This document discusses perspectives on the origins and nature of human violence from several philosophers and scientists. It summarizes views that violence arises from social contexts (Aron), origins of private property (Bergson), and is a political rather than natural phenomenon (Arendt). It also discusses Freud and Hobbes' view of innate human aggression versus Rogers' view that aggression only arises in coercive contexts. The document concludes that educating all humans and establishing democratic global governance could help reduce violence by addressing its social and political roots.

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THE OVERCOMING THE CLIMB OF VIOLENCE AND THE WARS IN THE
WORLD
Fernando Alcoforado *
We live in a world that has as one of its main features to violence by man against his
fellow man. The perception of many people is that violence is the predominance of
instinct animal that we have on the values of civilization. This would explain the
escalation of crime and war in all ages worldwide. The debate about violence puts on
the agenda the question of human nature whose topic was addressed by eminent
thinkers like Raymond Aron (French sociologist and philosopher), Henri Bergson
(French philosopher and diplomat), Hannah Arendt (German philosopher), Sigmund
Freud (Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis), Carl Rogers (American
pioneer of humanistic psychology), Thomas Hobbes (English political scientist,
philosopher and mathematician), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Swiss philosopher and writer)
and Karl Marx (German economist, philosopher, historian and political scientist),
among others. Scientists and philosophers for millennia raise the following question:
human nature is innate or is a product of the environment or both? It is genetically
determined or by society where the human being lives or both?
Why the world becomes more violent every year? Not only is an increase in the number
of armed conflicts around the globe, as the people themselves are more violent. A
simple disagreement transit can end in death. Calm, sociable and seemingly normal
people become, from one moment to another in cold and ruthless criminals. What
accounts for this? It is not uncommon to claim that since the world began, there has
always been violence between humans. It will be hard to find anyone today who does
not believe this statement. And yet, it is false. In the early days of mankind there was
violence that is manifested in the relations between individuals and between human
communities and nations.
No human being, no people of that distant time would have had the idea of attacking his
fellow. Not even they would be able to, for example, to attach your neighbor's land
against his will, by means of brute force. It's hard trying to draw a parallel between the
ways of life of human beings of that time with humanity today. At that time, living in
peace and harmony with his fellow humans was for something as natural as breathing,
eating and sleeping. Humans have lived on Earth, without offending or mistreat each
other, much less war against each other. This, however, was long ago. No record this
time we got to the present and, therefore, it is assumed that this situation did not exist.
According to Raymond Aron (1962), as a man's life is organized in families and in
groups, the less likely they could look exactly the bellicose behavior [ARON, Raymond.
Paz e Guerra entre as nações (Peace and War among nations). Editora Universidade de
Brasília, 1962]. Most animals fighting, but they are rare species that practice war,
understood as collective and organized. Aron says that war is the clash of organized
behaviors, a trial of strength between "teams", each of which intending outsmart the
other by multiplying the force of each combatant by the discipline of the set. In this
sense, the war cannot be earlier than the formation of teams, social phenomenon that
implies the existence of society. Let's meet in Sumer the first evidence of troops with
military training.
Homo sapiens appeared about 600,000 years. The Neolithic revolution, agriculture and
animal husbandry dating back some 10,000 years. Civilizations or complex societies

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arose about 6,000 years. This means that the period is termed historic one hundredth of
the total duration of the existence of humanity on planet Earth. Aron says that no
anthropologist has ever found any evidence that the men had drawn up an organization
or a combat tactic before Bronze Age (3300BC to 1300-700 BC). Not surprisingly, the
first indisputable evidence of armies and war date back to the Bronze Age that is a
period of civilization which occurred the development of this alloy resulting from
mixing copper with tin.
As to the first humans would be inconceivable the idea of causing any harm to his
fellow today, sounds like illusion, fantasy, the idea of a world without conflict, because
we consider violence as a characteristic of human beings. One can speculate whether
there would have been a good, short, intermediate phase between the many millennia
during which the man lived under the threat of wild beasts and the period in which the
threat to your safety has to originate in other men. It would be a time when men
possessed sufficient for defense against wild beasts and no engagement in the pursuit of
wealth and the class struggles, achievements and areas technical means. It is shown that
small companies without metal tools, insulated, not show characteristic features of
warlike societies.
Raymond Aron says in his above-mentioned work that biologists call aggressiveness
propensity of an animal to attack another of the same species or different species. In
most species (but not all) individuals fighting among themselves. Some are not
aggressive (ie, do not take the initiative to strike), but defend themselves when attacked.
Among primates, man is in the bottom of the scale of aggressiveness. While animal, is
relatively combative. In other words, just a bit heavy incentive to get man to trigger
aggression.
Aron says that among the higher vertebrates, the groups often manifest aggressiveness
with respect to individuals who do not belong to their community. In humans, however,
the manifestations of aggression are inseparable from collective life. Even when it
comes from the reaction of one individual against another, the aggressiveness is
influenced in many ways by the social context. The emergence of a specifically social
existence was not the only cause of the new dimensions that took the phenomenon of
aggression: the frustration and inadequacy resulting from aggressive reaction are the
most important fact in human relations.
Aron is defender of the thesis that frustration is a psychic experience, revealed by
consciousness. All individuals feel frustration since childhood. The frustration is above
all the experience of deprivation, ie a desired good and not achieved, oppression felt
painfully. The chain of causation that leads to emotions or acts of aggression always
originates from an external phenomenon. There is no physiological evidence that there
is a spontaneous incitement to fight, originated in the body of the individual. Physical
aggression and the will to destroy not the only possible reaction to frustration. The
difficulty in keeping the peace is more related to humanity of man than his animality.
Man is the only being capable of preferring revolt to humiliation, and the truth to life.
Henry Bergson, in turn, states that the source of violence and war is the existence of
property, individually or collectively, and how humanity is predestined to property, by
its structure, violence and war would be natural (BERGSON, Henry. Les Deux Sources
de la Morale et de la Religion. French & European Pubns, 1976). People who fear the
lack of food and raw materials they need consider themselves threatened by hunger and

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unemployment, are capable of anything. To survive, they are ready to attack. So
authentic wars, adjusted its essence born.
Hannah Arendt addressed the issue of violence in his work On Violence published by
Harvest Book in 1970 in which he discusses, especially with Niezstche and Bergson,
about what she calls the biological justification for violence. These thinkers attribute to
a natural expansionist power dimension and an inner need to grow. The violent action in
this context is explained as a strategy to give new vigor to the power and stability.
Arendt disputes this position, stating that "nothing could be theoretically more
dangerous than the tradition of organicist thought in political affairs, by which power
and violence are interpreted in biological terms.
Arendt maintains that neither violence nor power are natural phenomena, ie, a
manifestation of the life process, they belong to the political sphere of human affairs
whose essentially human quality is guaranteed by the faculty of man to act, the ability to
start something new. Arendt dismisses the organic metaphors of violence as a disease of
society. The distortion of the phenomenon of violence in Hannah Arendt's refusal to
join the historical process with the struggle for survival and violent death in the animal
kingdom and forgo the meaning of politics as determining human. Arendt rejects
assertions as Wright Mills that all politics is a struggle for power and the basic form of
power is violence, of Max Weber that the domination of man by man is based on the
legitimate means of violence or Bertrand de Jouvenel that war is presented as an activity
that belongs to the essence of the States.
Freud stresses in his work the destructive aspects of man. The need is evident, placed by
Freud, in order to control and restrain the individual, because of the danger he might
pose to society, which leads him to conclude that man, for he advocated, is not, socially
speaking, very trustworthy. According to Freud, civilized society is perpetually
threatened by disintegration because of this primary hostility of men among themselves.
The culture has to resort to every possible reinforcement in order to erect barriers
against the aggressive instincts of men. Facing a hostile and be as blaster, nothing more
natural than the society to use its coercive power [See the article by Sonia Maria Lima
Guzman entitled A natureza humana segundo Freud e Rogers (Human nature
according to Freud and Rogers) posted on the website <http:/ / www.rogeriana.com /
sonia / natureza.htm>].
In the article cited above, it appears that, in Carl Rogers observed the opposite of
Freud's view because he believes that it is precisely in a coercive context, where the
individual cannot expand, or better, upgrade your potential, which makes it hostile or
antisocial. Otherwise, we have nothing to fear, because their behavior will tend to be
constructive. Rogers notes that when the man is truly free to become what he is in the
depths of his being, when it is free to act according to their nature as a being able to
perceive things that surround him, then he clearly, heads for whole and integration. The
design of a naïve view of human nature attributed to Rogers lies far from the truth
because he knew that to defend themselves and moved by intense fears, and individuals
may, in fact, behave incredibly destructive, immature way regressive, antisocial and
harmful.
Hobbes has as its central thesis about human conduct that all human beings are selfish
and are willing to use others for their own benefit. Hobbes speaks of "war of everybody
against everybody", the continuing struggle that would trigger if men do not live in
safety and had to rely entirely on its own resources. Hobbes seeks to show that there can

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be no society without government and without the sanction of the law. There would
only be antagonistic to each other individuals. Hobbes compares the human life to a
race in which we have to assume that no other goal or other prize unless you manage to
get the first. The competition - the desire to outdo the other - is part of the fabric of our
lives: that we want to achieve something at the expense of others, or want to defend
what has been achieved [See the article by Roger Trigg under the title A Natureza
Humana em Hobbes (Human Nature in Hobbes) posted on the website <http://qualia-
esob.blogspot.com.br/2008/03/natureza-humana-em-hobbes.html>].
The central idea in Rousseau's thought is grounded in the conviction of the natural
goodness of man. According to Rousseau, the mishaps of socialization away from the
man himself throwing him against his neighbor. It is this transformation process that
man degenerates. Because he abandons his natural instincts going to use the justice
instead of mercy. The natural feelings lead men to serve the common interest, while the
reason impels selfishness. To be virtuous man just follow the natural feelings more than
reason. For Rousseau, socialization is the cause denaturation of man, and the best way
for their degradation. The communion with nature is the only way to preserve the true
essence of man. [See the article by Dalva Fatima Fulgeri entitled Conceito de natureza
em Rousseau (Concept of Nature in Rousseau) posted on the website
<http://www.paradigmas.com.br/parad12/p12.6.htm>). JJ Rousseau thought that wars
arise, or at least expanded with the expansion of communities and class inequality and
individual ownership are linked to the wars of conquest and domination by warriors.
Could not be otherwise, since the political units were forged for combat and the price of
victory was always the land, slaves and precious metals.
For Marx, featuring the man is not only rationality, but the fact of being the architect of
their own development. Humans are able to change the world around them and in so
doing, change themselves [See the article A Natureza do Homem Segundo Karl Marx
(The Nature of Man According to Karl Marx) posted on the website
<http://nomosofia.blogspot.com.br/2011/10/natureza-do-homem-segundo-karl-
marx.html>). Marx presented a definition of the essence of human nature in
Philosophical Manuscripts, featuring humans as free and conscious activity, in contrast
to the nature of the beast [See the article by Nildo Viana entitled A Renovação da
Psicanálise por Erich Fromm (Renewing Psychoanalysis by Erich Fromm) posted on the
website <http://br.monografias.com/trabalhos914/renovacao-psicanalise-
fromm/renovacao-psicanalise-fromm.shtml>). Marx argues that social conflicts result
from the division of society into classes with the emergence of private property to
replace the collective ownership of the means of production prevailing in primitive
societies.
From the foregoing, it appears that Aron defends the thesis that aggression is influenced
in many ways by the social context, Bergson says that the origin of violence and war is
the existence of property, individually or collectively, Arendt argues that neither
violence nor power are natural phenomena, ie, a manifestation of the vital process
which belong to the political realm of human affairs, Freud and Hobbes converge in
their thoughts in considering the aggressive instincts of man and the need for coercion
to repress them. The pessimistic view of Freud and Hobbes is contrasted with that of
Carl Rogers who states that only in an enforcement context man becomes hostile or
antisocial, and that no coercion he will tend to be constructive. Rousseau has as its
central idea the conviction of the natural goodness of man and that society is the
degenerative throwing him against his neighbor. Marx asserts that man is the architect

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of their own development and that humans are capable of changing the world around
them and in so doing, change themselves. In summary, it is quite clear that the existence
of a society based on social justice, the antithesis inhuman capitalist system in place can
make humans have constructive behavior and are able to change the world around them
and in doing so, change themselves. This is the way to combat the violence that
increasingly contributes to social disintegration of the world in which we live.
To make humans have constructive behavior and are able to change the world around
them, it´s necessary to educate them. Kant, the philosopher thus comprises education:
developing in individual all the perfection of which he is susceptible. This is the goal of
education. Pestalozzi, the consummate pedagogue, says that education is progressively
developing the spiritual faculties of man. John Locke, great preceptor, expressed on the
matter this way that is to educate straight spirits willing, at all times, not to do
something that is not consistent with the dignity and excellence of a sensible creature.
Lessing, authority no less illustrious, compares the work of education to the work of
revelation, and says that education determines and accelerates progress and the
betterment of man.
Combating violence in the world will only be victorious with the education of all human
beings in all corners of the earth in order that, by this means, to gain awareness of the
world they live in, to be organized in each country and across the world, to carry out the
political, economic and social changes necessary to eliminate social inequalities and
barriers to political, economic, social and environmental development in their respective
countries. In parallel with the effort of education of all human beings, it´s necessary to
the humanity to fight to provide as urgently as possible tools necessary to take control
of their destiny and put in place a democratic governance of the world. This is the only
means of survival of the human species and to halt the decay of humanity manifested in
rampant violence as that which occurs in the moment between Israelis and Palestinians
in the Gaza Strip. There is no other means of ensuring the interests of humanity and of
all nations, of all forms of life and future generations.
Democratic governance of the world does not replace the governments of each nation.
Your role would be to build the governance of the economy and the global environment
and the maintenance of world peace. Through it would be pursued to defend the general
interests of the planet. She would ensure towards each State to respect the rights of each
citizen of the world seeking to prevent the spread of global systemic risks of economic
and environmental nature. She would avoid the empire of one and anarchy of all the
countries as it does at the moment. A democratic governance of the world with these
characteristics can only result from a consensus among all peoples and nations of the
world. The preservation of peace is the first task of any new form of global governance.
Tomorrow, who will rule the world? No one, probably, if nothing is done to build
global governance. And this is the worst scenario. However, world economic, financial,
ecological, social and political crises and the development of illegal and criminal
activities today show the urgent need for global governance. Humanity must understand
that it has everything to gain by joining in a democratic governance around the world
representing the interests of nations, including the most powerful, controlling the world
in its entirety, in time and space.
The new world order must be built to organize not only the relations between men on
Earth, but also their relationship with nature. It is necessary, therefore, that a planetary
social contract that provides for economic and social development and the rational use

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of the resources of nature for the benefit of all mankind, is produced. The building of a
new world order based on these principles is urgent. This government will be a day
even happens after a gigantic economic or environmental disaster. It is urgent to think
about it to stop the violence and wars that proliferate around the world.
* Fernando Alcoforado , member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor of Territorial
Planning and Regional Development from the University of Barcelona, a university professor and
consultant in strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is
the author of Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova
(Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São
Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado.
Universidade de Barcelona, http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e
Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX
e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of
the Economic and Social Development-The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Muller
Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe
Planetária (P&A Gráfica e Editora, Salvador, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e
combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011)
and Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012),
among others.