In defense of integrative violence: How can philosophical practice augment organic social control?

Abstract

The paper explores the relationship between organic and institutional forms of social control from a potential contribution by philosophical practice to understanding social sanctions. The argumentation begins from the point of empirical fact that laws and constitutions of various countries define the purpose of punishment in a utilitarian light in their preambles. This operational-utilitarian character of institutional social control is similar to the utilitarian nature of philosophical consulting as practice. When control, which presupposes a form of violence, is viewed in a broader understanding of the notion of violence, space opens for a discussion on a challenging and controversial question about whether or not can violence be integrative either in the sense of integrating values or in the sense of confirming someone’s social status after a transgression, and to what a larger degree than by institutionalised and from an individual conceptually relatively distant forms of sanction.