The essays in The Question of Peace in Modern Political Thought address the contribution that political theories of modern political philosophers have made to our understandings of peace. The discipline of peace research has reached a critical impasse, where the ideas of both “realist peace” and “democratic peace” are challenged by contemporary world events. Can we stand by while dictators violate the human rights of citizens? Can we impose a democratic peace through the projection of war? By looking back at the great works of political philosophy, this collection hopes to revive peace as an active question for political philosophy while making an original contribution to contemporary peace research and international relations.
Peace is a universal ideal, but its political life is a great paradox: "peace" is the opposite of war, but it also enables war. If peace is the elimination of war, then what does it mean to wage war for the sake of peace? What does peace mean when some say that they are committed to it but that their enemies do not value it? Why is it that associating peace with other ideals, like justice, friendship, security, and law, does little to distance peace from war? Although political theory has dealt extensively with most major concepts that today define "the political" it has paid relatively scant critical attention to peace, the very concept that is often said to be the major aim and ideal of humanity. In War for Peace, Murad Idris looks at the ways that peace has been treated across the writings of ten thinkers from ancient and modern political thought, from Plato to Immanuel Kant and Sayyid Qutb, to produce an original and striking account of what peace means and how it works. Idris argues that peace is parasitical in that the addition of other ideals into peace, such as law, security, and friendship, reduces it to consensus and actually facilitates war; it is provincial in that its universalized content reflects particularistic desires and fears, constructions of difference, and hierarchies within humanity; and it is polemical, in that its idealization is not only the product of antagonisms, but also enables hostility. War for Peace uncovers the basis of peace's moralities and the political functions of its idealizations, historically and into the present. This bold and ambitious book confronts readers with the impurity of peace as an ideal, and the pressing need to think beyond universal peace.
The essays in The Question of Peace in Modern Political Thought address the contribution that political theories of modern political philosophers have made to our understandings of peace. The discipline of peace research has reached a critical impasse, where the ideas of both “realist peace” and “democratic peace” are challenged by contemporary world events. Can we stand by while dictators violate the human rights of citizens? Can we impose a democratic peace through the projection of war? By looking back at the great works of political philosophy, this collection hopes to revive peace as an active question for political philosophy while making an original contribution to contemporary peace research and international relations.
Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, recurring political violence at both state and non-state levels has eroded confidence in the progressively peaceful character of international relations, and has unsettled the parameters of political thought. Frames of peace and frames of war have, throughout Western thought, colored the questions that we ask about politics, the descriptions of the pragmatic and moral alternatives that we face, and the ideas and metaphors that we use at any given moment. These frames, as this book argues, also obscure too much of political life. Gerald M. Mara proposes, instead, a political philosophy that takes both war and peace seriously, and a style of theory committed to questioning rather than closure. He challenges two powerful currents in contemporary political philosophy: the verdict that "premodern" or "metaphysical" texts cannot speak to modern and postmodern societies and the insistence that all forms of political theory be some form of democratic theory. Mara reexamines seminal texts in the history of political theory, from Thucydides to Jacques Derrida, and from Machiavelli to Judith Butler, to examine how frames of reference of war and peace have structured both the writing of these texts, as well as interpretations of them. The result is not a linear history of ideas, but a series of conversations between them, and a democratic justification for moving beyond democratic theory.
Gathering together essays by some of the most influential modern political philosophers and theorists, War, Peace, and International Political Realism reveals the twentieth-century roots of the realist tradition and demonstrates the enduring relevance of realist insights for current international relations scholarship and foreign affairs. These essays, all of which were published in The Review of Politics, the majority during the 1940s and 1950s, reflect four major tenets of the classical realist tradition: an obligation to confront large and difficult questions about international politics, a recognition of the fundamentally tragic nature of relations among humans and states, a rejection of historical optimism, and a belief in practical morality. Keir A. Lieber provides an excellent introduction emphasizing the importance of political realism as defined by the contributors. "Political realism is a distinguished intellectual tradition that illuminates the tragic aspects of the human condition. This wide-ranging collection of essays highlights the philosophical depth and topical breadth of postwar realist thought and illustrates both the continuities and divisions that continue to shape that tradition. Readers will gain considerable insight from revisiting these classics, or from discovering them for the first time." --Stephen Walt, Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs, Harvard University "This collection of outstanding essays by such intellectual giants as Hannah Arendt, Herbert Butterfield, George Kennan, and Hans Morgenthau shows why conflict has long been at the heart of international politics and why there will never be world peace." --John J. Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago "This volume of essays that were originally published in The Review of Politics provides a unique perspective on the early history of both International Relations and political realism. All of the contributors, including luminaries such as Kennan, Morgenthau, and Thompson, asked profound questions about the nature of man, society, and politics, and should encourage readers to reconsider the purpose of contemporary political science. By focusing on the work of some of the leading realist thinkers who were writing in the 1940s and 1950s, Lieber clearly demonstrates that realism remains extremely relevant to understanding current debates on international politics and American foreign policy." --Brian C. Schmidt, Carleton University
The present book uses Sri Lanka’s failed attempt at negotiating peace with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, to examine the politics of state and market reforms towards liberal peace. Sri Lanka is seen as a critical case that demonstrates key characteristics and shortcomings of liberal peace, vividly demonstrated by internationally facilitated elite negotiations and donor-funded neoliberal development.
This collection of original essays by leading historians of political thought examines modern European thinkers' writings about conquest, colonization, and empire. The creation of vast transcontinental empires and imperial trading networks played a key role in the development of modern European political thought. The rise of modern empires raised fundamental questions about virtually the entire contested set of concepts that lay at the heart of modern political philosophy, such as property, sovereignty, international justice, war, trade, rights, transnational duties, civilization, and progress. From Renaissance republican writings about conquest and liberty to sixteenth-century writings about the Spanish conquest of the Americas through Enlightenment perspectives about conquest and global commerce and nineteenth-century writings about imperial activities both within and outside of Europe, these essays survey the central moral and political questions occasioned by the development of overseas empires and European encounters with the non-European world among theologians, historians, philosophers, diplomats, and merchants.
This book explores Hobbes’s ideas about the internal pacification of states, the prospect of a peaceful international order, and the connections between civil and international peace. It questions the notion of a negative Hobbesian peace, which is based on the mere suppression of violence, and emphasises his positive vision of everlasting peace in a well-governed commonwealth. The book also highlights Hobbes’s ideas about international coexistence and cooperation, which he considers integral to good government. In examining Hobbes’s conception of peace, it provides a fresh perspective on his international political thought. The findings also have wider implications for the ways in which we think about Hobbes’s relationship to the realist and liberal traditions of international thought, and will appeal to students and scholars of political theory and international relations.
This book develops a notion of differences and 'otherness' beyond hegemonic and hierarchical thinking as represented by the legacies of Western philosophical and political thought. In doing so, it relates to the phenomenological discourse of the twentieth century, especially to Georg Simmel, Alfred Schütz, Emmanual Lévinas, and Jacques Derrida, and drafts our understanding of difference as a genuine human experience of a social and political world that is in motion and transformative, rather than static and predictable. On this basis of temporalized ontology and its normative consequences, differences are drafted as a positive social and political force and as powerful capacities of transformation and change. In practical terms, this understanding is most important for our theorizing and acting upon peace, peace-building, and conflict solution. Differences now appear not as obstacle to peace and reconciliation, but as lively and constructive articulations of 'otherness' and as a positive power of transformation, emancipation, and change. This book will be of interest to students of international relations, philosophy and political theory.
