ABSTRACT
Concepts always come from somewhere, they are rooted accomplishments of understanding. Thus in asking after a definition of violence people always, at least implicitly, first decide from where, or from what violence is to be made intelligible, or what accordingly promises to yield us a coherent and appropriate concept of violence. The possibility of understanding violence as constitutive, whether at the very root of the formation of ethical subjectivity or human freedom, perhaps finds its most poignant, and disturbing potential confirmation in the question of the relation of human existence to war. To inquire into the intelligibility of the techne of the sophist is to hazard the risk of recognizing that untruth, falsity, and illusion have a concrete presence and function in human affairs, one that cannot be removed, yet which also cannot be thought in continuity with the order manifest in truthful speech.
