On Law, Power and Violence: From Christoph Menke to Hannah Arendt. A critical analysis

This article aims at proposing some reflections on law, power and violence in contemporary political philosophy. My attention will be devoted to a critical analysis of some relevant contribution on such matters by eminent scholars and authors such as Alessandro Ferrara, Christoph Menke, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt. The first part offers a brief introduction in which Alessandro Ferrara’s reading of Menke’s "Law and Violence" will be presented. The second part focuses its attention on the philosophical backgrounds of violence, especially in its relation to liberty, power and government. In this case, the main focus is devoted to some of the classics in political philosophy: Niccolò Machiavelli; Thomas Hobbes; Hannah Arendt. The last two sections are finally devoted to a further reflection on law and violence. On the one hand, giving a deeper description of Ferrara’s remarks on Menke’s work, especially in its connection to the Rawlsian political liberalism. The last section, on the other hand, proposes afurther brief and final reflections on the core issue of the whole paper.