This article examines the emerging pattern of 19th-century warfare against the backdrop of Modernity’s expressed optimism regarding social and economic progress. The author argues that in the modern period western countries have been insufficiently conscious of the consequences of weapons of mass destruction and of their own involvement in acts of mass violence. The article identifies a modernist culture radically different from that articulated by Enlightenment narratives.

The central theme of the text concerns the role that intellectuals have played in the significant political, cultural and social changes which have occurred in Europe in the second half of the twentieth century. This book draws together a wide and diverse series of contributions to the problematique of the role of the intellectual in society.