Alex Bell Posted January 23, 2014 Posted January 23, 2014 The other day I was listneing to Mark Passio discuss Natural Law. He came up with an interesting distinction between Violence and Force, I'm interested to see what you guys think. He uses the relationship between the roots of "violence" and "violate" to support the validity of his definition. It basically follows that of Oxford English, which is: "behaviour involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something" Basically, violence denotates agression. He then defines force, again, essentially as Oxford does: "strength or energy as an attribute of physical action or movement" In this sense, people describing sports like MMA, Football, and Hockey aren't actually "violent" as everyone volunteered to participate, not to mention the physiological testing that they must past to be allowed to do so, though they're most certainly "forceful." I forward this idea because most everywhere, even here, I find that people seem to muddle the two; I'm guessing people here might have a greater capacity to both challenge the idea and appreciate clarification for it's own sake. What do you think?
JohnH. Posted January 23, 2014 Posted January 23, 2014 "behaviour involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something" Don't MMA fighters use physical force with the intentions of hurting and/or damaging each other?
Alex Bell Posted January 23, 2014 Author Posted January 23, 2014 Good point, I probably shouldn't have appealed to the authority of a dictionary, it seems today most have the convolution you pointed out.
Recommended Posts