II. The Work of Love
III. Ecce Home! Putting Love to Work
The terms violence and power are often used synonymously: to exercise violence is to exert power, and violence seems to vindicate one’s claim to power. Hannah Arendt disputes this identity [1]. She associates power with authority, in the sense of rational or moral authority, in distinction to physical force. Violence, by contrast, represents the utter absence of power, its invocation signals impotence, for one only resorts to violence when one lacks legitimate authority. Thus a tyrant uses violence, in the form of secret police-inspired terror [2], not because he is powerful, but because he fears the people; though he may have massive instruments of torture and violence, he has no power, otherwise he would not be afraid.
