Culture et violence/ Culture and Violence

Faut-il tenter de contrôler ou de transformer la "nature humaine" pour limiter la violence, ou plutôt travailler la culture en ce sens ? En refusant un quelconque eugénisme, on optera plutôt pour la seconde solution qui revient à reconnaître aussi que la violence est autant et plus un effet de culture qu'un trait inné lié à l'espèce.Car la culture, jusqu'ici, -et contrairement à l'idéal proposé par Norbert Elias- a plutôt déplacé et amplifié la violence qu'elle était chargée de diminuer.
Comment sortir de ce paradoxe ? Probablement en comprenant mieux le mécanisme culturel lui-même, dont la science est partie intégrante comme tentative de "grammaticaliser" (de formaliser) la métaphore.
Une conclusion provisoire sera que, plutôt que de faire verser toute la culture dans la technoscience comme moyen privilégié de contrôler la violence, il vaut peut-être mieux contrôler la tendance de la culture à s'emporter sous la dictature d'une seule de ses dimensions inhérentes.
Dans un deuxième temps, on analyse ce que signifie le passage à une culture "réflexive" (ou circonvolutive).

Culture and Violence

Should we try to control or transform the "human nature" in order to limit violence, or should we rather work through our culture in this sense? By refusing any eugenics, we will opt for the second solution : namely, we will recognize that violence is much more an effect of an inborn cultural trait than of a natural one. For culture, -contrary to the ideal proposed by Norbert Elias- has often shifted and amplified the violence it was itself built up to amend or reduce.
How to get out of this paradox? Probably by understanding the cultural mechanism itself.
if we admit that the human act par excellence is metaphor, we can see that it is composite: it includes a goal to share, a reference to recognize, a logical and grammatical rule and a performative impetus which seduces people and pushes them to agree. Moreover, the metaphor is imbedded in sociality : it is built in a conversation where proposals, questions and answers come at fonctional poles in it. Finally, we generally prefer to invest ourselves in a position rather than the other: we work primarily on the goal, on the referee, on the rule, or, on the subjective-artistic-religious involvement.

But in the course of the conversation that produces this metaphor and tends to "wrap" it, inequalities occur : each position can become dominant, thereby inducing an imbalance. Our hypothesis is that human history reflects successive imbalances as major factors of violence, although violence is different depending on the polarity driving it. We have thus suffered specific violences related with religious style, style of pure power, or that of family feuds. More recently, the predominant metaphor has turned to science as an attempt to formalize and technicize the way we try to get control over violence. But this choice among others cultural styles is itself driving all of us to a mechanistic type of world and lifestyle. Beyond its apparent efficiency, disadvantages arise, which could be, on the long term, worse than traditional ones (unhumanity in the name of rationaliy, accidents due to techno-scientific control of nature, etc..)
A tentative conclusion is that, rather than to translate any culture in technoscience terms as the preferred means of controlling violence, it is perhaps better to get some control over the very tendency of Culture to comply to the dictatorship of only one of its inherent dimensions, whether it is power, knowledge, identity or private solidarities .

In a second step, we will analyze what it means to achieve a transition to a"reflexive"
(or convoluted) Culture, which, according to our views, is not only to be defined by a “good” philosophy, but must be understood as a plurality confronting positions even more intractable that they each embody a necessary moment of every metaphor, that is : of any human act.