One of the most pressing concerns for contemporary society is the issue of violence and the factors that promote it. In this book, the author stages an engagement between Emmanuel Levinas, one of the leading figures in 20th century Continental philosophy, and Plato, Hegel, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida and others. The text seeks to re-read the history of Western philosophy and religion by going beyond Levinas's alternatives to traditional theories of the self in order to suggest a notion of subjectivity that is not grounded in violence. Schroeder contributes to current discussions of reconceiving subjectivity as inter-subjectivity in a postmodern context through a sustained analysis of interpersonal violence. In addition, he takes up the themes of alterity, ground, transcendence, responsibility, language, community, politics, divinity and futurity.