Abstract

A great, though not exclusive subject of Sartre’s Books on Morals, published posthumously, is violence including the crucial question how to resist the situations, in which violence is involved. The first objective of the article is to unveil the everyday forms of violence. This leads the author to approach Sartre as a theoretician of violence, to show him in a role which in the reception of Sartre in Slovak cultural and ideological contexts was fully marginalized. The author focuses on different, although interconnected levels of Sartre’s understanding of violence. On one side it is the theoretical level concerning the very fundaments of violence. Here Sartre systematically starts with etymology of the word and goes further to unveil the essence and objectives of violence, its fundamental principle, as well as its moral principles, by which the violence tries to justify itself. On the other hand, it is the practical level. Here the world of violence is no more isolated as an abstract entity. Sartre is oriented on identification and examination of this phenomenon in everyday situations, in specific human relationships, such as asking a favor, request, threat, and refusal. His interpretation wants to show the logic of violence which, so Sartre, is present in everyday relationships, trying to destruct the freedom of the Other