Program & Abstract Book - EPFL Latsis Symposium 2009

EPFL Latsis Symposium 2009: Understanding Violence
P-18
72
February 11-13 2009
ca m u s \’ \”st r a n g e r \”: wh y cr i m e s
pr o s e e D
Galyona, Eugene 1
1 Karazin Kharkov National University, Ukraine
As any literature which has a crime as central event, in “Stranger” it is
made attempt to understand: what is the crime and why does it exist.
In “Stranger” Camus criticize European system of justice. It should be
noticed that the judicial system was not always been total resource of the
violence prevention. As the majority ethnographers said there was nothing
in archaic societies that reminds modern judicial system. Rene Girard
results the following gradation of institutions of internal conflicts settlement:
revenge, religious ritual, court. In his opinion efficiency of modern
judicial system has led to disappearance (or more truly to dissolution in
other institutions) of the sacrifice. However up to the XX-th century these
three institutions were represented by three various practices of the conflict
resolution: revenge (duel), religious ritual (Christian ethics) and court
(the state law). In the XX-th century the judicial system becomes the only
powerful institution of the violence prevention but just to its efficiency Camus
had questions.
From the ethological point of view (Konrad Lorenz) intraspecific aggression
is the reason of an individualization and formation of the subject (through
the pacification and greeting rituals). Thus thanks to violence there is
the certain order generated by system of distinctions. When this order is
broken, there is a situation which Girard names «sacrificial crisis» that is
always accompanied by violence. Girard and Lorentz underline value of
asymmetries. It not the violence apologia, it shows that the system which
have to resists to it does not function; that the murder censure, without
studying of deep sources of the violence, and any equality declared by democracy
and humanistic ideas ignore by-effect of themselves that loosens
basis on which they are generated.