What We Are Reading: Nonviolence 
 

By Samantha Hill

Masha Gessen interviews Judith Butler for The New Yorker. Butler’s new book, “The Force of Nonviolence” tackles the way we can imagine “an entirely new way for humans to live together in the world.” In the interview, Butler addresses questions of nonviolence, equality, and the liberal notion of individualism.
 

MG: Let’s talk about your approach to nonviolence as a matter not of individual morality but of a social philosophy of living.
 
JB: Most of the time, when we ask moral questions—like “What would you do?” or “How would you conduct yourself, and how would you justify your actions?” if such-and-such were the case—it’s framed as a hypothetical in which one person is offering a justification to another person, with the aim of taking individual responsibility for a potential action. That way of thinking rests on the notion that individual deliberation is at the core of moral action. Of course, to some degree it is, but we do not think critically about the individual. I am seeking to shift the question of nonviolence into a question of social obligations but also to suggest that probing social relationality will give us some clues about what a different ethical framework would be. What do we owe those with whom we inhabit the earth? And what do we owe the earth, as well, while we’re at it? And why do we owe people or other living creatures that concern? Why do we owe them regard for life or a commitment to a nonviolent relationship? Our interdependency serves as the basis of our ethical obligations to one another. When we strike at one another, we strike at that very bond.