Culture and Violence
Abstract
The article discusses the fundamental meaning of culture from the point of view of anxiety, aggression, violence, fear and the need for social security. The intention is to examine the relationship between these phenomena and human reason not as a psychological or cultural process, but as a transcendental reality genuine to the human being. Through the works of Plato, Le Bone, Ortega y Gasset, Freud and Girard the paper asserts that violence is not only the result of natural factors—for example desire as the natural element of the soul in platonic anthropology—but of cultural factors as well. This interpretation is anchored in Freud’s discussion of culture as the source of suffering and René Girard’s contemporary anthropological concept of scapegoat.
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