Theoretical approaches to violence: René Girard and Thomas Hobbes

The problem of violence in the society can be viewed from a Girardian perspective: violence is limited by an institution of sacrifice. The community places someone outside of itself. It seeks to redirect violence to something that is anodyne: a victim to be sacrificed. This outsider, or victim, may be seen as a scapegoat. Sacrificing can be either real or symbolic but in both cases it is collective action of the whole community. Also religion has its role in prevention of violence and of a circle of revenge in René Girard’s theory, notably in his book "Violence and the Sacred". The state theory of Thomas Hobbes is largely based on the fear of violence: a state is formed and the power given to the sovereign in order to escape from the state of nature where all men are enemies to each other. The fear of a violent death is one of the fundamental instincts of human beings. Violence is first archaic, pre-political violence, where emotional dynamic between people leads when there is no political power. However, politics does not disappear when state is constructed. A new dynamic of relations between people emerges when the state has the power of coercion. These approaches have in common that violence has an important role in the construction of a society or state and that the escape from violence comes through either a construction or through sacrifice. Both find a hidden motive at the origin of the state, an anterior crisis, a ”truth of the appropriation of power”.