On Violence

Title: On Violence
Author: Hannah Arendt
Publisher: Harcourt
ISBN: 9780156695008

From the publisher: We live amid escalating worldwide destruction and war. How do we make sense of it? In her enduring analysis of violence, Dr. Arendt point out that the glorification of violence is not restricted to a small minority of militants and extremists. The public revulsion for violence that followed World War II has dissipated, as have the non-violent philosophies of the early civil-rights movement. How did this reversal come about? And where will it lead us?

To answer these questions, Dr. Arendt puts theories about violence in historical perspective and re-examines the relationships between war and politics, violence and power. She questions the nature of violent behaviour, points out the causes of its many manifestations, and ultimately argues against Mao Tse-tung's dictum "power grows out of the barrel of a gun," proposing instead that "power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent."