Violence and Suffering, Choice and Responsibility: Issues in Ethics and Development

ABSTRACT
Part of the broadening of ideas of ‘development’ involves matters of personal security and societal peace. This paper examines why and how, with reference to conceptual and historical analyses and to case studies of domestic violence, emergency relief in civil wars, and South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It considers: physical violence as a major and ethically central aspect of many people’s experience; how violence and the resultant suffering are neglected and even denied, due partly to an economics-style focus on commodities; and some alternative lines of intellectual and practical response, at individual, agency, and societal levels, to past, present and prospective violence.