ABSTRACT
Hare has remarked in ‘On terrorism,’ that we all know what terrorism is, but although this seems doubtful the connection between terrorism and the threatened or actual use of violence seems clear enough. Presumably, if we do not all know what terrorism is, we all know what violence is. But here, too, what we think we know in our precritical or preanalytical moments may turn out to be simplistic or even erroneous when we come to consider the following questions. Is violence different from force and, if so, how? Is violence necessarily a violation of a right? Is violence always or necessarily physical or can there be psychological violence and even institutional violence? In what follows I shall be concerned with violence and force conceived of as social phenomena, and nothing I say will have any direct bearing upon them as natural phenomena, e.g. the violence of a storm or the force of an earthquake.
