“We know about the blood and tears that have been shed so copiously in the plans to transform the world through war or revolution. Beginning with the essay published in 1921 by Walter Benjamin, the twentieth-century philosopher committed himself to a ‘critique of violence’ even when this claims to be a ‘means to a just end.’ But what do we know about the dilemmas, ‘betrayals’, disappointments and the genuine tragedies of the movements inspired by the principle of non-violence?”

Domenico Losurdo illustrates the various chapters in the history of non-violence, from the American Christian organizations that in the opening decades of the nineteenth century attempted to combat the scourges of slavery and war, up to the great protagonists of movements that for passion or Realpolitik flew the flag of non-violence: Thoreau, Tolstoy, Gandhi, Capitini, Dolci, King, the Dalai Lama, and the latest promoters of the ‘colour revolutions’.