ABSTRACT
In this final chapter we turn to a consideration of the Ethics of Truth in relation to the problem of political violence. It is directly concerned with the difficulty that sociologists and social theorists have in dealing with hostility in human society. Enlightenment philosophers created universal theories of human nature and sociability—premised on the mechanism of imitation, to legitimate the State and the Law (Saint-Amand 1996). Human beings, they argued, are by nature social, cooperative, and peaceful. Socialization and positive modeling would be the solution to the problem of violence. They played down the possibility that society and imitation was ambivalent and a source of envy and dangerous rivalries that can cause political violence and victimage ritual. In the process, they idealized human sociability and played down the problem of violence. Violence was a regression, a thing of the barbaric past, and would have no place in civilized society. Reason and knowledge would produce a peaceful future. Of course, there were those who rightfully mocked the naiveté of Enlightenment theories of society.
