The book analyses the history of violence in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and traces the many situations, images, motifs and sources for this experience of unbounded violence that characterizes our times.

Introduction: Understanding the Violence; Part I Violence and History, Chapter One War as 'Becoming': On the Ontology of Conflict ; Chapter Two The Embodiment of the Victim: Phenomenology of Violence Suffered; Part II Dark Spots in History, Chapter Three Colonial Violence: The Dark Sides of the Modern State; Chapter Four Hate: On the enigma of divisiveness in the age of the total; Chapter Five Disastrous Violence: Ideologies; Chapter Six Politics, Violence and Sacrality; Chapter Seven The Frightening Love of War; Part III Between the Twentieth and Twenty-First Century: The Worldview of Concern; Chapter Eight The Valorative Space in Times of War; Chapter Nine What Does 'Learning from History' Mean? On the Implicit Pedagogy of History ; Chapter Ten War Again? The Contribution of Philosophy to the Phenomenon of War ; Chapter Eleven From the Worldview of War to the Worldview of Concern; Bibliography; Index