Anika. Unbecoming Subjects: Judith Butler, Subject Formation, and Responsibility. UC Berkeley, 2005.