ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines an account of the limits of any exclusively instrumental conception of violence. It explores the significance of the problematic instrumentality of violence for understanding the relation between violence and nonviolence, with particular attention to the impact that the limits of the former have on the comprehension of the latter. Compounding the difficulty is the related tendency in discussions of non-violence to overlook the necessity for a sustained analysis of the nature of violence when formulating arguments to reject violence. From a military perspective, a casualty essentially means no longer operative, no longer a factor that needs to be calculated when taking stock of the force capabilities of the enemy at a given point in time. Violence is thus instrumental here in the sense that casualties, or the inoperativeness of enemy combatants, can be secured by an application of violence.
