Jerash for Research and Studies Journal مجلة جرش للبحوث والدراسات
Abstract
This paper shed a light on Harvard thinker and linguist Steven Pinker’s concept of violence. Although In recent years the problem of defining 'violence' has gained a growing number of interest among philosophers, politicians and sociologists, but they rarely define it.even though most of us believes that violence has intensified in recent years, Pinker argues that we are living in an unusually peaceful time. For him it is a matter of data and the way we looks at that data, as Pinker himself state, “If one bases one’s beliefs about the state of the world on what one reads in the news, one’s beliefs will be incorrect”. This is not because of a distort the truth, but It’s because of an interaction between the nature of news it’s about things that happen, particularly bad things—and the nature of human cognition.
Steven Pinker’s thoughts about violence have established something akin to a contemporary orthodoxy. Part of his argument consists in showing that the past was more violent than we tend to imagine. This “civilizing process” has come about largely because of the increasing power of the state, which in the most advanced countries has secured a near-monopoly of force. Other causes of the decline in violence include the invention of printing, the empowerment of women, enhanced powers of reasoning and expanding capacities for empathy in modern populations, and the growing influence of Enlightenment ideals
Recommended Citation
Al-Tarawneh, Malek and Shatara, Amer
(2022)
"Steven Pinker’s Concept of Violence: between Nature and Culture,"
Jerash for Research and Studies Journal مجلة جرش للبحوث والدراسات: Vol. 23:
Iss.
2, Article 60.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.aaru.edu.jo/jpu/vol23/iss2/60