The Trial of Hatred: An Essay on the Refusal of Violence

Confronts the nature of hatred and how it manifests in terrorism, racism, war and other forms of violenceFrames our current political confrontations with terrorist violence in their philosophical and historical contexts Highlights how conventional nonviolent movements inadvertently participate in and perpetuate the violence they claim to resist Draws an existential analytic of nonviolence from Europe, India, the United States, Rwanda, and South Africa to demonstrate the global imperatives of a philosophical critique of violenceProposes a new phenomenology of violence on the basis of its concrete effects on the singularity of individual lives Demystifies the idea of ‘enemy’ through genealogical analyses of the culture of hatred in which it always takes rootLooking at the evidence of violence motivated by hatred, including US racial segregation, South African apartheid and the terrorist attacks in New York City in 2001 and in Paris in 2015, Marc Crépon makes a compelling case for why hatred is the burden of our times.With inspiration from the non-violence resistance movements of Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr., Crépon reveals how philosophy and literature, using courage and a new language, can overcome the many forms of hatred and violence present in our lives today