Abstract

This essay presents a phenomenology of different manifestations of hatred through an analysis of texts written by Romain Rolland during the autumn of 1914. Rolland’s essays specifically pertain to his protest of the war; an attitude which went against the prevailing collective anger at that time. The objective of this essay is to analyze what Rolland calls ”the ordeal of hatred’ from two points of view: 1) the so-called ”collective contagion’ that characterizes every war, and 2) the moral and spiritual trials, which are necessary in order to resist hatred. He reminds us that hatred is always the result of an individual or collective construction and that nothing is more estranged from hatred than the pursuit of truth.