CPP: Concerned Philosophers for Peace

While other eras have faced severe challenges our crises—including nuclear war and climate catastrophe—involve unprecedented existential threats to human life. It can seem as if our rulers are unable or unwilling to picture an alternative to the status quo. For many, there is insufficient hope for a good future, and scores of people, particularly the young, are gripped with fear and nihilism about their prospects. This volume brings together a diverse group of thinkers appealing to a diverse range of sources responding both to the crisis in power, and the crises we need power to address more skillfully, even if this requires rethinking the role of power itself. It is my hope as editor of this book that you will find resources for and examples of warm-hearted and hard-headed efforts at creating more just and peaceful forms of life. Taken as a whole, this volume is not intended to provide precisely what political project or theory is required to successfully address the crises in power and the crises power faces, it is more a collection of prompts to focus our efforts on realizing a better world for operating under the shared commitment of mutual respect, mutual critique, and the importance of clear critical thought in the pursuit of a sane, just, and stable future.

Peace in the Face of Aggression seeks to find ways to promote peaceful, nonviolent transitions in all arenas of common life, by examining the peaceful and nonviolent solutions to the Russo-Ukrainian War, Israeli-Palestinian War, and other current states of aggression. Authors were asked to reflect and provide arguments related on a variety of peaceful, nonviolent responses one might have to aggression and war, and the results have been organized around three main themes: 1) issues related to the frontline of conflicts; 2) issues related to the home front, specifically how the home front responds to war; and 3) issues related to interstate relations during acts of aggression and war.

Scholars and commentators have noted the frequent inefficacy of “development,” and criticized the power relations it entrenches. Aware of these problems, some North Americans choose to disengage from transnational work. But the reality is that we cannot avoid participating in global networks that affect people in many countries, and there are vast inequalities in access to resources that need to be addressed. Through philosophical insights, narrative accounts, and testimony from community members, we can discover a path between development and disengagement, through which relational morality and meaningful action can enrich intercultural collaboration and yield many fruits.

The arguments within the contemporary literature paint a clear picture: popular discourse is marked with extreme partisanship and polarization, threatening democracy, tolerance, diversity, pluralism, and cooperation. Polarization simplifies and deforms language, ideas, and people. Polarization reduces the complexities of social life into an oppositional binary based on crude distinctions revolving around partial and harmful reified conceptions of self and other. Since the egocentric “us versus them” narratives catalyze conflicts which tend to violence, polarization is itself a cause of violence. The project of peace, then, is aided by the project of depolarization. But what can we do to bring about a transformation away from polarity to peace? What are the real polarities obscuring the path to peace? Is it a question of freedom versus control? Is it one of absolutism versus open-mindedness? Is it good versus evil? In a time of increasingly poisonous national politics, widening tribal polarity, and fragmented and fragmenting communities, what sense does it even make to appeal to reason, discourse, and compromise? The authors in this volume attempt to answer these and other questions relating to polarity and politics in the pursuit of peace and justice, the guiding ideals of the Concerned Philosophers for Peace and Brill’s Philosophy of Peace series.

The papers collected here apply the insights of the philosophy of peace to contemporary issues and the larger problem of what it means to have hope and to work for peace in dark times. The authors included in this volume respond to contemporary challenges posed by the Trump Era and the COVID-19 crisis. This represents a novel application and exploration of concepts and ideas found in the philosophy of peace and nonviolence. The authors elucidate the philosophy of peace and general approaches to building peace while applying these ideas to current crises.

Events in recent times have led many to rightly question the compatibility such traditionally revered concepts as democracy, liberal tolerance, and capitalism have with the realization of social peace. Clearly, it can no longer be uncritically assumed that the values championed by earlier generations are conducive to reaching peaceful outcomes. In Peaceful Approaches for a More Peaceful World, a wide array of scholars explore the challenges presented in the current age to conventional understandings of what is required for peace and provide insights that are both practical and constructive to a world in urgent need of conceiving new ways forward.

Written in dialogue format, Andrew Fitz-Gibbon’s Pragmatic Nonviolence argues that nonviolence is the best hope for a better world. Human violence in all its forms—physical, psychological and systemic-cultural—is perhaps the greatest obstacle to well-being in personal and community life. Nonviolence as “a practice that, whenever possible, seeks the well-being of the Other, by refusing to use violence to solve problems, and by acting according to loving kindness” is the best antidote to human violence. By drawing on the philosophy of nonviolence, the American pragmatist tradition and recent empirical research, Pragmatic Nonviolence demonstrates that, rather than being merely theoretical, nonviolence is a truly practical approach toward personal and community well-being.

In Civility, Nonviolent Resistance, and the New Struggle for Social Justice, Amin Asfari brings together scholarly contributions addressing the causes of injustice in its many forms. Predicated on the idea that violence and injustice are systemic and historical, this collection includes chapters that examine the antecedents and effects of prejudice, state-sponsored violence, policies of exclusion, and the social forces that shape and solidify their existence.

Moving beyond ad-hoc, ahistorical, and descriptive explanations of violence and injustice, this volume provides a scholarly, multidisciplinary approach to confronting them. Contributions reflect the many ways in which injustice manifests, and civil, nonviolent means of engagement are emphasized, challenging the very systems that give rise to these notions.

Pacifism, Politics, and Feminism: Intersections and Innovations discusses a) how feminist analyses allow for and encourage the re-conceptualization of concepts and ideas once thought familiar from traditional ethical and political philosophy, and b) traditional political topics and issues through pacifist and feminist lenses. The chapters that focus on the former explore the possibility of “queering” such concepts as autonomy, violence, resistance, peace, religion, and politics, while the chapters that focus on the latter bring feminist and pacifist sensibilities and arguments to bear on classic political questions such as when and how violence and war are justified, the appropriateness of various responses to climate change, and the correct way to engage with such topics and themes in educational, institutional settings.

Contributors are David Boersema, Barrett Emerick, Tamara Fakhoury, Jane Hall Fitz-Gibbon, William C. Gay, Jennifer Kling, John Lawless, Megan Mitchell, and Harry van der Linden.

Many judgments regarding what is good or bad, possible or impossible, rely upon unspoken assumptions or frameworks which are used to view and evaluate events and actions. Philosophers uncover these hidden aspects of thoughts and judgments, scrutinizing them for soundness, validity, and fairness. These assumptions and frameworks permeate the topics of violence, nonviolence, war, conflict, and reconciliation; and these assumptions influence how we address these problems and issues. The papers in this volume explore what kind of assumptions and frameworks would be needed in order for people to see nonviolence as a sensible approach to contemporary problems. Topics include conceptions of positive peace, nonviolence and international structures, and perspectives on peace education.

Contributors are Elizabeth N. Agnew, Andrew Fitz-Gibbon, William C. Gay, Ronald J. Glossop, Ian M. Harris, John Kultgen, Joseph C. Kunkel, Douglas Lewis, Danielle Poe and Harry van der Linden.

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.

Contributors are: Amin Asfari, Edward Demenchonok, Andrew Fiala, William Gay, Fuat Gursozlu, Joshua M. Hall , Ron Hirschbein, Todd Jones, Sanjay Lal, Alessandro Rovati, Laleye Solomon Akinyemi, David Speetzen, and Lloyd Steffen.

A Future without Borders (FWB) offers an explanation of why the recent, but by now distant, movements of the “Occupy Wall Street” activists have repeated themselves across the globe. The book demonstrates some of the processes inherent to an adapting cosmopolitanism (a call for civility, a call for Justice, a call for a collective responsibility or accountability) that is not individualistic in nature.
Until recently, the statal/national problems understood as politico-economic failures were conceived as isolated problems, failures of statal institutions that are particular to certain countries. FWB contests the Westphalian logic that explains these circumstances, as national failures and argues instead that the conditions be assessed as extensions of the global economic and ideological failures that they surely are.

Contributors are: Anton Allahar, Arnold Farr, Andrew Fiala, Pierre-André Gagnon, Bill Gay, Kurtis Hagen, Linden F. Lewis, Tracey Nicholls, Richard T. Peterson, Jorge Rodriguez, Eddy M. Souffrant, and Hilbourne A. Watson.

The essays collected in The Peace of Nature and the Nature of Peace consider connections between ecology, environmental ethics, nonviolence, and philosophy of peace. Edited by Andrew Fiala, this book includes essays written by important scholars in the field of peace studies, pacifism, and nonviolence, including Michael Allen Fox, Andrew Fitz-Gibbon, Bill Gay, and others. Topics include: ecological consciousness and nonviolence, environmental activism and peace activism, the environmental impact of militarism, native and indigenous peoples and peace, food ethics and nonviolence, and other topics.

The book should be of interest to scholars, students, and activists who are interested in the relationship between peace movements and environmentalism.

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!

This volume examines the many ways in which violence, domination, and oppression manifest themselves. This examination opens the way to creative suggestions for overcoming injustice. The authors in this volume also describe the features of a just community and inspire readers to implement peaceful transformation.

Positive Peace is a scholarly and creative compilation of articles on peace education, nonviolence and social change. Arun Gandhi (grandson of Mahatma Gandhi) sets the scene in his introduction with the challenge that positive peace is both a resisting of the physical violence of war and the passive violence of the psychological structures that lead to conflict. Peace education rises to meet that challenge. In twelve chapters, philosophers and educators look at a variety of topics from Gandhian nonviolence, to pragmatic conflict solving; hope and the ethics of belief, to the way we use violent language; mothering and peace activism, to multiculturalism and peace. Recurring themes are: pragmatic nonviolence, the ethics of care as an antidote to violence, and hope in a violent world. Chapters on the use of film in peace education, song and nonviolent activism, and teaching art history and peace, demonstrate pragmatic possibilities for would-be peace educators. Arun Gandhi in his introduction asks, “For generations human beings have strived to attain peace, but with little or no success. … Why is peace so illusive? Is it unattainable? Are humans incapable of living in peace?” This book suggests that peace education has a large part to play. It is an important attempt to begin to meet the challenge.

This book addresses “containment” as it relates to interlocking discourses around the “War on Terror” as a global effort and its link to race and sexuality within the United States. The project emerged from the recognition that the events of 11 September 2001, prompted new efforts at containment with both domestic and international implications.

Parceling the Globe is a study in the processes of global democracy. It offers an early answer to the question regarding our responsibility to others. Through its organization, it presents a partial understanding of the globalization process. It determines the range of global behaviors and articulates the prospects for peace in a globalizing environment.

This book responds to the Bush Administration position on the “war on terror.” It examines preemption within the context of “just war”; justification for the United States-led invasion of Iraq, with some authors charging that its tactics serve to increase terror; global terrorism; and concepts such as reconciliation, Islamic identity, nationalism, and intervention.

This book is a collection of philosophical papers that explores theoretical and practical aspects and implications of nonviolence as a means of establishing peace. The papers range from spiritual and political dimensions of nonviolence to issues of justice and values and proposals for action and change.

This book, based on the premise that democracy promotes peace and justice, explores theoretical and practical problems that can arise or that have arisen in democratic polities. Contributors address, with clarifying analyses, such theoretical issues as the relationship between recursivist metaphysics and democracy, the relationship between the economic and political orders, and the nature of justice. Contributors offer, as well, enlightening resolutions of practical problems resulting from a history of social, political or economic injustice.

This book examines the role and limits of policies in shaping attitudes and actions toward war, violence, and peace. Authors examine militaristic language and metaphor, effects of media violence on children, humanitarian intervention, sanctions, peacemaking, sex offender treatment programs, nationalism, cosmopolitanism, community, and political forgiveness to identify problem policies and develop better ones.

This book has its philosophical starting point in the idea that group-based social movements have positive implications for peace politics. It explores ways of imagining community, nation, and international systems through a political lens that is attentive to diversity and different lived experiences. Contributors suggest how groups might work toward new nonviolent conceptions and experiences of diverse communities and global stability.

Peacemaking includes a large array of activities from local to global attempts to attain peace. It includes consideration of international, interstate, and intertribal conflict resolution; communal, personal, and interpersonal social justice; deterrence of the use of nuclear weapons; design of international treaties that prevent war or other forms of international conflict; disarmament; international organizations that secure the order among nations; and even, from some points of view, war. As the 20th century drew to a close, we have witnessed peacemakers trying to end ethnic cleansing, reinstate justly elected political leaders, and reach compromises in the ideological differences that perpetuate age-old conflicts. We also see peacemaking in our schools, homes, and workplaces.

Philosophers have long been interested in peacemaking in one form or another, and philosophical accounts of peacemaking reflect the variety of perspectives, methods, and activities developed in pursuing peacemaking. In some instances, philosophers expand upon the situations, activities, and methods of the peacemaker in the field. The essays in this volume propose some theoretical arguments for various aspects of peacemaking, offer nonmilitary alternatives to war, and discuss practical examples of peacemaking in daily life. The contributors analyze power relations, language, social groupings, and distribution of resources. At times, they draw insight from social and historical models of conflict and conflict-resolution. This collection of essays on peacemaking aims to enlighten contemporary social and political discussions and contribute to achieving the ever-challenging goal of peace.

Violence can be physical and psychological. It can characterize personal actions, forms of group activity, and abiding social and political policy. This book includes all of these aspects within its focus on institutional forms of violence. Institution is also a broad category, ranging from formal arrangements such as the military, the criminal code, the death penalty and prison system, to more amorphous but systemic situations indicated by parenting, poverty, sexism, work, and racism. Violence is as complex as the human beings who resort to it; its institutional forms pervade our relational lives. We are all participants in it as victims and perpetrators. The chapters in this book were written in the hope that violence can be explicated, even if not fully understood, and that such clarification can help us in devising less violent forms of living, even if it does not lead to its total abolition. The studies bring new aspects of violence to light and offer a number of suggestions for its remedy.

This book argues that the secret to the political miracle achieved in South Africa is a comprehensive change in the conception of justice as guiding political institutions. Pursuing justice is a moral imperative that has practical value as a cost-efficient way of dealing with conflict. This case study in applied ethics and social theory patiently explains how justice in the new South Africa restores humanity and establishes lasting peace, whereas injustice in apartheid South Africa led to conflict and dehumanization.

The essays in this volume explore in detail many of the ways power structures our daily personal, political and intellectual lives, and evaluate the workings of power using a variety of theoretical paradigms, from Hobbesian liberalism to Foucauldian feminist postmodernism. Taken as a whole, the book aims towards an end to unjust and destructive uses of power and the flowering of an encouraging, educated empowerment for all human beings in a pluralistic world. Section I offers a progressive chain of arguments that moves from the acceptance of domination, through the rejection of domination and, finally, to a new vision of power based on equality and mutual respect. Section II explores the questions, how is the philosophical self, that is, our very understanding of who we are, implicated in the web of power and domination? Section III responds to political realism as it explores morally ideal solutions to the global problems of poverty, war and hunger. Section IV discusses ways in which our thought and practice in both public and private life are bound up in hierarchies of domination.

From the Eye of the Storm: Regional Conflicts and the Philosophy of Peace presents to the reader a cross section of an emerging field of study: the philosophy of peace. The editors bring together articles that explore the philosophic implications of many recent regional conflicts. Reflecting the diversity and vitality and any new field of study, this volume contains five sections: Conceptual Foundations; America’s Homefront; Desert Storm Assessments; Jihad, Intifada, and Other Mideast Concerns; and Latin American Issues. The topics of the articles include war, militarism, patriotism, nationalism, nonviolence, conscientious objection, feminist peace, the media, the ethics of the Gulf War, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Islamic pacifism, and Latin American resistance. A concluding postscript assesses prospects for achieving peace and change within our fast changing international scene. This volume has an extensive bibliography of writings concerning peace and conflict and is suited to professional and student audiences.