Violence and political order - philosophical investigations on the concept of violence and on the justification of using violence

一个国家的正当理由和接受至少基于它提供的一个好处：它防止由国家垄断暴力的制度发生不受限制的和不可预测的暴力。然而，这意味着国家机构和代表保留使用暴力的专有权。现在，机构和国家代表在多大程度上拥有暴力的权利仍然是一个有点悬而未决的问题；特别是因为在现实中，代表一再使用只能被描述为“非法”的暴力：因为它的受害者是那些应该受到保护而不是受到这些代表的暴力的人。一个例子是一些警察在政治示威过程中的行为。这个问题只是强调但不限于这个问题的根本问题集中在使用暴力的正当理由上：众所周知，什么时候允许使用暴力是出了名的不清楚，特别是当涉及到团体或机构使用的暴力时。这个项目的主要目标是分别界定个人暴力、集体暴力和机构暴力的明确概念。第二个次要目标是讨论那些被认为是国家垄断暴力的理由的论点。普遍接受的论点是，国家对暴力的垄断是保证公共和平并因此被理性接受的必要条件，这一论点被批评为不充分和矛盾的。一方面，人们通常不清楚“暴力垄断”(准确地说，是指制度化的暴力)这一看似无辜的言论到底是什么意思；另一方面，为什么一个机构能够通过威胁和实施暴力本身来声称合法性，而不是阻止所有暴力的发生，而只是私营化的、非国家的暴力，这一点非常令人怀疑！

The justification and acception of a state is based on at least one benefit it provides: that it prevents unrestrained and unpredictable violence from happening by the institution of the state's monopoly of violence. That implies, however, that institutions and representatives of the state retain the exclusive right to use violence.Now, it remains a somewhat open question, to which degree institutions and representatives of the state possess the right to violence; especially so, since in reality said representatives over and over again use violence in way that can only be described as "illegitimate:" because its victims are those that should be protected against rather then subjected to violence by said representatives. An example are the actions of some policemen in the course of political demonstrations.The underlying problem that is merely highlighted by, but not restricted to this question centers on the justification of using violence as such: it is notoriously unclear when using violence is allowed, especially so when it comes to violence used by groups or institutions.The main aim of this project is that definition of clear concepts of personal, collective and institutional violence, respectively. The second, subordinate aim is the discussion of arguments that are supposed to justify the state's monopoly of violence. It is predominantly the widely accepted thesis that the state's monopoly of violence is the necessary condition to guarantee public peace and hence to be rationally accepted that is criticized as both insufficient and contradictory. On the one hand, it usually is unclear what exactly is meant by the seemingly innocent talk of a "monopoly of violence" (which, to be precise, refers to institutionalized violence); on the other hand, it is highly dubious why an institution should be able to claim legitimacy that does not prevent all violence from happening but only privatized, non-state violence - by threatening and applying violence itself!