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UYGARLIK KURAMLARI VE ŞİDDET SORUNU 111
Theories of civilisation and the problem of violence
In this article, the civilisation theory of Elias is taken together with other civilisation
theories and these theories are compared in terms of the problematic of
violence. This is done to evaluate the relation between civilisation and violence.
Two different views on modernity -the one sees no violence in modernity and
the other focuses on the character and the destructive potential in modernityare
discussed. Twentieth century is explained as a century of violence. Here an
attempt is made to find out how the theoreticians’ own experiences of violence
reflect on their theories of civilisation and culture. Sigmund Freud, Max Weber,
Alfred Weber, Norbert Elias, Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno are the
figures whose analyses on civilisation are examined in terms of their experiences
of ‘macro violence’. Four different relations between civilisation and violence
are explained. The first one sees humanity always in a process of civilisation,
and war and terror as short-term set-backs. The second one explains the
reason of violence with refernce to the success of civilisation. The third one
emphasises the multiplicity of meanings inherent in the essence of modernity
and evaluates the barbarism as the ‘dark’ face of modernity. The fourth one
rejects the relation between macro crimes and civilisation. Here in this article
the third approach is supported as it considers the inherent contradictions of
Enlightenment, reason, and modernity. Elias’ theory of civilisation is criticised
of having deficiencies in terms of understanding the experiences of violence of
the twentieth century.