Abstract

The word for “life” and the word for “violence” are etymological neighbors in many languages. Compare, for example, vita and vis in Latin, bios and bia in Greek, jivah and jiya in Sanskrit, as well as the Indo-European *guiuos and *guiie (all the former stand for “life,” “aliveness,” or “living,” while the latter stand for “violence,” “force,” or “strength”). But when you try to trace a genealogy of this decisive link within the field of theory, rather than that of linguistics, you soon come to face a founding text that is actually a phantom. In a letter to Gershom Scholem…