Violence and Phenomenology

Abstract

Abstract Humans are primarily existential beings embedded in a particular cultural milieu of the lived-world. Every individual has different kinds of experiences that constructs one's world-view about the inter-subjective world. One of the experiences that I have chosen to analyze is the experience of violence. I will approach the problem of violence through phenomenology. I have taken Michael Staudigl's two articles, Towards a Phenomenological Theory of Violence: Reflections Following Merleau- Ponty and Schutz and The Many Faces of Violence: A Phenomenological Inquiry, as background for my phenomenological understanding of violence. Violence so far has been understood by different disciplines of social sciences as an abstract concept where the analyst has to be an objective observer, whereas violence should be looked at as an act of intentionality by the perpetrator of violence. How does the experience of violence destruct the “sense structures” of the consciousness of an individual and bring the feeling of estrangement with the lived-world and within oneself? It will be very significant to know what it means to undergo the experience of violence and what contributes to the making of such an experience in order to have a deeper understanding of the problem of violence. The pre-established social, cultural, political, economic and legal structures of the lived-world form the pre-objective understanding, or the manifold horizon, of the sense structures of the individual. However, the above mentioned structures are also amongst the many sources that can inflict violence.