Marc Crépon is a graduate of the École Normale Supérieure, a philosopher, and is head of the department of philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure.

It isn’t true that violence is inevitable, and that our societies can do nothing to fight against it. In this book, the philosopher Marc Crépon continues the reflection on violence he began in Epreuve de la haine. How does it happen that suddenly we decide to no longer tolerate that which seemed normal before? How does that which was once a part of our surroundings suddenly become intolerable? It isn’t because we are abruptly overtaken by good feelings, but because we have learned to see the violence in what we once accepted passively. We learn to no longer tolerate that which makes our world literally inhuman. And then situations turn around, individuals rebel, legislation is passed, and societies evolve. This is when philosophy comes into play. Its mission is to make visible – and thus intolerable – the suffering of wage-earners at work, the death penalty, the often disgraceful way our societies treat refugees, the conditions of animals in slaughterhouses – these are the moral battles described in this book.