Introduction: Violence, Redemption, and the Liberal Imagination

V iolence haunts liberal political thought. The defining image of early modernEuropean social contract theory-and an image that remains potent in contemporary contractarian moral and political theory -locates the possibility of civil society in a compact among men who are long accustomed to the use of force in the bloody business of self-assertion and self-preservation.These men, so the story goes, surrender their right to fight one another (and to dominate the defenseless), investing a common, sovereign power with the right to command obedience for the sake of peace, justice, prosperity, and reasonable expectations of security.In turn, their consent legitimates this common power-the state-at least as long as its use of coercion serves the welfare and good future of a voluntarily toothless citizenry.