War

Violence and Technics in the West

Emanuele Severino, Federico Divino

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2026
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350543546
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History

The first English translation of Emanuele Severino's provocative analysis of the philosophy behind war in the West.

Drawing on a broad range of sources, from Heraclitus to 20th-century grassroots movements, Italy's foremost philosopher calls for a new way of thinking that could lead the West to perpetual peace. War, for Severino, is not merely the manifestation of conflict through violence to resolve disputes between nations or fractions. Rather it is a mode of thought deeply embedded in the foundations of Western civilisation. Highlighting the divisive and isolating mechanisms that the West uses to conceptualize their bases of power, War shows that this divisive thought is so intrinsic to Western philosophy that even critiques of war are warlike. For peace to be possible, we need more then ceasefires; we need a fundamental re-evaluation of the history of Western thought.

Originally written in the geopolitical context of the 1990s, Severino's text retains an extraordinary urgency at a time when the reality of war seems increasingly insistent. Bringing this relevance to focus, this volume includes a comprehensive introduction by translator Federico Divino, which carefully contextualises War historically and politically, whilst also situating it in relation to Severino's wider philosophical oeuvre.

An accessible book, free from the more complex logical and metaphysical lexicons central to some of Severino's other works, this is a must-read for anyone interested in why war happens and what may be needed to stop it.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Why War? An Awakening Perspective
• Series Editors’ Preface
• Translator’s Introduction
• 1 War and Western soul
• 2 War as ‘function’
• 3 The rejection of war
• 4 Duumvirate and grassroots movement
• 5 Flesh and spirit
• 6 The logic of isolation
• 7 Plato and the division of labour
• 8 Éros, Thánatos: Plato and war
• 9 The condemnation of violence
• 10 Victorious violence and defeated violence
• 11 Medicine as the disease
• 12 Violence and dialogue
• 13 The violence of dialogue
• 14 Original violence
• 15 The peace of the deceased
• 16 Logic of tension
• 17 In praise of folly
• 18 War and pacifism
• 19 Bipolarity, revolution disarmament
• 20 The eye of the needle
• 21 The demon and the destiny
• Notes
• Index
• Imprint