Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures and tables
- Foreword
- Warm thanks
- The point
- 1 Why are people violent?
- 2 Violence is morally motivated to regulate social relationships
- 3 Defense, punishment, and vengeance
- 4 The right and obligation of parents, police, kings, and gods to violently enforce their authority
- 5 Contests of violence: fighting for respect and solidarity
- 6 Honor and shame
- 7 War
- 8 Violence to obey, honor, and connect with the gods
- 9 On relational morality: what are its boundaries, what guides it, and how is it computed?
- 10 The prevailing wisdom
- 11 Intimate partner violence
- 12 Rape
- 13 Making them one with us: initiation, clitoridectomy, infibulation, circumcision, and castration
- 14 Torture
- 15 Homicide: he had it coming
- 16 Ethnic violence and genocide
- Chapter 17 Self-harm and suicide
- 18 Violent bereavement
- 19 Non-bodily violence: robbery
- 20 The specific form of violence for constituting each relational model
- 21 Why do people use violence to constitute their social relationships, rather than using some other medium?
- 22 Metarelational models that inhibit or provide alternatives to violence
- 23 How do we end violence?
- 24 Evolutionary, philosophical, legal, psychological, and research implications
- The dénouement
- References
- Index
18 - Violent bereavement
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures and tables
- Foreword
- Warm thanks
- The point
- 1 Why are people violent?
- 2 Violence is morally motivated to regulate social relationships
- 3 Defense, punishment, and vengeance
- 4 The right and obligation of parents, police, kings, and gods to violently enforce their authority
- 5 Contests of violence: fighting for respect and solidarity
- 6 Honor and shame
- 7 War
- 8 Violence to obey, honor, and connect with the gods
- 9 On relational morality: what are its boundaries, what guides it, and how is it computed?
- 10 The prevailing wisdom
- 11 Intimate partner violence
- 12 Rape
- 13 Making them one with us: initiation, clitoridectomy, infibulation, circumcision, and castration
- 14 Torture
- 15 Homicide: he had it coming
- 16 Ethnic violence and genocide
- Chapter 17 Self-harm and suicide
- 18 Violent bereavement
- 19 Non-bodily violence: robbery
- 20 The specific form of violence for constituting each relational model
- 21 Why do people use violence to constitute their social relationships, rather than using some other medium?
- 22 Metarelational models that inhibit or provide alternatives to violence
- 23 How do we end violence?
- 24 Evolutionary, philosophical, legal, psychological, and research implications
- The dénouement
- References
- Index
Summary
“Alas, my royal lord Achilles … Patroclus has been killed…”
When Achilles heard this he sank deep into the black depths of despair. He picked up the dark dust in both his hands and poured it on his head. He soiled his comely face with it, and filthy ashes settled on his scented tunic. He cast himself down on the earth and lay their like a fallen giant, fouling his hair and tearing it out with his own hands. The maidservants whom he and Patroclus had captured caught the alarm and all ran screaming out of doors. They beat their breasts with their hands and sank to the ground beside their royal master. On the other side, Antilochus shedding tears of misery held the hands of Achilles as he sobbed out his noble heart, for fear that he might take a knife and cut his throat.
Homer, Iliad, Book XVIII, 18–34Briseis came back, beautiful as golden Aphrodite. But when she saw Patroclus lying there, mangled by the sharp bronze, she gave a piercing scream, threw herself on his body and tore her breast and tender neck and her fair cheeks with her hands.
Homer, Iliad, Book XIX, 310–15The phases of relationship constitution begin with the creation of the relationship, and variously proceed in no particular sequence though conduct and enhancement, protection, and redress and rectification. Eventually, a relationship “terminates” through one or both parties’ choice, their involuntary separation, or death. Yet the loss of one’s partner, even his death, doesn’t actually end the relationship. Just as a person can sustain a social relationship with a deity, spirit, or other supernatural being, a person can continue to relate to someone who leaves even if that person never directly or materially communicates with the person left behind. Similarly, you can relate in every psychological sense through e-mail, or text, or telephone – even if your interlocutor doesn’t actually receive the message when there is a technical glitch, or the person has died without your knowing it. If you are talking to someone in the next room, you are relating, although it might turn out that she’s not really in the next room, after all; she’s gone out of earshot.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Virtuous ViolenceHurting and Killing to Create, Sustain, End, and Honor Social Relationships, pp. 223 - 242Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014