Why read Virtuous Violence?

Book cover of Virtuous Violence: Hurting and Killing to Create, Sustain, End, and Honor Social Relationships

Book description

What motivates violence? How can good and compassionate people hurt and kill others or themselves? Why are people much more likely to kill or assault people they know well, rather than strangers? This provocative and radical book shows that people mostly commit violence because they genuinely feel that it is…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Virtuous Violence as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Jessica Scott

Author

This book technically isn’t about the Iraq war but instead, about violence more broadly and it's super nerdy but super important.

As a soldier and sociologist, I’ve always been fascinated by the ways academia deals with questions of violence. In particular, since the popularity of moral psychology theories like Jonathan Haidt’s moral foundations theory (popularized in his book The Righteous Mind), the running assumption in a lot of academic circles is that harm = bad. But Fisk and Rai show that violence serves social purpose such as bonding people together or teaching them group boundaries.

It’s a difficult read…

From Jessica's list on The best books about the Iraq War that go beyond bullets.