Forgiveness, anger, and the limits of reciprocity: a critical note on Stephen Darwall’s the heart and its attitudes

Stephen Darwall's thoughtful essay focuses on my treatment of the authority of morality, and on the significance of my notion of motivation. Darwall says that the question of morality's authority, as I initially characterize it, is the normative question of how far our reasons to behave morally extend. Moreover, he suggests, it is this question that my overall project requires me to address. However, he says, throughout much of my subsequent discussion, I seem instead to be addressing the empirical question of the extent to which morality has a psychological hold on people. Thus, in effect, I equivocate, in my use of the term 'authority', between the notion of normative authority and the notion of psychological hold. Furthermore, Darwall argues, since most of what I present as a discussion of morality's authority is in fact a discussion of its psychological hold, I never do succeed in demonstrating that morality's (normative) authority is less dependent than many have supposed on the truth of the claim of overridingness (CO). At most, my argument may show that many people would be stably disposed to treat morality as authoritative even if CO were false. However, I do not show that morality would actually possess normative authority under these conditions. If the arguments I offer are correct, in other words, then people might think there were (normative) reasons for them to behave morally even if CO were false, but it does not follow that there would indeed be such reasons. This is Darwall's central line of criticism as I understand it. It seems to me to raise at least two different issues. One is primarily a verbal issue about whether I equivocate in my use of the term 'authority'. The other is a substantive issue about whether or not the argument that I offer makes any contribution to the discussion of morality's normative authority. The easiest way to address these issues is by locating them in relation to the structure of my argument.

A central theme of Samuel Scheffler's impressive Human Morality is that considered view of the relation between morality and the individual (5) requires distinguishing frequently confused issues concerning morality's content, scope, authority, and deliberative role, and appreciating interrelations among these. He suggests a nice example of the latter. Some are inclined to believe morality lacks the overriding authority others claim to have because they assume that morality's content is stringent. They may think, for instance, that morality gives no weight to the agent's interests and concerns (except as one person among others) but argue that, since would be irrational to weight one's concerns and interests in rational deliberation, moral requirements lack overriding reason-giving force. But this assumes without defense a conception of morality that is controversial. If morality is not stringent but moderate, agents' interests and concerns will be relevant as such to determining their moral obligations, and will be less clear that the best reasons can ever dictate violating them. For me, Scheffler's treatment of morality's authority is the most interesting, suggestive, and original part of the book. But is also the hardest to pin down. I want to raise some questions about his ideas in this area, therefore, in the hope of clarifying directions in which they might be developed further. Scheffler dubs CO (claim of overridingness) the thesis that it can never be rational knowingly to do what morality forbids. (52) His attitude towards CO is complex. He says repeatedly that CO is implausibly strong (e.g., 56) but he doesn't deny CO and appears to agree with Kant's thesis that something like is a presupposition of our pre-philosophical conception of morality. (61-66) Moreover, he argues that the reasons writers have had for denying CO have often been less than convincing. Some have simply assumed morality to be stringent, thereby saddling CO with an unfavorable theory of morality's content. (56-60) And others have interpreted a plausible internalist premise linking reasons and motives (nothing can count as a reason for a person to act in a certain way unless is capable of actually motivating him to do so (61, 74)) in terms of an implausible Humean theory of

In Human Morality, I attempt to do two things. The first is to distinguish carefully among questions concerning morality's scope, content, authority, and deliberative role, and to emphasize the importance of addressing all four of these topics if we are to understand the relation between morality and the point of view of the individual agent. The second is to explore each of these topics myself, and, in so doing, to sketch one interpretation of the place of moral concerns in human life. With respect to the question of scope, I argue that morality should be seen as pervasive, in the sense that no voluntary human action is immune to moral assessment. Although some philosophers have suggested that certain types of action may be beyond the scope of morality, I argue against this position, and try to show that some of the concerns that underlie it can be better accommodated in other ways. With respect to the issue of content, I argue that morality should be seen as moderate rather than stringent. This means that although morality and selfinterest can conflict, and although morality sometimes demands great sacrifices, moral requirements are less systematically demanding than some philosophers have believed, and than some moral theories imply. Thus, the idea that morality is moderate represents an intermediate position, which stands midway between the view that morality is stringent and the view that morality and self-interest coincide. My position on the authority of morality is less straightforward. The focal point for my discussion is the traditional claim that morality is overriding, which means that it can never be rational knowingly to do what morality forbids. I do not argue against this claim and, indeed, I criticize certain arguments against it that others have offered. Nevertheless, I express doubts about the claim of overridingness, and the bulk of my discussion is devoted to arguing that morality's authority is less dependent on the truth of this claim than has often been supposed. For, even if the claim were true, morality would still have less authority than some people would like; and, even if the claim

I discuss a remark made by Gitta Sereny about Treblinka Kommandant Franz Stangl that questions the role and scope of moral authority, viz. “I don’t know now at which point one human being can make the moral decision for another that he should have the courage to risk death.” I provide an illustrative elaboration from her remark of a role for moral authority and a limit on its scope. First, I use the idea of supererogation to introduce the idea and role of moral authority. Second, I argue that there is a parallel understanding of Sereny’s remark that shows moral authority operative in a similar role in Stangl’s case. Third, I make four refinements to what she has expressed about Stangl, each of which further illuminates the nature of moral authority. Finally, I address objections and consider the implications of my account.

Why do we have a moral duty to fulfill promises? Hume offers what today is called a practice theory of the obligation of promises: he explains it by appeal to a social convention. His view has inspired more recent practice theories. All practice theories, including Hume’s, are assumed by contemporary philosophers to have a certain normative structure, in which the obligation to fulfill a promise is warranted or justified by a more fundamental moral purpose that is served by the social practice of promising or adherence to it. Recent practice theories do have this structure, but, I argue, Hume’s own does not. Hume’s account, while it does trace the origin of promises to convention, is instead a causal explanation of the moral sentiments we have toward fulfillment and violation of promises, sentiments he regards as normative in themselves and not susceptible of further warrant. He explains how a collectively-invented social practice becomes (itself) morally obligatory for us to conform to, without deriving its moral authority from a more basic principle. I discuss one objection often made to practice theories that, in its application to Hume, presupposes the incorrect interpretation, and show that while it is telling for Hume’s descendants, for Hume it misses the mark. Instead I make a different challenge to Hume, and suggest how he might meet it.

Complexity and complex challenges call for leadership that enables people to collaborate and create across diverse forms of knowledge, backgrounds, and perspectives. The challenge is that complexity and differences challenge dominant masculine leadership norms and conventional problem-solving practices, which generates tension. These tensions are affective—and more often than not, they divide rather than connect people. This dissertation points to the heart of a complex tension dynamic that exemplifies why efforts to adapt to pressures for increased gender diversity in leadership positions across private companies in Denmark are not automatically transformed into relational leadership practices that connect different people, different thinking, and different bodies This dissertation argues that complexity requires leadership that embraces tension as a constructive potential—both as a driver of adaptation and as a force that can challenge dominant leadership practices. Complexity Leadership Theory (CLT), to some extent, builds on this foundation by conceptualizing adaptation to complexity as the process of conflicting and connecting amidst tension, which leads to adaptive outcomes. However, while CLT emphasizes the productive role of tension, it does not account for the embodied and affective tensions that emerge when leadership norms are challenged—tensions that shape whether people enter into the potential of tension or whether they shut tensions down and turn away. On this basis, the dissertation explores: What it takes to enable the process of connecting amidst tensions that emerge in pressures for gender diversity in leadership in the context of Denmark, how norms of gender and leadership are sustained, and how the interplay between gendered leadership norms and affective encounters shapes responses to tension. CLT forms the metatheoretical entry point for examining how tensions generated by pressures for gender diversity can serve as catalysts for adaptive change. To support my point that adaptation requires a multi-level understanding of tension to both encompass a view on tension as a pressure to adapt, and as a potential to unsettle norms that keep dominant structures in place, I integrate my metatheoretical with a spatial metaphor and definition of tension as a “tensile structure”—tent-like constructions that depend on tensions between poles to generate structural strength, and resilience thereby creating space and openness for alternative approaches. Combining these perspectives enables an understanding of tension as both a driving force for adaptation and a space that broadens the potential to challenge prevailing leadership practices. To broaden CLT’s conceptualization of tension to include normative and affective dimensions, this dissertation integrates this metatheoretical foundation with affect theory and post-structuralist feminist perspectives on norms and their performativity. Together, this integrated theoretical foundation enables an inquiry into how the complex interplay between gendered expectations of leadership, the performativity of norms, and affective dynamics shapes responses to the tensions that emerge under pressures for increased gender diversity in leadership. In doing so, the dissertation offers insight into the relational processes that either facilitate or hinder the constructive engagement of difference and tension in the context of complexity. Through an affective ethnographic approach to research, the dissertation highlights how normative, sensory, and embodied experiences shape relational dynamics and emotional responses to tension. This process is based on qualitative interviews with people working primarily in leadership positions across Danish private-sector organizations, combined with informal conversations, everyday interactions, and the researcher’s affective experiences and responses in the field. The findings reveal how tensions surrounding leadership and gender diversity manifest as both normative forces, affective currents, and embodied reactions. At the same time, they demonstrate that such tensions often reinforce dominant gendered understandings of leadership, yet affective tensions can also open space for connection and the emergence of alternative perspectives. Enabling such connection requires noticing when and how affective tensions shape our responses, and being willing to stay with the sensory and vulnerable states that arise when normative structures are unsettled. This suggests that complexity leadership is not only a matter of structure and decision-making in tension-filled contexts but also a matter of affective and embodied presence in relational processes. Consequently, this dissertation offers an affective, embodied expansion of CLTs concept of the adaptive process. It also contributes methodologically to advancing an affective approach to leadership research—one that extends critical thinking with critical feeling, and thereby brings the sensing body, affect, and emotion into play alongside discursive elements. In doing so, it advances an approach to studying leadership that foregrounds embodiment, affect, and emotion.

Discourses on Responsible Innovation and Responsible Research and Innovation, in short R(R)I, have revolved around but not elaborated on the notion of critique. In this article, generative critique is introduced to R(R)I as a practice that sits in-between adversarial armchair critique and co-opted, uncritical service. How to position oneself and be positioned on this spectrum has puzzled humanities scholars and social scientists who engage in interdisciplinary collaborations with scientists, engineers, and other professionals. Recently, generative critique has been presented as a solution to the puzzle in interdisciplinary collaborations on neuroscientific experiments. Generative critique seeks to create connections across disciplines that help remake seemingly stable objects in moments when taken-for-granted ways of seeing and approaching objects are unsettled. In order to translate generative critique from the neurosciences to R(R)I, socio-technical integration research (STIR) is proposed as a practice of generative critique in interdisciplinary R(R)I collaborations. These collaborations aim to account for societal aspects in research and technology development. For this purpose, a variety of approaches have been developed, including STIR and video-reflexive ethnography (VRE). STIR and VRE resemble each other but diverge on affective, collaborative, and temporal dimensions. Their juxtaposition serves to develop suggestions for how STIR could be modified on these dimensions to better enact generative critique in interdisciplinary R(R)I collaborations. In this way, the article contributes to ongoing discussions in R(R)I and in the engaged programme in science and technology studies more broadly on the dynamics of positioning in collaborative work.

Introduction “With most people, you cannot tell just from looking at them that they are fighting a silent, unseen battle”, says Sugary Symbiote, a Black, disabled, and sapphic artist in the United States. “That is what a lot of my illustrations represent. The girl is surrounded by cute things that make her happy, but she still feels alone and sad” (Sugary Symbiote). Central to her work is the bishōjo, or “cute girl”, drawn from manga, anime, and related media. While scholarship has largely treated bishōjo as objects produced for and by men (Galbraith; Galbraith and Rose), artists such as Sugary Symbiote reveal their queer and transformative potential. Women, queer men, and gender-diverse people have long engaged with bishōjo as sites for self-expression, identity, and resistance. For Sugary Symbiote, the bishōjo “may be assumed to be for the male gaze, but she is more than that. She has internal struggles that no one else can see” (Sugary Symbiote). Her illustrations reconfigure bishōjo through a Black queer lens, forming part of a broader movement by global fans to reclaim and reimagine Japanese popular culture (Gresham; Hassel; Jordan-Zachery and Harris). As Laura Miller notes, bishōjo figures can “serve … important social and cultural functions” by persuading, informing, and resisting through stylised cuteness (“Afterword” 172). In seeing the bishōjo through Sugary Symbiote’s eyes, we aim to draw scholarly attention to these underexplored dimensions of embodiment and affect. Figures such as the bishōjo can be continuously reimagined as mediators of body, self, and gender. This aligns with Jack Halberstam’s idea of “sublime mutation” (143), wherein women and gender-diverse people enact the bishōjo’s pliability through an ongoing interplay of the “fem(me)” and “hyperfemininity”. We use “fem(me)” to describe feminine-identifying and/or -presenting people of all genders, who have reclaimed the term “girl” to signify a queer excess. Scholars such as Rhea Hoskin and Allison Taylor show how hyperfemininity, pushed to its extremes, becomes an “agential femininity” that “veers from patriarchal sanctions” (283), offering genderqueer potential (Schippers). Fem(me) cultures also give room for the “cripping” and “queering” of bodies, opening up possibilities of expression and reflection on pain, trauma, and marginality (Kafer). While much academic work universalises fem(me) experience, artists like Sugary Symbiote speak from the first person—visibly and loudly—through their practice. As Lauren Elkin argues, “the feminist artist who addresses herself to the question of beauty and the female body has to be ready for other people to see her as a monster” (35). We are reminded of Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s queer-crip performance in Sins Invalid, where she highlights how significant it is to give voice to disability in this context: “queer women of color never say we are disabled if we have any choice about it … . Our bodies are already seen as tough, monster, angry, seductive … . How can we admit weakness, vulnerability, interdependence and still keep … our perch on the ‘thin edge of barbwire’ we live on?” Here Sugary Symbiote’s work and its open, cute vulnerability offers much to contemplate. Like in many other contemporary fem(me) practices, her monstrous feminine appears and demands to be seen. Yet “repetitive academic attention” (Kinsella 18) to male fans and artists continues to dominate the field, leading to misconceptions and ignoring the rich, creative output of women and gender-diverse practitioners. As Miller notes, this marginalisation “forestalls a consideration of female agency and resistance through aesthetic forms” (“Cute” 24). This article contributes to a larger project titled Girl Estranged, which examines how women and gender-diverse people in Japan and beyond reinterpret bishōjo figures through their own illustrations. Drawing on Elkin’s Art Monsters, we foreground the fem(me) figure as central to exploring “complex feelings” and multiple “forms of embodiment” (22). Even when rendered in the language of cute girl characters, these voices can be, we argue, defiantly monstrous. In the Girl Estranged project, we explore how fem(me) and queer artists engage with bishōjo—manga/anime-style cute girl characters—as symbols, texts, and avatars. Building on Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s notion that “we are composed of lines”, we examine how artists invent “lines of flight” through their characters, expressing selves and desires beyond normative structures (202). These lines are not just drawn—they draw us in, enabling expression through and with bishōjo. While we centre sapphic representation—fem(me)-identifying people attracted to fem(me)s—we also include heterosexual fem(me)s and ace-spectrum perspectives, expanding beyond sexual intimacy to explore alternative forms of affect and connection. We collaborate with artists and illustrators who work in local subcultural scenes in Tokyo, Japan, and international digital spaces such as Instagram. Here emerges a convergence of local Japanese cultures and a diverse array of communities who co-participate with them in parallel overseas. In Japan, this includes YUI, an illustrator who creates sapphic works inspired by dating simulation games, and whose joyfully queer and girly images were taken up by English-speaking meme boards worldwide. Other examples include Aoi Uni, who paints abstract interpretations of the bishōjo figure to create her own “ironic and poisonous” queer world. Sugary Symbiote presents one of the many global artists we reflect on, including Australian street artist Bei Badgirl and American-resident artist Junko Mizuno. The visual work of artists across these two scenes tends to operate in intimate gallery networks where zines and low-cost goods circulate. Their curation diverges from mainstream white-wall conventions, shaping a fem(me)-centred aesthetic that resists institutional norms. As should be clear from bishōjo or “cute girls”, the artists we feature reclaim the figure of the “girl”, which does not denote “child”, but rather is a the fem(me) full of self-identifying, agentic presence. Imagining and Creating “Bishōjo” Originating in the ferment of the nascent movement of mature fans of comics for girls in Japan from the 1970s into the early 1980s, bishōjo are manga/anime-style cute girl characters. This manga/anime style is in contrast to the more realistic drawings seen in Japanese comics, which had dominated the previous decade and continued to have a hold on the popular imagination. In contrast to action stories presenting gritty representations of pulp-like intrigue and violence, a “cuter” manga/anime style provided a more playful and flexible alternative (Shiokawa 97). Here the playfulness of manga/anime’s form, with simplified rounded shapes and bold cartoony line work, shone out in the Japanese media landscape. This was, in some ways, a return to classic visual representation such as Tezuka Osamu’s Astro Boy (1952-1968, see fig. 1), which spanned out from work for children to include people of all genders and age demographics. Fig. 1: First appearing in the 1950s, Astro Boy was a hit among children. The cute style of the character, pictured here, spread to works targeting more mature audiences in the 1970s. Image courtesy of Tezuka Osamu’s official Website. Comics targeting girls and young women, written by women and queer men in particular, became a driving force in shaping and expanding on these logics. Given the association of comics for girls with “cute” (Shiokawa 99), it is not too much to say that the bishōjo, representative of the manga/anime style, is above all else “cute”. Even the distinctively large, shimmering eyes of bishōjo, which emerged from the contribution of girls’ comics as a way to encourage “empathy” (Takahashi 124, see fig. 2), are now emblematic of cuteness. Fig. 2: The characteristic look of comics for girls evolved from lyrical pictures in the pre- and interwar periods. Note the massive, sparkly eyes in this poster for an exhibition of illustrator Youko Tadatsu’s work. This capacity to feel with and as the cute girl mutated further, generating hybrid art appealing to men, women, and others. Appearing first in 1978, Invader Lum is perhaps the most famous of the bishōjo pinups and cover girls of the time (Galbraith 107-112, see fig. 3), but she certainly was not the only or the last one. While much has been written on Lum as a character “for men”, little attention has been paid to her significance as an important figure for sapphics, or indeed, the artist Takahashi Rumiko’s own sapphic intimations. (One recalls an interview where Takahashi quipped that, if she were a man, she would “get a wife”; Shōnen Sunday Graphic.) Further to this are assumptions in the literature as to how men engage with these texts. For example, today, the largest university clubs dedicated to queer pairings of bishōjo characters are not only a mixture of genders and sexualities, but also circulate and discuss books on Japanese lesbian politics as part of community-building and allyship (for more, see Welker). On the ground in Japan is a far more dynamic field than scholarship and English-speaking fandom presupposes, and this arguably begins with figures such as Lum in the 1970s. Fig. 3: In the late 1970s, Lum, featured on the cover of this art book, made a huge splash among manga/anime fans in Japan. As the centre of the mega-popular franchise Urusei Yatsura, she appeared in countless media and material forms for over a decade. Beginning in Japanese subculture and underground comic markets, cosplay, and spectacular fashion cultures, the bishōjo became increasingly “cool” through international fan movements from the 1990s into the early 2000s, and subsequent Japanese government initiatives, and finally the inclusion of anime on large streaming platforms such as Netflix. Here, a mutation of meaning and cultural capi

Many ethicists argue that we should respect persons when we distribute resources. Yet it is unclear what this means in practice. For some, the idea of respect for persons is synonymous with the idea of respect for autonomy. Yet a principle of respect for autonomy provides limited guidance for how we should distribute scarce medical interventions. In this article, however, I sketch an alternative conception of respect for persons-one that is based on an ethic of mutual accountability. I draw in particular upon Stephen Darwall's writings on respect and the second-person standpoint. I consider the implications of this conception of respect for the distribution of scarce, lifesaving healthcare resources. A second-personal account of respect rules out aggregative approaches to distribution, and instead requires that we give individual consideration to the claims that persons in need make on the resources in our control. The principles that we use to govern our allocation of resources, furthermore, should be principles that are acceptable to all reasonable agents. Building on this insight, the final section of this paper considers how a principle of need can be used as a means to make decisions about the allocation of lifesaving resources.

It is widely agreed that reactive attitudes play a central role in our practices concerned with holding people responsible. However, it remains controversial which emotional attitudes count as reactive attitudes such that they are eligible for this central role. Specifically, though theorists near universally agree that guilt is a reactive attitude, they are much more hesitant on whether to also include shame. This paper presents novel arguments for the view that shame is a reactive attitude. The arguments also support the view that shame is a reactive attitude in the sense that concerns moral accountability. The discussion thereby challenges both the view that shame is not a reactive attitude at all, suggested by philosophers such as R. Jay Wallace and Stephen Darwall, and the view that shame is a reactive attitude but does not concern moral accountability, recently defended by Andreas Carlsson and Douglas Portmore.

This paper is one in a series of attempts on my part to think through one of the central challenges left to us by Merleau-Ponty’s sudden death in 1961: if we understand the turn, in his later writings, toward an ontology of the flesh as “a radical rethinking of the experience of belonging from within, [as] a phenomenology of being-of-the-world” (Landes 2020, 141), how are we to bear witness to such an experience? What modalities are called forth to do justice to this belonging? The task accrues existential and ethical weight when, at stake in our analyses, are historical and social structures like coloniality that normalize experience, perception, and sense-making while marginalizing others. It is my contention, in this article, that when the phenomenological inquiry becomes critical the question of modality becomes ethically central; how we bear witness to experiences of marginalization and the operations of power that produce them matters in that it risks reifying the same normative structures that predicate the oppression of many. With these questions and considerations in mind, in this article, I return to silence and propose that the mobilization of what I call “deep silences” can be a powerful tool for a critical phenomenology that bears witness without capitulating to the imperative of transparency norming the modern/colonial world system. Deep silence, in fact, designates signifying practices that do not primarily operate within the bounds of logocentrism and speech as the foundational principles of meaning, or that rely upon conceptual, analytical, and instrumental thinking, mobilizing instead the somatic, affective, and sensual dimensions of existence. In this article, I am primary concerned with the sense-making effected by the aesthetic as an instance of deep silence. Specifically, I focus on the image- and ritual-centered photographic documentaries of Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, which, I suggest, challenge the hegemonic normativity of modern/colonial aesthetics, introducing the reader to other sensibilities wherein the distinction between theory and practice has no purchase and the multiplicity of creative expressions is recognized.

This essay introduces a thematic issue focused on the contributions to clinical ethics and the philosophy of medicine by Richard M. Zaner. We consider the apparent divorce of Zaner's philosophical roots from his recent narrative immersions into the blooming, buzzing confusions of clinical-moral lifeworlds. Our considerations of the Zanerian context and origins of the clinical encounter introduce the fundamental questions faced by Zaner and his commentators in this issue, questions about the role of ethics consultants, moral authority, and clinical truths.

This article examines landmark advocacy speeches—including those by Malala Yousafzai, Greta Thunberg, Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela—to distill strategies that make public speaking effective across cultural and political contexts. It highlights the role of storytelling, emotional appeal, visionary rhetoric, and moral authority in mobilizing audiences and sustaining impact. Key lessons include adaptability to audience expectations, resilience in the face of adversity, and the importance of strong openings, clarity, and actionable conclusions. Applications in health, education, and environmental advocacy illustrate how non-profits can translate these lessons into sector-specific campaigns. By synthesizing historical and contemporary examples, the article demonstrates how real-world speeches provide a framework for refining advocacy communication and equipping practitioners with proven strategies to inspire engagement and systemic change.

This special issue on the role of traditional authorities in African cities highlights critical debates about governance and urban development on a fast-urbanising continent. The six articles in this issue focus on the following: (1) the roles of traditional authorities as custodians of the values of society; (2) the roles of traditional leaders as moral authorities; (3) the modern chieftaincy as an invention of the colonial state; (4) the ‘unrelenting co-optation and appropriation’ of traditional governance structures by the state; and (5) the stretching of pre-colonial narratives to justify the legitimacy of traditional leadership and its control of community resources. The special issue features contributions from Burkina Faso, Senegal, Ghana, South Africa, Botswana and Eswatini, providing a rare comparison between cases from Southern and West Africa.

The Indonesian government has passed the Law on the Elimination of Domestic Violence (PKDRT Law) to provide comprehensive protection, including guarantees of legal protection and victim recovery. Domestic violence is stated in article 1 point 1 of Law Number. 23 of 2004 concerning the elimination of domestic violence. means any action against a person, especially women, which results in physical, sexual, psychological, and or domestic neglect, including threats to commit acts, coercion, or unlawful deprivation of independence within the scope of the household. Domestic violence can occur to husbands, wives, and children as well as those within the scope of the household. There are two main underlying causes of domestic violence. Firstly, economic factors. The economic factor in question is the lack of established economic conditions in the household so that the many demands that arise in the household are unable to be fulfilled. This condition is what then triggers conflict and even acts of domestic violence. Secondly, a patriarchal culture which embraces the meaning of a social system that places men as the main power holders and dominates in the role of political leadership, moral authority, social rights, and control of property. A patriarchal culture that sees paternal lineage indirectly gives birth to the idea that women have a lower position than men (subordinate). Which ultimately involves many women becoming victims of domestic violence. The objectives of this research are: To find out the implementation of the Domestic Violence Policy at the Palu City Women's Empowerment and Child Protection Office. The research design uses descriptive qualitative. This research is designed within one year