Abstract

Violence is a force that harms, hurts or kills. This force may go beyond the critical threshold and run out of control. The etymological root of the word violence comes from the Ancient Greek bia meaning “vital force”. The word violence can be used to describe natural phenomena such as storms, waves and earthquakes. If there are some common charasterics of violence, force, power and authority, violence itself has its proper phenomenological aspect (Arendt L. Du mensonge à la violence: Essai de politique contemporaine. Calmann-Lévy, 1972). In that sense, violence appears as an unexpected event going against peace and order (Girard R. La violence et le sacré. Grasset, 1972). The concept of violence was defined by the Council of Europe in 1989 as follows: “Violence is characterized by any act or omission committed by a person, if it harms the life, the physical or psychological integrity or the freedom of another person or impairs the development of his person and/or harms his financial security” Thus, a typology can be made between physical violence, psychological violence, symbolic violence, sexual violence and metaphysical violence.