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An Insight into Peace
By
Thalia Arawi
For
quite some time now the world has been tenaciously proving itself to be a
consistent battlefield were peace is difficult to find. Humanity stranded in
the middle of war is becoming an issue of paramount importance. Numerous
nations wake up every morning not knowing whether they will live to see the
next sunrise, other nations suffer psychological wars and threats and amidst
this crude realism, human beings seem to long what has become a hollow word:
Peace.
I have read “A Vision of Peace” by Lawrence M. Hinman.
Although I disagree with the idea of ‘military attacks’ since they are not “as narrowly
focused and precisely executed as possible” (there are laws to war and these
laws have been and are still, drastically broken), I find the five ‘elements’
of his vision essential for peace. Peace can be defined simply as the absence
of war in its different forms thus, the ‘absence of violence’ where war is commonly
defined as the use of violence and force in order to resolve differences and
conflicts. However, this need not always be the case. War can also be explicated
as threats of using force and
military actions. This is a situation that prevails in the natural order of
things and states, as Kant puts it, (in their external relations to one
another), are in a situation of war where the rights of the stronger predominate
even if there is no actual combat. This potential is actualized in our century that
is marked by perpetual wars in different areas of the globe. They take
different forms and extend to different time zones. From time to time, hostile nations stop
fighting and people feel freed and contented. They fail to acknowledge that
wars are not over since as long as there is hostility there is no room for
tranquility. We find this idea in Thucydides The History of the Peloponnesian
War, where he maintained that the seven or eight years interim without
combat during the thirty years of war between the Spartans and the Athenians
was not to be considered a period of peace. Peace has to begin in the minds and
in the intention of those who wage the war, in a form of an awakening where
they realize that in war there really is no winner for both parties entangled
in armed conflict actually suffer irreparable losses. Thus, good action is a
reaction to a good intention at the basis of which, to use Kant’s term, there
need be a “good will”. In his Groundwork
for the Metaphysics of Morals, the German philosopher presented what he
called the Formula of the Kingdom of Ends: "So act as if you were, through
your maxims, a law-making member of a kingdom of ends." This formula can
indeed lead to the Vision of Peace and for those who find Kant too theoretical,
Rawls gives the following methodical interpretation: We should ask ourselves what principles it
would be rational for us to will that we be governed by were we to make that
choice from a position of ignorance about our own conception of the good,
social situation, talents and abilities. Naturally, qua rational persons, we
all have the same interests: the freedom to pursue our ends, a framework that
will allow us to fulfill our ‘rational plan of life’ and insure that we lead a
dignified life, etc. Thus, according to the Rawlsian interpretation, Kant is suggesting
that we act in such a way that we choose a universal law from behind a veil of
ignorance. Such a law cannot but pave the way to a just social order and be
conducive to peace unless members of the original positions were
irrational, masochists or
‘psychopaths’, which is not the case.
This, I think, is a precondition to
the ‘elements’ of L.M. Hinman’s Vision. The “good will”, along side a “sense of
justice”, ensure that these elements will be met, that the vision of peace,
regardless of the hindrances that stand in its way is not all too impossible.
At this
point, I would like to elaborate on his third ‘element’, namely, the importance
of living up to one’s own ideals. Human rights have been violated for centuries
in various areas of the world and, with the development of new technology more
so now than ever before. Human nature becoming what it is, there is a striking growing immunity to harm
and ruthlessness in the case of the attackers and the “strong” who are either
becoming blind to the injustices they are inflicting or are becoming too
simple-minded in thinking that they can actually delude the masses by trying to
make the weaker argument appear the strong. At this point in time, there is a
major uproar
The fourth element that L. M. Hinman presents is the
“need to take positive steps toward the establishment of a genuine world court
of criminal justice”. The statue of justice is a symbol. A blind Justice holding the sword and the
scales. The scales in her hands stand for equality and balance, the sword
represents the coercive force of the law in the application of justice and the
blindfold over her eyes portrays the impartiality of legal justice, which gives
us the edict that no person shall be a judge in his or her own case. Fighting
for justice cannot be by means of a sword without a scale or else it will
create further injustice and there will be no room for peace.
In his magnum opus A Theory of Justice, Rawls states:
“Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of
thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if
it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well
arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust.” Waging a war
against terrorism in order to abolish it and spread justice is indeed an ideal
that sets a framework perhaps for all utopian thinking. Terrorism is a threat
to peace and by definition, as Nozick puts is in his Anarchy,
State and Utopia “Utopia is the best world imaginable for all of us”.
Yet, when terrorism is fought by terrorism, when injustice is fought by
injustice, when the spirit is vengeance and when civilian ‘causalities’ are
confused with military targets there is no room for justice to prevail. And
this is exactly what is happening.
To L. M.
Hinman’s five ‘elements’ I would add a sixth element that I think is essential in
that it will promote a culture of peace, namely, education. In the Hague Agenda
for Peace & Justice for the 21st Century we read: "A culture of peace
will be achieved when citizens of the world understand global problems, have
the skills to resolve conflicts and struggle for justice non-violently, live by
international standards of human rights and equity, appreciate cultural
diversity, and respect the Earth and each other. Such learning can only be
achieved with systematic education for peace." As I said before, peace starts in the minds of
people and “out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was every
made” was Kant’s insightful remark. Education plays an important role in
shaping that timber that is becoming more crooked by the day and nations that
are in war are blaming each other’s educational system while failing to
actually see or acknowledge the shortcomings in their own.
It was once
said that the only means necessary for evil to flourish is for good people to
do nothing. This need not be done through violent means, and indeed I do not
espouse this philosophy, rather it can be done through nonviolent and peaceful
means and history of full of such examples that actually did pay. The world is becoming more of a violent place
because of people who are thirsty for power and equally because of people who
do nothing about it. That political behavior is becoming a morally dubious
venture is something that cannot be concealed or brushed aside as “accidental”.
Kant, and rightly so, felt that politics is not simply a matter of prudence and
calculation and that there should be some limits to politics. His political philosophy ensues from his moral
philosophy and according to him, practical reason should set the standards for
political life. This philosopher of the Enlightenment makes the timely
important distinction between the “moral politician” who conceives of the
principles of political expediency in a way such that they coexist with
morality on the one hand, and the “political moralist” who construes morality in
such a way so that it suits the interest of the statesman. Our world is mostly
governed by the latter: Political Moralists with a Machiavellian twist thirsty
for power. Kant says that the moral world (which provides us with some vision
or conception of an ideal to be approached) and the political world which
provides us with the occasion to make an attempt at actualizing this ideal
state) are strongly linked: a true theory of politics must begin by paying
homage to morality and enduring peace between nations is a possibility.
The
readers of this essay might think that, as a Kantian, I have fallen into the
trap of asserting the primacy of idealism over realism. But it is important to
note that Kant did not offer any guarantees that perpetual peace will actually
take place rather that its pursuit must not be dismissed as imaginary.