This is an ambitious and challenging book. It develops a critique of predominant strands of thinking about freedom and violence in the Western political and philosophical tradition going back to the Greeks. In addition, it traces alternative, nonviolent, ways of thinking about political freedom, which are also traced back to the ancient world. Building on the latter, Howes develops a distinctive nonviolent conception of political freedom that owes debts in particular to Arendt and Gandhi. The book combines history of political thought with interpretations of historical events and literary works, conceptual analysis and philosophical argument. The book is organized thematically rather than chronologically, it covers a massive range of material, and it is clearly based on extensive research and thinking.

Howes spells out the key concerns of the book in his introduction, using the mottos carved above the entrances of the Guantánamo Bay detention camp and Nazi concentration camps to flag that “the idea that freedom can be exercised through violence and warfare is part of the very fabric of what we have come to call the Western political tradition” (3). The argument of the book is crafted to demonstrate the above, while at the same time drawing out alternatives immanent to Western thinking. The book has four parts. The first three focus on how violence and freedom are connected, examining the themes of violence to achieve freedom (revolution), violence for the defense of freedom, and violence and collective freedom. The final part focuses on the idea of nonviolent freedom, drawing on counterhistories told in the earlier sections. Although the themes cut across historical time and examples, Howes suggests that there are moments of historical development that are particularly significant in relation to each. He sees, for example, the development of the idea of violence in defense of freedom to be embedded in the (mis)interpretation of ancient Roman republicanism in early modern theorists such as Machiavelli, which is in turn reworked in individualist terms by the social contract theorists and influential in the enshrining of the right to bear arms in the US Constitution (73–83). In each part, Howes aims to show that the “necessary” link forged between freedom and violence, by figures as far apart as Pericles and Lenin, is not only unnecessary but can be countered by alternative modes of conceptualizing and practicing political freedom from the figures of Antigone and Lucretia to twentieth-century thinkers and actors, such as Arendt and Gandhi (146).

It is not possible to do justice to the details of Howes's argument here. Readers are likely to find different aspects intriguing depending on their own disciplinary background and political and philosophical interests. From the point of view of historians of political thought, particularly those of a more contextualist persuasion, there might well be skepticism about the boldness of the links Howes draws between understandings of freedom and violence in the ancient and modern worlds. To what extent, for example, is Howes imposing a Judeo-Christian understanding of love and self-sacrifice on Greek and Roman modes of thinking when it comes to figures such as Antigone or to the interpretation of the rape of Lucretia (46–48)? From my point of view, however, as a political and ethical philosopher, Howes's construction of possible counterhistories to help develop a nonviolent conception of freedom is the most interesting aspect of his analysis, both illuminating and disturbing.

Howes's counterhistories are designed to challenge the myth that political effectiveness has to rely on violence as a “last resort,” and therefore that we may always need violence “for” freedom, whether offensively or defensively. We see this in his accounts of the withdrawal of the plebs from fighting duties in the Roman context (53), the use of the strike within the labor movement (129–37) and the effectiveness of abolitionist, women's, and nonviolent anticolonial movements (28–39). He is also concerned to use historical examples to demonstrate that the use of violence is always most likely to undermine freedom at the individual and collective levels (160, 194–98). All the above examples support his articulation of a concept of nonviolent freedom in the final section of the book, which sees Gandhi's concept of Swaraj (self-rule) as resolving problems in other nonviolent conceptions of freedom, such as those of Arendt, Berlin, and Kant (177–91). Gandhi's concept, on Howes's account, combines an understanding of political freedom as grounded in individual creative capacity (free thought and free will), as encompassing individual and collective self-rule, and as tied to an egalitarian ethic and a certain humility (194): “Gandhi's idea of freedom requires that each must recognize the freedom of everyone else, working with others on a voluntary basis to achieve self-rule individually and collectively. However, Gandhi has more confidence in the possibilities of free will than Arendt. He incorporates, integrates, and embraces a strong will in his definition of freedom, and relies on the will to elicit the self-control required for us to work with others. A reasonable, active, moral will can freely rule over the self for the specific purpose of ruling with others” (190).

Howes's discussion of Gandhi is illuminating. It provides a robust account of what an understanding of nonviolent freedom might encompass. In particular, a good case is made for how violence is incompatible with the possibility of ruling over self for the purposes of ruling over others, precisely because violence destroys the irreducibly individual grounds of freedom in Gandhi's sense (194). However, there are also elements in this Gandhian definition that hark back to earlier parts of the book and the counterhistories Howes constructs about women, slaves, and workers. I am particularly concerned by Howes's use of the rape of Lucretia example in the first part of the text. The example is used to show how nonviolent action involving self-sacrifice can be more powerful that physical force in bringing about political change: “In her response to Sextus, Lucretia demonstrates savvy strategy, preventing the Tarquins from impugning her character either before or after the rape, while also distinguishing her status as a free woman from that of a slave. Most importantly, she sacrifices herself to force action. Lucretia's suicide provides her with enduring and potent political leverage” (46). In Gandhi's work the theme of women committing suicide in preference to dishonor is also a persistent theme. What worries me here is that women's killing of themselves gains a heroic status within counterhistories designed to support the cause of nonviolent freedom. In what sense can Lucretia's action be understood as free, and what kinds of understandings of the status of women and slaves did it perpetuate? Gandhi's or Howes's insistence on individual free will as an irreducible element of political freedom may well fail to challenge political violence that works not through war, revolution, or capital punishment, but through constraints on what it means for actions to count as violent or nonviolent resistance in any given place or time.