I am curious about a new book on violence, by Steven Pinker, professor of psychology at Harvard: *The better angels of our nature: why violence has declined*. I look forward to reading it but couldn’t find it at our local book shop yet. Will it make the usual points about how much more violent hunter societies were before the Neolithic period? On this, see Guilaine in *Caïn, Abel, Ötzi*, pages 197–99, or Guilaine and Zammit, *The origins of war: violence in prehistory*. Note that a sort of containment of violence happens with the appearance of the professional warrior, sometimes in the Bronze Age (2d millenium), except in the city-states of Mesopotamia, where it happens a little earlier (i.e. 4th millenium BC).

It will be interesting to see the tables which the author gathered in support or illustration of this thesis. Can one really do the kind of research done by Muchembled on the Middle Ages (end) and the early modern period (much before Pinker) on other periods? It shows a clear decrease of all kinds of violent behavior. See Muchembled, *Une histoire de la violence: de la fin du Moyen Âge à nos jours*, which broadens the scope of his *thèse de doctorat d’état* on violence in Artois between 1400 and 1660, published in 1985.

It will be interesting also to see what is measured under this name “violence?” Is the violence of a patriarchal society going after its daily bread the same as the violence in a society in which there is a surplus of goods since at least the 18th c., though ill distributed, and in which the reason for violence is much less connected to this bread-earning need? And is it measured by the number of acts deemed violent today, in relation to the presumed demographics of yesteryear and the better known modern population numbers?

What are the reasons the author gives for this civilizational trend? In his talk on Ted.com—a sort of TV university—, Pinker speaks of four possibilities: the role of Hobbes’ Leviathan state in taming our ur-brutish instincts, the higher price put on life, the realization that life is a non-zero-sum game (cooperation profits parties, commerce and better understanding of the commonality of interests are good for everyone, peace dividend also. In other words: rational calculations), and the expanding circle of empathy (expanding beyond kinship systems for instance). I would like to be sure that what is to be explained is not assumed as pre-existing. The thesis seems partly to go along with the likes of Norbert Elias, perhaps Weber, and against a presumed modern sentiment, often hostile to religion, or against the picture drawn by Foucault. No need to scare ourselves silly with thrillers and big bad wolf stories. Even the nazi kind?

When listening to Pinker’s talk on Ted.com referred to above, I was curious about his remarks on violence in the Bible, which is a very common theme in modern conversations. If the general thesis is that violence has gone down thanks to a civilizing process à la Norbert Elias (who thinks court life had much influence, vs Muchembled who sees the influence of early urbanization), why does Pinker bother to refer to the frequent passages of the Bible which call for the extermination of the enemy, as in Numbers? Does he think the Biblical passages are actually reactionary because of the underlying monotheism, or is he just interested to show that they simply belong to their time (Assyrian cruelty is well documented too), no matter what theologians say about “ethical monotheism?”

Footnote on this discussion of violence and monotheism: see Jean Soler and others who follow a long tradition of laying much of the Western tradition of violence at the feet of monotheism. For instance Soler in *La violence monothéiste*; Assmann considers the question honestly but wants to save the baby (ethical monotheism): *The price of monotheism*; more generally on religion and violence, see Hans Kippenberg, “Aktuelle religiöse Gewalt aus Handlungstheoretischer Perspektive. Frobenius-Vorlesung 2002”; and Kippenberg and McNeil, *Violence as worship: religious wars in the age of globalization*.

Pinker’s talk on Ted.com made clear that he subscribes to a view of the “civilizing process” as non-Rousseauist (brutish origins) and accepts that technological progress and an ever fuller mastery over nature simply breeds too many interlocking interests which violent behavior cannot be allowed to threaten. So Hobbes mixed with Elias. I have to ask: what happens when the mediation of the state falls by the wayside?

Finally, I would like to see if the book by Pinker has anything to say about the effects of religious representations, so important surely in transforming the practices of war as well as justice since late antiquity. For instance, what of the effects of the beliefs concerning the body (other people’s body) manifested by the evolution of crucifixion scenes, and later on such etchings, drawings or paintings as those of Callot or Goya (both on war disasters, however)? Quoting from the *Encyclopaedia Britannica* (online), but see Mâle, Dupront et al:
>By the 6th century, however, representations of the Crucifixion became numerous as a result of current church efforts to combat a heresy that Christ’s nature was not dual—human and divine—but simply divine and therefore invulnerable. These early Crucifixions were nevertheless triumphant images, showing Christ alive, with open eyes and no trace of suffering, victorious over death. In the 9th century, Byzantine art began to show a dead Christ, with closed eyes, reflecting current concern with the mystery of his death and the nature of the incarnation. This version was adopted in the West in the 13th century with an ever increasing emphasis on his suffering, in accordance with the mysticism of the period.

Were the paintings of the dead Christ by Mantegna (1490) and especially Holbein (1521–22) a manifestation of the expansion of empathy and compassion brought about by a better perception of the advantages of economic cooperation, or do they come from a longer tradition which actually brought about more cooperation? From a willingness to look at the body of a tortured man, far away in time and space, as somehow closely related to oneself, even ground for oneself? Chicken or egg question. In any case, the book by Pinker promises to be an interesting read.