Non-violence (a History Beyond The Myth)

By (author) Losurdo Domenico; Translated by Elliott Gregory C.
Short description/annotation:
This book embraces two centuries of the history of non-violence, reconstructing the great historical crises that this movement has faced. In this book the historical reconstruction is intertwined with the philosophical and psychological analysis of the moral dilemmas that great historical crises inevitably imply.
Description:
We know of the blood and tears provoked by the projects of transformation of the world through war or revolution. Starting from the essay published in 1921 by Walter Benjamin, twentieth century philosophy has been committed to the criticism of violence, even when it has claimed to follow noble ends. But what do we know of the dilemmas, of the “betrayals,” of the disappointments and tragedies which the movement of non-violence has suffered? This book tells a fascinating history: from the American Christian organizations in the first decades of the nineteenth century who wanted to eliminate slavery and war in a non-violent way, to the protagonists of movements—Thoreau, Tolstoy, Gandhi, Capitini, M. L. King, the Dalai Lama—who either for idealism or for political calculation flew the flag of non-violence, up to the leaders of today’s “color revolutions.”
Table of contents:

Introduction: From the Broken Promises of Perpetual Peace to Non-Violence
1. Christian Abolitionism and Pacifism in the USA
2. From Pacifist Abolitionism to Gandhi and Tolstoy
3. Gandhi and the Socialist Movement: Violence as Discrimination?
4. The Anti-Colonialist Movement, Lenin’s Party, and Gandhi’s Party
5. Non-Violence in the Face of Fascism and the Second World War
6. Martin Luther King as the “Black Gandhi” and Afro-American Radicalism
7. Gandhi’s Global Reputation and the Construction of the Non-Violent Pantheon
8. From Gandhi to the Dalai Lama?
9. “Non-Violence," the “Color Revolutions," and the Great Game
10. A Realistic Non-Violence in a World Prey to Nuclear Catastrophe

Review quote:
If the characteristic feature of the critical thinking is the questioning of the mythologies that affect the current opinions, the recent book of Domenico Losurdo is an excellent example of this school of thought. Now Losurdo engages in the deconstruction, never prejudicially hostile but rather full of genuine sympathy for the essential core, of non-violence. In order to achieve this goal he delivers a detailed history of the pacifist and non-violent theories and practices, starting with Kant''s idea of perpetual peace and the with the first pacifist movements in the USA of the nineteenth century. An important and timely book in a period of increasing danger of war!
Review quote:
Domenico Losurdo is among Europe''s most distinguished intellectual historians. Reading his books has become a necessity for contemporary philosophers, sociologists, and political scientists. This is particularly true for this new book. Here we are not simply told the history of the great struggles and great tragedies of the movement of non-violence but also the history of the manipulations of all those who proclaimed and proclaim non-violence, while unleashing wars and organizing bloody coups d''état.
Review quote:
In attempting to make nonviolence into a myth, the Italian philosopher Losurdo examines several theorists and practitioners of nonviolence from early Quakers and Martin Luther King Jr. in the US to Chinese demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. In the several cases he examines, the author finds that nonviolence rhetoric invariably occurs alongside some, and often considerable, violence . . . Presenting several cases in which Gandhi endorsed violence, such as his support for Britain in WW I, the author portrays Gandhi’s nonviolence as a sham. The Dalai Lama also emerges as an endorser of both nonviolence and violence . .