The ontology and ethics of violence

The aim of this chapter is to start laying the foundation for a comprehensive account of violence.
In order to build such an account, I will start by examining the most minimal definition of
violence, which I call the "physicalist account,"1 and test it against some problematic or
ambiguous cases to see if it is solid enough to account for them. The following discussion will
show that, if we aim for a coherent theory of violence, we need to broaden the scope of, and
complicate, our explanation of the nature of violence.