Sergii P. Shevtsov

The article raises the question of constant violent acts, primarily military, despite the longtime general condemnation thereof. This turns us to the problem of ontology of violence. The approach suggested here is based on understanding violence as labor with the excessive use of force. This is related to the understanding of force as the truth. Thus, for the archaic mind, force (and violence), the sacred, and truth were different projection-implementations of one entity. The civilizational world model contains in its basis not the principles of a single truth, but the principles of collaboration and coexistence of different stances instead of the submission to one entity. The old model of violence as a way to participate in the object’s truth and to confirm the subject’s sacred status stays effective. This paper argues that violence has an ontological dimension in the old model of a single truth, but cannot have it within a civilizational approach.