Peace

The purpose of this document is to outline why and how universities must both transform and mobilise to avert the worst impacts of the global crises faced by humanity. The first section addresses the justification for transformation and how academia can and must transform. In the second section, the document highlights the need for a peaceful mobilisation of student and staff bodies to make effective the transformation advocated for. The document then outlines a blueprint as to action that must be (...) taken in order to initiate the required transformation and mobilisation. (2020). (shrink)

Recent studies of peacebuilding highlight the importance of attending to people’s local experiences of conflict and cooperation. This trend, however, raises the fundamental questions of how the local is and should be constituted and what the relationship is between institutions and individual actors of peace at the local level of politics. I turn to Hannah Arendt’s thoughts to address these issues. Arendt’s thinking provides a distinctive form of realism that calls for stable institutions but never depletes the spirit of resistance. (...) Peacebuilding guided by this insight seeks to enable parties in conflict to voice their competing opinions by acting agonistically in public and to help them align their disruptive yet creative voices with a desire to establish and sustain common institutions. Thus, Arendt’s thinking not only offers a way to increase sensitivity to local differences but also to provide direction to the politics of resistance. In the end, it offers a balanced insight into peacebuilding and local agency beyond the contemporary liberal and critical approaches to peace. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to present the main contributions to peace, democracy, and the philosophy of education in Colombia, made by philosopher Guillermo Hoyos-Vásquez (Medellín, 1935 – Bogotá, 2013). The work of this Colombian philosopher stands out for its important contributions to political philosophy as the vital, supportive, and responsible exercise of thought concerning the public interest. Using Kant’s concept of practical reason, Husserl’s lifeworld [Lebenswelt], and Habermas’s communicative action as starting points, Hoyos-Vásquez succeeded in going beyond these (...) political philosophers by trying to apply their ideas in the midst of the difficult context of corruption, drug trafficking and armed conflict in Colombia over the past five decades. At the same time, Hoyos-Vásquez developed throughout his life a varied public activity as a thinker and educator, belying the myth of the theoretical distance between the philosopher and his/her political present or historical reality. The thought of Guillermo Hoyos-Vásquez, and his public action as an educator, represent a substantial contribution to contemporary political and educational philosophy, maintaining a close connection between theory and practice. (shrink)

When the odds of achieving world peace seem so long, do hopes for peace amount to anything more than wishful thinking? In this paper, I introduce the idea of meaningful hope, which can help us to u...

In his 2017 World Day of Peace message, Pope Francis made a subtle yet stunning move when he called the Sermon on the Mount the Church’s “manual” for peacemaking at every level. Continuing the “fresh reappraisal” of war that the Second Vatican Council launched, Francis's choice of a term associated with the “Manualist” tradition of natural‐law casuistry signaled the Catholic magisterium’s growing commitment both to rooting its teaching on peace and war in biblical sources instead, and to active nonviolence in (...) pursuit of just peace. Given centuries of dismissal of Jesus’s teaching as irrelevant to real‐world politics by both Catholics and Protestants, reception of Francis’s signal will benefit both from fresh biblical exegesis and new insights into natural law. Informing the biblical side is the groundbreaking work by Glen Stassen on the triadic structure of Jesus’s teachings in Matthew 5‐7, and its practical implications for just peacemaking. Informing the natural‐law side are recent findings from social psychology and neuroanthropology on the role of mimesis in human formation. The two fields join in underscoring the creative power of what Stassen called transforming initiatives for breaking cycles of violence. (shrink)

This article explores the understanding of the Church as a creative minority, particularly in connection with the Matthean beatitude of peacemaking. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’s description of the Church as a creative minority provides the starting point. This paper investigates the communal, obedient practice of diaspora peacemaking from multiple and overlapping theological perspectives, including Biblical narratives of diaspora and of Babel, a comparison of political exile and critical exile, and diaspora peacemaking as a threefold ministry of the Church (priest, prophet, king). (...) The diaspora people of the new covenant are truly peacemakers–in service to God, creation, the Church and ultimately all people. (shrink)

This comment reflects on how the Women, Peace and Security agenda has been translated into policy and put into practice by the European Union and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Although the WPS agenda has enabled many gains by women peacebuilders, this comment identifies important challenges from these two very different contexts. First, situating WPS policy areas within a broader feminist political economy analysis demonstrates how little influence the WPS agenda has across government. Second, the WPS agenda is being used (...) to promote heteronormative, patriarchal understanding of ‘gender’, stripped of any power dynamics and excluding any gender identities that do not conform. The result, then, is that WPS policies and practice are adrift in the patriarchal policy mainstream. (shrink)

Kant’s 1795 essay on perpetual peace has been lauded as one of his most important and influential political texts as well as one of the most important texts on peace. Kant’s text was largely forgotten until the 1980s and 1990s, with numerous commentaries appearing around the time of its 200 years existence. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida’s interest in Kant’s text appears to have arisen around the same time, and his analyses of this text continued after the turn of the (...) century. The references to Kant’s essay in Derrida’s texts appear mostly in the context of a discussion of the concept of hospitality. The latter concept is understood by Derrida as including both a demand for absolute hospitality, that is, hospitality without the imposition of any limitations, as well as a demand, in the interests of survival, for such limitations or conditions. A negotiation between these dimensions of hospitality is ultimately required. The aim of this article is to elucidate Derrida’s analysis of Kant’s essay, specifically his recasting of the concept of peace as absolute hospitality, as well as to briefly outline its implications for international and cosmopolitan law. (shrink)

Review of Tolstoy and Spirituality (Academic Studies Press, 2018), edited by Pedrag Cicovacki and Heidi Nada Grek, with articles by Miran Bozovic, Predrag Cicovacki, Abdusalam A. Guseynov, Robert Holmes, Božidar Kante, Rosamund Bartlett, Diana Dukhanova, Liza Knapp, Inessa Medzhibovskaya, Donna Tussing Orwin, Mikhail Shishkin, and Alexandra Smith.

How can we rationally make peace with our past moral failings, while committing to avoid similar mistakes in the future? Is it because we cannot do anything about the past, while the future is still open? Or is it that regret for our past mistakes is psychologically harmful, and we need to forgive ourselves in order to be able to move on? Or is it because moral mistakes enable our moral growth? I argue that these and other answers do not (...) properly resolve the problem of temporal asymmetry in our attitudes toward moral imperfection, and I defend an alternative response, centered on our personal attachments and our biographical identity. (shrink)

Rossi’s book tackles the challenging task of giving a unified picture of a large swath of Kant’s Critical philosophy by attending to the need for epistemic humility from the first Critique, drawing upon the primacy of practical reason and the importance of freedom in both the first and second Critiques, appealing to the anthropological task that Kant set for himself in the Jaesche Logic and Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, exploring the implications of politics and history for the (...) enactment of morality and freedom, and synthesizing all of that via a notion of hope and moral reform drawn from the religious writings. (shrink)

The ideal of the United Nations was first put forward by Immanuel Kant in his 1795 essay Perpetual Peace. Kant, in the tradition of Locke and Rousseau is a liberal who believes that relations between individuals can either be based upon law and consent or upon force and violence. One way that such the ideal of world peace could be achieved would be through the creation of a single world state, of which every human being was a citizen. Such an (...) ideal was advocated by a number of eighteenth century liberals. Kant, however, rejects this ideal and instead argues that the universal rule of law can be achieved through the establishment a federation of independent states. I examine the relevance of Kant’s arguments today, focusing on two questions: Firstly, as advocates of the rule of law, why advocate a federation of independent nations rather than a single world state. Secondly, is this ideal realizable? Is Kant right to think that republics are natural and are likely to live peacefully with one another? Kant’s arguments on this issue have been taken up again in recent decades by defenders of the theory of the “democratic peace”, the theory that democracies are more likely to live at peace with one another. (shrink)

Interest in pacifism—an idea with a long history in philosophical thought and in several religious traditions—is growing. The Routledge Handbook of Pacifism and Nonviolence is the first comprehensive reference designed to introduce newcomers and researchers to the many varieties of pacifism and nonviolence, to their history and philosophy, and to pacifism’s most serious critiques. The volume offers 32 brand new chapters from the world’s leading experts across a diverse range of fields, who together provide a broad discussion of pacifism and (...) nonviolence in connection with virtue ethics, capital punishment, animal ethics, ecology, queer theory, and feminism, among other areas. This Handbook is divided into four sections: (1) Historical and Tradition-Specific Considerations, (2) Conceptual and Moral Considerations, (3) Social and Political Considerations, and (4) Applications. It concludes with an Afterword by James Lawson, one of the icons of the nonviolent American Civil Rights movement. The text will be invaluable to scholars and students, as well as to activists and general readers interested in peace, nonviolence, and critical perspectives on war and violence. (shrink)

Pacifism is often painted into a corner as an absolute rejection of all violence and war. Such a dogmatic and negative formulation of pacifism does leave us with pacifism as a morally problematic position. But pacifism is not best understood as a negative claim. Nor is pacifism best understood as a singular or monistic concept. Rather, there is a “pacifist tradition” that is grounded in an affirmative claim about the importance of nonviolence, love, community building, and peaceful conflict resolution. This (...) more positive conception of pacifism aims to transform social and political life. When understood in this way, pacifism is a robust and useful critical social theory. This paper explores the philosophy of pacifism in an attempt to reconceptualize pacifism as a tradition of normative critical theory. The paper argues that pacifism ought to be understood on analogy with other critical theories—such as feminism; that pacifism should be understood in terms of the “pacifist tradition”—along lines familiar from interpretations of the “just war tradition”; and that pacifism should be seen as offering interesting themes and ideas that are worthy of philosophical attention. (shrink)

The Triumph of Liberal Democratic Peace and the Dangers of Its Success” provides an overview of the “liberal democratic peace theory” that is associated with Kant and has been developed by Doyle and other contemporary scholars. The chapter examines the problem of wars that are fought in the name of democracy and the way that the liberal democratic peace theory can end up encouraging military interventions. It argues that a careful understanding of the Kantian democratic peace theory can resist the (...) urge to intervene. It employs Galtung’s notion of cultural violence to provide a critique of interventionist peace action. It concludes by advising that we work to find a way to build bridges between democracies and non-democracies. (shrink)

Peace, Culture, and Violence examines deeper sources of violence by providing a critical reflection on the forms of violence that permeate everyday life and our inability to recognize these forms of violence. Exploring the elements of culture that legitimize and normalize violence, the essays collected in this volume invite us to recognize and critically approach the violent aspects of reality we live in and encourage us to envision peaceful alternatives. Including chapters written by important scholars in the fields of Peace (...) Studies and Social and Political Philosophy, the volume represents an endeavour to seek peace in a world deeply marred by violence. Topics include: thug culture, language, hegemony, police violence, war on drugs, war, terrorism, gender, anti-Semitism, and other topics.. (shrink)

There have been four main motives to introduce the notion of modus vivendi in the political-philosophical literature. One is to use it as a negative contrast to what one regards as the ideal goal in politics. The second is to use it within a distinctively realist political theory that refrains from advocating utopian ideals. The third is to defend liberal institutions as a modus vivendi. The fourth is to have a concept for the institutional tools for peace. Depending on the (...) motive to introduce the notion of modus vivendi, the notion is conceptualized slightly differently. One aim of the chapter is to provide an overview of the different motives that have led theorists to think about modus vivendi and the different conceptualizations of modus vivendi they have offered. But the chapter also makes a more substantial point: it argues that we should conceptualize the notion of modus vivendi in line with the fourth motive, because this seems the most promising way to get a conception of modus vivendi that is both ‘deeply motivated’ and ‘open’ for all kinds of approaches in political theory. (shrink)

We argue for peace education as a process of improving the quality of everyday relationships. This is vital, as children bring their habits formed largely by social and political institutions such as the family, religion, law, cultural mores, to the classroom (Splitter, 1993; Furlong & Morrison, 2000) and vice versa. It is inevitable that the classroom habitat, as a microcosm of the community in which it is situated, will perpetuate the epistemic practices and injustices of that community, manifested in attitudes, (...) beliefs, behaviours and actions that can limit the child’s ability to learn. The educational task then, is to create opportunities for children to problematize the very environment they inhabit. To this end, our concern is for peace education aimed at addressing epistemic violence; a form of harm brought about by a particular rationality of domination. -/- The classroom community of inquiry, initially developed by Matthew Lipman and Ann Sharp as the methodology for the Philosophy for Children (P4C) approach to education (Lipman & Sharp, 1978; Lipman, Sharp & Oscanyan, 1980), is often viewed as a solution to inequality in the classroom—an intellectually safe environment which allows students to explore, practice and internalize good reasoning through philosophy so that they can make school relevant to their lives. Traditionally, the teacher’s role is to take a ‘neutral stance’ in discussion during the conduct of a community of inquiry. However, we argue that it is misplaced to assume that the community of inquiry is a safe intellectual environment in which the teacher as co-inquirer also facilitates the discussion procedurally, letting the argument lead, which Lipman took as the guiding principle for his process of inquiry. For, as Paulo Freire (1987) put it: -/- ... the dominant ideology makes its presence in the classroom partly felt by trying to convince the teacher that he or she must be neutral in order to respect the student. This kind of neutrality is a false respect for students. On the contrary, the more I say nothing about agreeing or not agreeing out of respect for the others, the more I am leaving the dominant ideology in peace! (p. 174). -/- Teachers must be aware of the possibility of epistemic violence to be able to detect and disrupt it, in order to facilitate a peaceful inquiry. We do not consider peace in the negative, as the absence of conflict, but in the positive as the capacity to respond skilfully to conflict as a way of life. Therefore, we concentrate on peace education that prepares students to turn conflict into inquiry, rather than peace education as values education or character education that instils values of ‘fraternity and non-violence’ (Gregory, 2004, p. 277). The community of inquiry provides such a framework, however, we argue that it must be facilitated in a way that mitigates the effects of epistemic violence by creating an educational habitat in which multiple ways of knowing can flourish. (shrink)

In this chapter, I approach the subject of peace by way of Andrew Fiala’s pioneering, synthetic work on “practical pacifism.” One of Fiala’s articles on the subject of peace is entitled “Radical Forgiveness and Human Justice”—and if one were to replace “Radical Forgiveness” with “Peace,” this would be a fair title for my chapter. In fact, Fiala himself explicitly makes a connection in the article between radical forgiveness and peace. Also in support of my project, Fiala’s article names four of (...) the six historical figures who are central to my chapter, namely Marcus Aurelius, King, Arendt, and Nietzsche. Moreover, Fiala also insists there “forgiveness must be held in creative tension with justice,” and it is this very tension that forms the basis of my new conception of socially-just peace. To wit, I propose that socially-just peace is lovingly generous reimagining (peace) through intuitively self-overcoming tension (social justice). (shrink)

Peace and conflict studies education has grown significantly in the last 30 years, mainly in Higher Education. This article critically analyzes the ways in which this field might be subject to poststructural critique, and posits Bourdieusian second-order reflexivity as a means of responding to these critiques. We propose here that theory-building within PACS education is often limited by the dominance of Galtung and Freire, and that, while the foundational ideas of positive and negative peace, structural and cultural violence, conscientization, reflexivity (...) and critical pedagogy are still relevant today, they nevertheless need to be combined in new ways with each other, and with Bourdieu’s notions of habitus and field, to adequately respond to poststructural critique. Thus, we call here for greater field-based reflexivity in twenty-first century PACS. (shrink)

To Andrew Fitz-Gibbon the history of Northern Ireland provides much useful insight by which progress can be made in the on-going (and seemingly never ending) vicious conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians that our world has not been able to break free of. In the first three chapters of “Talking to Terrorists” the Northern Ireland conflicts are placed within a very accessible and surprisingly thorough (given the book’s brevity) context. In his final chapter “Toward a Peaceful Future” Fitz-Gibbon identifies and elaborates (...) upon seven specific areas “where the Northern Ireland Peace Process might inform the situation between Israel and Gaza.". (shrink)

Epicurus, Marcus Aurelius, Mahatma Gandhi, Alain Locke, Howard Thurman, and Dr. Huey Newton comprise central figures of concern in three feature articles of this issue. The fourth feature takes us on a climate march through Washington, D.C. where the central figure of concern is a broken global relationship. In addition, we offer book reviews that take up applications of nonviolence to counter-terrorism, of ethics to immigration, of pacifism to war, and cosmopolitanism to peacebuilding.

Just war scholars are increasingly focusing on the importance of jus post bellum – justice after war – for the legitimacy of military campaigns. Should something akin to jus post bellum standards apply to terrorist campaigns? Assuming that at least some terrorist actors pursue legitimate goals or just causes, do such actors have greater difficulty satisfying the prospect-of-success criterion of Just War Theory than military actors? Further, may the use of the terrorist method as such – state or non-state – (...) jeopardize lasting peace in a way that other violent, for instance military, strategies do not? I will argue that there appears to be little reason to believe that terrorist campaigns are in principle less able to secure or at least contribute to a lasting peace than military campaigns; quite to the contrary. Or, put differently, if terrorism is an unlikely method for securing peace, then war is an even more unlikely one. (shrink)

This book articulates a cosmopolitan theory of the principles which ought to regulate belligerents' conduct in the aftermath of war. Throughout, it relies on the fundamental principle that all human beings, wherever they reside, have rights to the freedoms and resources which they need to lead a flourishing life, and that national and political borders are largely irrelevant to the conferral of those rights. With that principle in hand, the book provides a normative defence of restitutive and reparative justice, the (...) punishment of war criminals, the resort to transitional foreign administration as a means to govern war-torn territories, and the deployment of peacekeeping and occupation forces. It also outlines various reconciliatory and commemorative practices which might facilitate the emergence of trust amongst enemies and thereby improve prospects for peace. The book offers analytical arguments and normative conclusions, with many historical and/or contemporary examples. (shrink)

In a world riven with conflict, violence and war, this book proposes a philosophical defense of pacifism. It argues that there is a moral presumption against war and unless that presumption is defeated, war is unjustified. Leading philosopher of non-violence Robert Holmes contends that neither just war theory nor the rationales for recent wars defeat that presumption, hence that war in the modern world is morally unjustified. A detailed, comprehensive and elegantly argued text which guides both students and scholars through (...) the main debates clearly but without oversimplifying the complexities of the issues or historical examples. (shrink)

This book explores the morality of compromising. The author argues that peace and public justification are values that provide moral reasons to make compromises in politics, including compromises that establish unjust laws or institutions. He explains how it is possible to have moral reasons to agree to moral compromises and he debates our moral duties and obligations in making such compromises. The book also contains discussions of the sources of the value of public justification, the relation between peace and justice, (...) the nature of modus vivendi arrangements and the connections between compromise, liberal institutions and legitimacy. In exploring the morality of compromising, the book thus provides some outlines for a map of political morality beyond justice. (shrink)

This book argues that peace must be a public thing. Philosophers of peace have long worked for public results. Opposing nuclear weapons, organizing the disinherited, challenging violence in the status quo, such are the legacies of engaged philosophers. Our authors remember these examples as we confront modern challenges such as immigration, police interrogation, or mental health.

Kant’s non-voluntarist conception of political obligation has led some philosophers to argue that he would reject self-government rights for indigenous peoples. Some recent scholarship suggests, however, that Kant’s critique of colonialism provides an argument in favor of granting self-government rights. Here I argue for a stronger conclusion: Kantian political theory not only can but must include sovereignty for indigenous peoples. Normally these rights are considered redress for historic injustice. On a Kantian view, however, I argue that they are not remedial. (...) Sovereignty rights are a necessary part of establishing perpetual peace. By failing to acknowledge the sovereignty of native groups, states once guilty of imperialism leave open the in principle possibility for future violence, even though no current conflict exists. Only in recognizing self-government rights can states truly commit to the cosmopolitan ideal. (shrink)

To a world assaulted by private interests, this book argues that peace must be a public thing. Distinguished philosophers of peace have always worked publicly for public results. Opposing nuclear proliferation, organizing communities of the disinherited, challenging violence within status quo establishments, such are the legacies of truly engaged philosophers of peace. This volume remembers those legacies, reviews the promise of critical thinking for crises today, and expands the free range of thinking needed to create more mindful and peaceful relations. (...) With essays by committed peace philosophers, this volume shows how public engagement has been a significant feature of peace philosophers such as Camus, Sartre, Dewey, and Dorothy Day. Today we also confront historical opportunities to transform practices for immigration, police interrogation, and mental health, as we seek to sustain democracies of increasing multicultural diversity. In such cases our authors consider points of view developed by renowned thinkers such as Weil, Mouffe, Conway, and Martín-Baró. This volume also presents critical analysis of concepts for thinking about violence, reconsiders Plato’s philosophy of justice, and examines the role of ethical theory for liberation struggles such as Occupy! (shrink)

A co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, its newspaper, and hospitality houses, the writer Dorothy Day promoted public peace nationally and internationally as a journalist, an organizer of public protests, and a builder of associational communities. Drawing upon Hannah Arendt’s conceptions of the role of speech and action in creating the public realm, this paper focuses on several of Day’s most controversial public positions: her leadership of non-cooperation against Civil Defense drills intended to prepare New York City residents to survive (...) a nuclear war; her urging of Catholics to find common cause with the Cuban revolutionary government; and her support for interracial farming communities in the Southern United States. As Arendt asserts about Rahel Varnhagen’s salon in Berlin, by being public meeting spaces hosted in private houses, Catholic Worker communities fostered egalitarian rather than “agonal” politics. Like Gandhi’s newspapers and ashrams as well as “Occupy” communities such as Zuccotti Park, Day’s newspaper was a center for incubating and implementing social reform. The Catholic Worker provided a place where writers could question the official rhetoric of such conflicts as World War II and the Cold War, put forward different interpretations of unfolding events, and chart possible alternatives to establishment agendas. (shrink)

The idea that peace prevails in the relations among liberal democratic states, given its first expression in Kant’s essay “Toward Perpetual Peace,” has gathered a great deal of attention in the post-Cold War period as both a testable hypothesis and a proposal for expanding peace through democratization. This article examines the explanations for how a democratic peace is achieved and sustained. It argues that, despite tendencies within democratic state relations toward peaceful conflict resolution, such a peace is destabilized by continued (...) adherence to a set of assumptions and practices which we might call, following Jane Addams and John Dewey, ‘the war system.’ In the context of the ideological and institutional supports of militarism, democratic states remain subject to the dynamics of conflict escalation that produce occasions for war. This war system is the undoing of the democratic peace. (shrink)

Understanding Peace: A Comprehensive Introduction fills the need for an original, contemporary examination of peace that is challenging, informative, and empowering. This well-researched, fully documented, and highly accessible textbook moves beyond fixation on war to highlight the human capacity for nonviolent cooperation in everyday life and in conflict situations. After deconstructing numerous ideas about war and explaining its heavy costs to humans, animals, and the environment, discussion turns to evidence for the existence of peaceful societies. Further topics include the role (...) of nonviolence in history, the nature of violence and aggression, and the theory and practice of nonviolence. The book offers two new moral arguments against war, and concludes by defining peace carefully from different angles and then describing conditions for creating a culture of peace. Understanding Peace brings a fresh philosophical perspective to discussions of peace, and also addresses down-to-earth issues about effecting constructive change in a complex world. The particular strength of Understanding Peace lies in its commitment to reflecting on and integrating material from many fields of knowledge. This approach will appeal to a diverse audience of students and scholars in peace studies, philosophy, and the social sciences, as well as to general-interest readers. (shrink)

Illustrated with sumptuously detailed panel-style artwork and based on the Eastern philosophies of the Tao Te Ching, a lyrical picture book explores the eternal question of how to promote world peace and shares inspiring quotes from famous peacemakers while counseling readers on how to find peace within oneself.

In this essay, I continue Nicholas Wolterstorff’s work of developing a rights-based theory of ethics called eirenéism, which maintains the good life only occurs when justice—as a moral state of affairs where agents enjoy the goods to which they have a right—is achieved. As a result, justice is eirenē (the Greek word for peace). In the process of developing eirenéism I explain how eirenē differs from other conceptions of peace, and I offer several interpretive arguments for how best to understand (...) eirenéism in relation to better-known competing ethical theories, like utilitarianism, virtue ethics, duty ethics, and care ethics. (shrink)

Our societies are marked not only by disagreements on the good life, but also by disagreements on justice. This motivates philosophers as divergent as John Gray and Chandran Kukathas to focus their normative political theories on peace instead of justice. In this article, I discuss how peace should be conceived if peace is to be a more realistic goal than justice, not presupposing any moral consensus. I distinguish two conceptions of peace to be found in the literature. One, ordinary peace, (...) conceives of peace as non-violent coexistence based on modus vivendi arrangements. Modus vivendi arrangements, in turn, are explained as a special kind of compromise. Ordinary peace does not presuppose any moral consensus and is therefore realistic, but at the same time it is too minimalist and undemanding to be satisfying. The other conception of peace, ambitious peace, can be found in Kukathas’s work. It is a conception of peace ‘beyond compromise’, not minimalist and undemanding, but, I will argue, not realistic because presupposing at least a second-order moral consensus. In the end, I advocate a division of labour between both conceptions of peace under the umbrella of an overarching ideal of peace. (shrink)

India is an ancient land, extending back to the Vedic civilization. India’s historical importance is recorded in the Book of Esther India formed a landmark country in the Medo-Persian Empire when King Xerxes 1 ruled over 127 countries . It is noteworthy that the Jews and the Vedic people did not mix with other national cultures of the Empire because the Jewish Laws were different targeting the social values. The Ten Commandments and Mosaic Laws were geared to keep community and (...) family values. On the other hand the Vedic rules and regulations that kept the well being of the society were contained in their Scriptures. Each nation and each culture was living in peace and international law was the dialogue that sustained peace. Can Laws in contemporary India ensure such a peace in the family and society?Ancient Vedic India practiced rich bioethical principles in science, medicine and cosmology. In medical science and technology, ancient classical treatises like Charaka and Sushrata are standing testimony that there was a well established health care system with well qualified surgeons and physicians like Charaka who was the official physician of the kings like Kanishka in the first century AD. Scientific knowledge was so well advanced that medical interventions like lithotomy and repair of damaged nose were of common occurrence. Their physicians recognized the dignity of life and were experts in alleviating pain and curing diseases. Physicians were prescribed bioethical laws so as to lead a balanced personal bioethical behavior. Human health was their prime interest and hence social peace was ensured..Ancient India proclaimed and practiced a life of peace in day to day life. Although it was a nation with then international trade links it did not wage a war against any nation that was located in its trade routes. The present paper highlights the paradigm shift in its social values that has affected the peace of the community. One of the social evils is that of the custom of giving dowry in marriages. The girl’s parents pay a heavy sum of money besides gold ornaments to the bridegroom’s parents. Hence a girl child is always a terrible financial “burden” to the family. And hence she is eliminated before or after birth. The Government enacted a federal law – The Pre-Conception and PreNatal Diagnostic Technique Act to maintain a healthy and peaceful sex ratio. The 1971 census recorded a ratio of 941 females to 1000 males which has been reduced to 914 which is the National Sex Ratio . In some States it has dropped to about 750 girls per 1000 males. The Government proposed to lift the ban. Such recent damage control move by the government has been discussed in terms of peace and harmony in society. (shrink)

Although a modus operandi throughout history, the passing down of beliefs and values from parent to child is a practice that must now be challenged. Drawing a connection between fundamentalist religious beliefs and inter-generational violence, this paper examines an ethical dilemma that lies at its crux: on the one hand, the peaceful intentions of fundamentalist believers, and on the other a number of violent consequences for individuals, society, and the world. Applying interdisciplinary religious and peace theory scholarship to the case (...) of Christian fundamentalism in Australia, a number of intertwining issues surrounding religion and education are explored. Should religion be taught to children? What is the difference between indoctrination and education? Is some enculturation desirable? Who decides? Do children have a right to choose their own religion? Do parents have a right to teach them theirs? Is indoctrination avoidable? Is neutrality of the teacher attainable? Does a liberal society have a right not to tolerate the intolerant? How might these complex paradoxes be addressed from a philosophical and peace education perspective? (shrink)