ABSTRACT

This book charts ideas European intellectuals (mostly from Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy) put forward to solve the problem of war during the first half of the twentieth century: a period that began with the Anglo-Boer war and that ended with the explosion of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Such ideas do not belong to a homogeneous tradition of thought, but can be understood as a unique discourse that takes different characteristics according to the point of view of each author and of the specific historical situation.

chapter |4 pages

Introduction

part I|69 pages

1900–1914: ideas and history, the nineteenth-century legacy of optimism

part II|42 pages

Inside the war (1914–1915)

chapter 5|9 pages

Apologies for violence

chapter 6|17 pages

Rhetorics of peace

chapter 7|16 pages

Planning the future peace

part III|30 pages

Seeking a new European order: projects for unifying the continent in the interwar period

chapter 8|13 pages

From war to projects for European unity

chapter 9|17 pages

For a new Europe

part IV|85 pages

Critique of violence: politics, revolution and religion

chapter 10|21 pages

Peace and war in Max Scheler

chapter 11|23 pages

The problem of force: Simone Weil

chapter 12|14 pages

Thinking outside politics: Andrea Caffi

chapter 13|11 pages

Bart de Ligt and the true revolution