THREE FACES OF CRUELTY: TOWARDS A COMPARATIVE SOCIOLOGY OF VIOLENCE.

The article provides information on some of the greatest displays of cruelty in history which were carried out by the universal religions, especially Christianity and Islam. It is true that a decline in institutionalized ferociousness can be discerned in the past two hundred years, but this only reminds that cruelty comes in more than one form. The concern with alienation in the modem era points to a peculiarly modem form of brutality. Still a third dimension is suggested by the line of thought opened up by psychoanalysts, Nietzsche and Freud, the migration of cruelty to the interior of the individual mind in the form of psychic. In contemporary society, ferocious cruelty is no longer structurally induced; it is no longer part of the dominant ceremonial order, although still individual cases can be found. In this sense, modern society appears more humane. But at the same time, dangers of callousness increase and the technological efficiency of modem instruments of destruction makes its consequences all the more appalling while it hides them from view. There is no evolutionary trend towards kindness and happiness. Ferociousness once increased, then declined, callousness and asceticism now oppose each other as defenders and challengers of the status quo. And the institutionalized asceticism of a victorious revolutionary movement easily amalgamates with the callousness of an established bureaucratic regime. Those who claim that demons can be exorcised only by action in the world, not by theorizing about them, seem to be possessed by demons of their own, especially the demon of asceticism; one senses here the communal hostility of the ascetic to the individual luxury of intellectual contemplation. And here is the danger. Three aspects of ferociousness of cruelty, the decline of kindness and the probability of ascetic violence reflects on social violence as a whole.