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.
Introduction; Part I 1900–1914: ideas and history, the nineteenth-century legacy of optimism; Chapter 1: Peace and patriotism: Ernesto Teodoro Moneta; Chapter 2: Peace, the free market and the strength of financial advantage: Norman Angell; Chapter 3: "Do not avenge yourselves against those who do evil": Leo Tolstoy; Chapter 4: Against militarism; Part II Inside the war (1914–1915); Chapter 5: Apologies for violence; Chapter 6: Rhetoric of peace; Chapter 7: Planning the future peace; Part III Seeking a new European order: projects for unifying the continent in the interwar period; Chapter 8: From war to projects for European unity; Chapter 9: For a new Europe; Part IV Critique of violence: politics, revolution and religion; Chapter 10: Peace and war in Max Scheler; Chapter 11: The problem of force: Simone Weil; Chapter 12: Thinking outside pochlitics: Andrea Caffi; Chapter 13: Bart de Ligt and the true revolution; Chapter 14: Aldo Capitini: elements of a non-violent experience
Biography
Alberto Castelli is Associate Professor of the History of Political Ideas at the University of Ferrara, Italy.