In 1938, Virginia Woolf published her (unwelcome) reflections on the root causes of war. Three Guineas was written during the Spanish Civil War, a horrific bloodbath that pitted a beleaguered democratic republic against a fascist military insurrection.

The essay is structured as an answer to a trio of letters the author received, the first having been sent by a prominent London lawyer, asking: "How in your opinion are we to prevent war?"

Her brave, scornful answer to this question confronts the issues of sex and class to formulate a classic antiwar manifesto – as well as a feminist treatise on human rights and freedom.

At the beginning of World War II, the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil wrote her essay,
The Iliad, or the Poem of Force.

In it, she dissects Homer's epic poem to vigorously argue against the inhuman nature of violence. Her close reading and skillful translation of the Greek verses reveal the text to be a endless litany of human debasement—a snare that claims both victor and victim—rather than a triumphant history of warriors and war making.

Weil undermines the conventional interpretation of the poem, transforming an ancient masterpiece into a contemporary and original moral experience.

Susan Sontag's book length essay, Regarding the Pain of Others, examines the representation of atrocity through narratively rich descriptions of war-related paintings, prints, film, photography and mass media.

Her approach is often framed through questions:
    • Do images of cruelty inure—or incite—the viewer to violence?
    • Does the constant media barrage of violence erode our perception of reality, or sharpen it?

Sontag challenges the "viewer" in all of us: on the use and misuse of images; on how contemporary wars are waged and understood; on the limits and obligations of sympathy and conscience.