Virtuous violence

"What motivates violence? How can good and compassionate people hurt and kill others, or themselves? Why are people much more likely to kill or assault people they know well, rather than strangers? This provocative and radical book shows that people mostly commit violence because they genuinely feel that it is the morally right thing to do. In perpetrators' minds, violence may be the morally necessary and proper way to regulate social relationships according to cultural precepts, precedents and prototypes. These moral motivations apply equally to the violence of the heroes of the Iliad, to…