II.) The Origins of the “Ontology of Violence”
During their first 300 years, Christians in the West were also despised and persecuted quite often, much as were those in the East.
Only in the early 4th century C.E., when the Roman Emperor Constantine favored Christianity, did it become the major religion of a major empire.
Afterwards, when the Western Roman Empire collapsed in the late 5th century, and honest, capable leaders were needed to stem the chaos and destruction, Christians took over many public functions. For the next 1,200 years or so, Churches often wielded great influence in western governments. Sometimes the Church elevated the moral and social life in Western nations.
But at other times its leaders descended, along with kings and princes, into promoting evils like persecutions of the Jews and the Crusades against Islam.
Criticisms of the Roman Catholic Church’s political involvement and its failures in promoting Christian values helped to bring about the Protestant Reformation.
But Protestant Churches were also “State Churches:” they supported, and were supported by, the governments of the various nations where they existed.
Sometimes their Christian values led them to critcize their rulers. But at other times, especially in wars against other nations, Protestant Churches strongly supported their own governments.
During the 17th century C.E., however, a philosophy arose which sought to free governments and society from the restraints of Christian values altogether.
This was the “Ontology of Violence,” articulated by thinkers like Hugo Grotius, Baruch de Spinoza and Thomas Hobbes. This Ontology was among the first of many western attempts to explain the origin and nature of human society without reference to God, revelation or spiritual reality, and to greatly reduce the influence of Christianity. Its proponents conceived the world as an autonomous realm, or sphere, governed entirely by natural laws. They taught that religions had filled this sphere, as it were, with deities and revelations which were actually unreal.
Their philosophical task, then, was to eliminate these pseudo-realities from the world, in order to lay bare its autonomous, non-religious, secular character.
Why did these philosophers remove religion from the world? Because they wanted reason and science to reshape the world, and they believed that religion opposed these.
By the end of the 17th century, reason, science, and values like freedom, democracy and progress were being extolled by the “Enlightenment.” The Ontology of Violence, as we shall see, formed the pessimistic side of the optimistic Enlightenment which sought to improve human life by reason, not religion.
However, the Christian social theologian John Milbank argues that these philosophers did not discover any sphere which was empty of religion; instead, they created or invented it. According to Milbank, no earthly realm devoid of spiritual realities ever existed. Therefore, in order to free human society from religious institutions and values, these philosophers created such a realm. This new philosophy differed in some important ways from the medieval Christian theology of society.
Western medieval theology had taught that some people can exercise power in society, and that most people have the right to own private property.
But since God is concerned about the welfare of the whole society, each person’s property and power had to be used to promote, and had to be limited by, the Common Good of everyone.
But the “Ontology of Violence” was based on a different understanding of power, derived from ancient Roman law. Power now became unrestricted lordship over everything that one controlled: such as children, wives, slaves and lands.
The right to own property became the right to do whatever the owner wanted to do with it, rather than subordinating the use of that property to the Common Good.
In other words, this new philosophy loosened ownership of property from justice.
According to the Torah, God originally gave humankind dominion over the rest of creation (Genesis 1:28) In Medieval theology, this dominion had become Adam’s rule over the human race, which was passed down through history to political rulers.
The new philosophy interpreted this “dominion” also in the Roman way: as the absolute control of rulers over their lands and subjects.
This principle was sometimes called “the divine right of Kings.
” Although this “right” could be limited somewhat, in theory, by Christian principles, it often was not so limited in practice.
But the new philosophers wanted to be entirely “scientific.” Thinkers like John Locke (1632-1704 C.E.) eliminated the “divine right of kings,” and denied that any basic religious or social bonds hold people together. Locke dissolved society into a mass of individuals. Each individual had its own physical drives, social preferences and intellectual opinions, which often conflicted with those of others. How, then, could a stable society arise from this mass of conflicting urges?
Locke’s answer, briefly, was democracy:
if every adult could vote for the leaders they wanted, these conflicting urges would balance each other out, and a government which could best satisfy the desires of everyone would be elected.
American understandings of democracy probably come more from Locke than from anyone else.
About a century later, Adam Smith (1723-1790) applied this basic principle to economics.
Each person, according to Smith, wants to purchase things as cheaply as possible, and to sell things as expensively as possible.
Further, every worker wants to earn as much as possible, but every employer wants to pay workers as little as possible.
How, then, can governments keep buyers and sellers, and workers and employers, from constantly opposing each other; and how can they prevent some employers from eventually controlling all the wealth and production and reducing everyone else to poverty?
Smith’s answer was laissez-faire: that is, governments should “let alone,” or avoid interfering with, these conflicting economic forces; then these forces will balance each other out, and create the greatest possible prosperity for everyone.
It is important to notice that when the new philosophers examined human beings “scientifically,” they treated human desires much like animal drives which simply sought satisfaction, unaffected by religion or morality.
But if every individual expressed these desires freely, how could this lead to social harmony, instead of violent conflict? Basically, because these philosophers believed that people were also guided, to some extent, by reason.
“Rational self-interest” showed each person that they, like everyone else, must moderate their desires somewhat to attain harmony and avoid conflict.
Therefore, most people would accept governments and social arrangements which limited their desires to some degree.
Paradoxically, however, the attempt to explain human nature scientifically– by means of reason and not religion— eventually led many western thinkers to conceive reason itself as the mere product of physical processes. They emptied the social sphere not only of God and revelation, but also of reason itself (except for a kind of “reason” which arose from and served the physical drives).
By the late 19th century, all human drives could be considered products of evolution, a struggle for survival which only the strongest creatures survived.
Evolution was consistent with the old Roman notions of power and ownership of property as absolute control over everything which one possessed.
In this Darwinian view, the Ontology of Violence appeared in a very clear form: violent struggle was basic to all human life, including all relationships among nations.
Further, since stronger creatures had subdued weaker creatures in evolution, this view gave stronger nations the “right” to conquer and control weaker peoples.
When western nations, with their superior technology, dominated nations which lacked that advantage, westerners could justify this as “progress,” or the advance of stronger, better people over inferior people.
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