★A topical subject of the contemporary world.
★An important feeling to understand in order to better fight against it.
★Hate from a philosophical expert's point of view.

Nestled at the heart of our private lives and increasingly present in the public arena, hatred is rarely studied as such, often confused with anger and indignation. Without endorsing it, this book tries to understand its dynamics and logic. Like a fire that burns and can’t be extinguished how can it be sustained and developed? There are many similarities between personal resentments that degenerate and sectarian movements, where hatred is sometimes enlisted by feeding on a collective ideology, starting with the demonization of a culprit to be hunted down or shot. But we mustn't ignore the specific nature of collective hatred. We don't hate a public figure, let alone a human group or an entire community, in the same way as we hate our neighbor. So how do personal hatreds and collective hatreds sometimes converge until they become inseparable? The aim here is to understand a dual process. The process by which individual hatreds are reinforced and legitimized. It's also the process by which sectarian movements manage to harness them to use them for political ends.

Hervé Caudron is a specialist in philosophy and a former professor at the Université d'Artois. He is the author of numerous essays, including Philosopher or Merchant of Serenity (L'Harmattan, 2011), Learning to Philosophize with Montaigne (Ellipses, 2013) and The Predictable and the Unpredictable (L'Harmattan, 2021).