CAN SPIRITUALITY RESOLVE VIOLENCE?

Abstract

This article examines whether spirituality can resolve violence by tracing how a wide range of traditions—Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, pre-Christian paganism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—name violence, explain its origin, and propose paths toward its overcoming. The analysis proceeds in two movements: a comparative survey of each tradition's diagnosis and remedy, and a philosophical critique of their internal contradictions and historical instrumentalization, from crusades to jihadist violence. It situates violence within the framework of the state and political power, arguing that structural violence exceeds what individual consciousness alone can address, and warns against spiritual bypassing as a way of avoiding injustice. Weighing seven contributions of spirituality—including its capacity, when organized, to become a political force, as Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. showed—against five limitations, the article concludes that no tradition resolves violence: each merely administers it. Genuine progress requires a spirituality that descends from inner pacification into collective, socially engaged action.