Violence remains a central yet unresolved problem for philosophy, challenging foundational assumptions about rationality, morality, language, and social consent. This thematic issue approaches violence not merely as an object of condemnation or empirical description, but as a conceptual ultimate case that exposes tensions within ethical theory, political legitimacy, and political phenomenology. By examining violence as practice, discourse, and horizon of meaning, the issue investigates how distinctions among legitimacy and transgression, resistance and domination, and prescription and obedience are philosophically constructed and contested.

Rather than treating violence as an aberration external to normativity, the contributors explore how violence actively shapes concepts of law, responsibility, subjectivity, and utopia. In doing so, the issue advances a critical rethinking of whether a violence-free social interaction is a coherent ideal or a regulative fiction, and what this implies for contemporary moral and political philosophy in a world where violence remains structurally embedded rather than historically superseded.

Key questions include:

• What are the ethical, epistemological, and methodological challenges for investigating violence-shaped societies?
• How can we separate physical violence from symbolic violence if it is implied that both are structurally interrelated?
• What are the reasons to believe that non-violence can be combined with a certain social order?

Analytical Dimensions

Violence as a Training Ground for Social Sciences

Violence functions as an empirical object through which social sciences correct their theories of power, order, and collective action, revealing how institutions, norms, and identities are forged under conditions of extreme suppression.

Right for Violence: From Resistance to Transgression

Claims to legitimate violence alternate between ethical resistance and moral rupture, exposing the fragile boundary where the struggle for emancipation can slip into domination or obedience.

Language of Violence and Its Philosophical Conceptualization

A grammar of violence—tropes, narratives, and justifications—shapes how harm is understood and normalized, while demanding, however, a supplementary philosophical analysis of the ways in which language mediates responsibility, agency, and meaning.

Utopia of a Violence-Free World

Visions of a violence-free world articulate both normative aspirations and conceptual limits, testing whether peace can be imagined beyond repression, deterrence, or the silent persistence of structural harm.

Key Research Areas

We welcome submissions addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:

• Normativity within Legitimate Violence: How law, morality, and political theories define, justify, or prohibit a violent intention and action? When does emancipatory violence transform into coercion, domination, or ethical breakdown?
• Discourses on Violence: How narratives, metaphors, and symbolic frames legitimize, explain, or contest violent acts? Conceptualizations of agency, guilt, intention, and accountability in violent contexts.
• Social Dimensions of Violence Practices: How extreme conflict conditions recalibrate theories of power, institutions, social cohesion, and collective behavior?
• Nonviolence and Political Imagination: How philosophical and/or political visions of some social order transcend coercion and force.
• Invisible Violence:How convincing are critiques of violence-free utopias, given the diversity of ideological, economic, and symbolic suppression forms? 

Methodological and Empirical Approaches

We encourage submissions that combine theoretical innovation with empirical depth, including:

• Studies of legitimation, normativity, and agents’ imagination;
• Case studies of political violence and emotional harm;
• Discourse analyses of violent narratives and resistance;
• Comparative studies on logic of war, peace-making, and non-violent activism.
• Analyses of practices focusing on the aesthetics of politically engaged performance art.

 Submission Details

Authors are invited to submit an abstract (maximum 300 words) no later than July 15, 2026 to Dr. Viacheslav Tsyba and Dr. Sergii Grygoryshyn at the following email addresses: viacheslav.tsyba@ukma.edu.ua and grigorishinsv@gmail.com. The Editorial Board will review all abstracts and inform selected authors who will be granted the opportunity to submit a full paper for publication.

The deadline for the full paper submissions is October 25, 2026. Articles should be written in American English and range from 6,000 to 10,000 words. However, longer texts are also welcome.

This issue of the Ideology and Politics Journal is expected to be published by December 31, 2026.

All submissions to the Ideology and Politics Journal are subject to double-blind peer review, which determines acceptance for publication. Review and publication in the Ideology and Politics Journal are free of charge.

For detailed information on submission procedures and publication terms, please visit the Instructions for Authors. By submitting an article for review, authors agree to comply with all terms of cooperation outlined by the IPJ Editorial Board.

Editors of the Special Issue: Dr. Viacheslav Tsyba (National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy) and Dr. Serhii Hryhoryshyn (independent scholar). Editor-in-Chief of the Ideology and Politics Journal: Mikhail Minakov.

Further information about the Ideology and Politics Journal can be found at About the Journal.