ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that Ludwig Wittgenstein's claim captures a common problem in terrorism research, and that in order to determine the meaning of the word 'terrorism' people have to extend their analysis beyond those behaviors that are today called terrorism. The most instructive model for this kind of analysis has been put forward by Michel Foucault. The chapter presents the different ways republicans and liberals used the word 'terrorism' during the French Revolution. In an effort to replace Jacobin republicanism with the rule of law, the liberals argued that violence was only justifiable for the preservation of the law. While much of the academic literature on terrorism claims to know the object of its research and defines it in terms of ostensibly universal features, it fails to recognize that these definitions merely reflect the last stage of a historical process.
