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Marc Crépon, Chair, Department of Philosophy, École Normale Supérieure, Paris

Title:  “The Trial of Hatred”

The surprise of war is two-fold. First,war comes as a shock. Second, the initial victims, destructions, and, with them, suspicions of abuse and war crimes have as their immediate effect - almost from one day to the next - the silencing of all the voices that still favor peace, the voices that had wanted to believe that war was impossible. ‘Reason’ itself becomes hawkish and intolerant. In this centennial year of the outbreak of World War I, this paper recalls the resistance offered by literary figures such as Romain Rolland and Stefan Zweig against the war and the hatred it provoked, and finds in that resistance language and actions that effectively “place hatred on trial.”

Marc Crépon is the author of thirteen books on the philosophy of identity, otherness, violence, and grievability. The Thought of Death and the Memory of War appeared in English in October, 2013.