Is Violence Justifiable in Self-Defense?
NONVIOLENCE, 8 Sep 2025
Alejandro A. Tagliavini – TRANSCEND Media Service
Violence, in all cases, including the urgent defense of oneself or others, is immoral. It’s not what I think, and often not what I «would like»—my primary impulse; it’s what I have to accept and disseminate, because science says so, which, in contrast, demonstrates that the only efficient methods of defense are peaceful ones, beginning precisely with the natural, spontaneous order of societies, and then others such as prevention, deterrence, negotiation, psychological influence, leadership, etc.
Those who do not accept this scientific postulate will be complicit in extremely serious acts that harm them, their families and friends, and society in general, if they do not take they don’t care to try to scientifically prove the opposite. That is, they have a grave obligation to explain why violence is, in some cases, valid, or to accept that it never is. Of course, for any scientific demonstration, empirical facts are not enough; they must be supported, explained, and developed by a rational, scientific, and serious theoretical framework.
Because all those who justify violence argue that empirical facts («reality») support them, which is false. On the contrary, empirical facts conclusively show that violence always destroys and worsens any situation. But even supposing that «reality» proves them right, that is not enough; these «realities» must be supported by a rational, scientific, and serious theoretical framework.
Let’s begin by studying what science is. According to Jacques Maritain, scientific law never does anything other than extract, in a more or less direct and unconventional manner, the property or requirement of a certain ontological indivisible, which is none other than what philosophers call nature or essence[i].
That is to say, science limits itself to discovering and explaining what actually occurs in nature, such as the law of gravity or chemical reactions, often using scientific language like mathematics. And technique, technology applies these scientific laws to, precisely, technological developments.
Okay, now that we know what science is, let’s see why violence is inevitably destructive and, therefore, cannot be rationally justified. Aristotle, concluding a long list of philosophers, says that “…whenever there is a cause outside of beings that compels them to do what is contrary to their nature or their will, it is said that these beings do what they do by force… This, then, will be for us the definition of violence and coercion: there is violence whenever the cause that compels beings to do what they do is external to them; and there is no violence from the moment that the cause is internal and is in the very beings that act.”[ii]
And Saint Thomas Aquinas adds, taking it from Aristotle, that: “Violence is directly opposed to the voluntary as well as to the natural, insofar as it is common to the voluntary and the natural that both come from an intrinsic principle, and the violent emanates from an extrinsic principle.”[iii] Thus, Etienne Gilson asserts that for Aquinas, «The natural and the violent are mutually exclusive, and it is inconceivable that something simultaneously possesses both of these characteristics.»[iv]
Thus, violence is that which opposes the voluntary or the natural, everything that is extrinsic. Violence, precisely, is extrinsic to people, it is extrinsic to natural development, to nature; therefore, it is destructive, disorderly, and not only does it not constitute a law of nature worthy of scientific study, but, on the contrary, it destroys nature and its spontaneous (scientific) development, according to science.
And what is morality? There is a very erroneous idea that it is a set of norms established or dictated by some «authority” state, civil, cultural, religious, or any other kind that must be followed to be a «good person.» This is definitely not true. No one has sufficient authority to establish or dictate morality.
Morality is a science[v]. It is the science that—like all sciences, as we have seen—studies and describes the laws of nature, in this case, so that humankind can fully develop. Hence, violence is immoral in all cases, precisely because it violates the natural development of humans.
Thus, it is a fact that human beings have evolved historically and come to understand that violence is immoral. In the Middle Ages, for example, torture and murder were justified for ideological and religious reasons, and even simply at the whim of the lord of the county. Today, this is unthinkable, at least theoretically. Thus, as societies mature, human beings acquire wisdom and intelligence, and they discover, understand, and accept scientific postulates.
Unfortunately, this maturation is very slow, and there is still a vast majority who justify violence in certain cases, such as supposedly urgent defense[vi]. This is a primitive, primal reaction—of human beings as animals—that they do not only don’t bother to rationalize but rather despises the possibility of rationalizing it by praising this primitive reaction in favor of violence. In this way, they commit grave complicity with serious immoral acts.
NOTES:
[i] See ‘Les degrés du savoir’, Paris 1932 (Spanish trans. Desclée, Buenos Aires 1947). Thus, according to P. Duhem (cf. ‘La théorie physique’, Rivière, Paris 1914), a physical theory is not an explanation of a ‘fabricated’ phenomenon, like the instructions on a television set, but rather a system deduced from a small number of principles, which are intended to represent as simply and completely as possible a set of experimental laws that occur, by their very nature, in the cosmos.
[ii] ‘The Great Morality’, I, XIII (in Aristotle, ‘Moral’, Espasa-Calpe Argentina SA, Buenos Aires 1945, p. 46).
[iii] S.Th., I-II, q. 6, a. 5.
[iv] ‘Thomism’, Second Part, Chapter VIII, EUNSA, Pamplona 1989, p. 438.
[v] Adam Smith was not an economist, but a moralist, a professor of Moral Philosophy, and his first work was «The Theory of Moral Sentiments.» For Friedrich Hayek —one of the fathers of the Austrian School of Economics— a group of prominent Thomists, professors of morality and theology at the University of Salamanca, were precursors to a serious and systematic development of market theory.
[vi] Practically all those who exercise violence claim to do so “objectively” in “defense,” and who is right? Certainly none.
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Alejandro A. Tagliavini – As a young man, I graduated with a degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Buenos Aires, but later took various courses in philosophy, economics, and social sciences. I was a member of the Department of Economic Policy at the School of Economics and Business Administration. I currently work in private investment and academic activities. Since 2006, I have been a member of the Advisory Board of the prestigious Center on Global Prosperity at The Independent Institute in Oakland, California, USA. I have lectured at prestigious institutions around the world, such as the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross (Rome). I have received several honorary degrees, including the “Guardian of the Treasury” award from the Governor of the State of New Mexico, USA. @alextagliavini – www.alejandrotagliavini.com
Tags: Cultural violence, Direct violence, Just War, Morality, Nonviolence, Nonviolent Action, Nonviolent communication, Philosophy, Structural violence, Theology, Thomas Merton, Violence
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One Response to “Is Violence Justifiable in Self-Defense?”
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Mahatma Gandhi did not view violence in self-defense as a justifiable ideal, but as preferable to cowardice. He distinguished between active, brave nonviolence (Satyagraha) and the passive, cowardly submission he abhorred. For Gandhi, true strength lies not in the capacity to inflict violence, but in the indomitable will to resist injustice through nonviolent suffering, even unto death
Actually, Nonviolence is more fundamental than disarmament. It is not necessary that a disarmed person would always be nonviolent. But a nonviolent person would always be disarmed. For this, we will have to introduce and implement everywhere the man-making education i.e. peace education based on universally inherent five elements, viz. body, vitality, mind, intellect and spirit in every man and woman everywhere without discrimination of any type (which was and is missing everywhere) and to be integrally manifested to be nonviolent, which leads to total and permanent sustainable disarmament forever. The concept of this peace education has been developed by the author of these lines Dr. Surya Nath Prasad after his continuous study of about five decades. For more details, one may refer to:
Nonviolence: More Fundamental than Disarmament
Surya Nath Prasad, Ph. D. – TRANSCEND Media Service
https://www.transcend.org/tms/2016/08/nonviolence-more-fundamental-than-disarmament/
Universal Peace Education: A Remedy for All Ills
Prof. Surya Nath Prasad, Ph.D.
L’Harmattan, Paris, France, May 2024
http://www.editions-harmattan.fr/livre-universal-peace-education-a-remedy-for-all-ills-surya-nath-prasad-9782140488580–80186.html