Exploring the Intersection of Nonviolent Communication (NVC)
and some philosophical approaches
Andrea Vettorino, Janaury 2024
Following some contemporary philosophical approaches and their intersections with Nonviolent Communication, based on my experience. Here and there, I will refer to the NVC Key Differentiations and the NVC Self-assessment matrix.
Ethics of care: I aim to connect with and care for others and our relationships, fostering a compassionate heart-to-heart connection and giving from the heart.
Existentialism: I explore my authentic self, taking the risk of making choices and following my life path without submission or rebellion.
Ethics of responsibility: I take ownership of my feelings, embracing the needs alive in me, and caring for them, taking them in my hands. In the present moment, I respond to how my actions have affected others. I am aware of my respons-ability.
Postmodernism: From a neutral observation, I wonder how we receive differently the life we are living. I am open to the complexity of human perspectives and can dissolve enemy images.
Ethics of discourse: By authentically revealing what is alive in me, I engage in a dance of giving and receiving, creating a shift in both dialogants and transforming conflicts.
Poststructuralism: I recognize the fluidity of social construction of identities and relationships, promoting life-serving social structures where all needs matter. I differentiate power over from power with.
Virtue ethics: Through practice, I cultivate moral virtues such as empathy, compassion, patience, self-discipline, self-acceptance and presence.
Phenomenology: I aim for an unmediated experience of life, directly perceiving needs as the doorway to my inner aliveness and ultimate way of knowing.
Feminist ethics: I have choices in the roles I adopt and how I respond to others' roles. I hold both the form, the roles, and the substance, the needs, with grace and equanimity and can transcend roles.
Philosophy of language: The words I use create meaning and shape our perception and understanding of reality. I promote a language of process, reflecting the ever-changing nature of life.
Self-care ethics: I am aware of my inner space and focus on taking care of the needs alive in me, recognizing that my availability towards others is a reflection of my inner resources.
Pragmatism: I make clear, positive, and doable requests, sensing and harvesting from the power of now, knowing that my better future has already begun.
Ethical relativism: I know that needs can have different cultural expressions and be coloured by the culture one lives in, taking the form of values.
Deontology: I recognize universal human needs and am encouraged to live from an awareness of our common humanity.
Environmental ethics: I am conscious of our interdependence with all living organisms, and of the fact that how I use resources influences others.
Epicureanism: I am in touch with the sweet flow of life, nurturing myself in producing giraffe juice, an awareness of how my actions or presence enrich someone else's life. I know what my heart really wants.
Ethical realism: I am eager to know how my actions have affected others, open to both 'positive' and 'negative' feedback, as I want to know if I have contributed.
Stoicism: in creating an environment where inner attachment can grow, I can be resilient in face of inner reactions.
And finally, Kant's categorical imperative reminds me that the other is always an end, never a means, while Socrates' dialogical and inquiring method encourages us to embrace the awareness that we don't know what is better for ourselves, others, and the world, but we can discover it through our shared living, moment by moment.