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The Question of Peace in Modern Political Thought

Edited by David Edward Tabachnick & Toivo Koivukoski
Subjects Philosophy, Political Science
Series Laurier Studies in Political Philosophy Hide Details
Paperback : 9781771121217, 326 pages, January 2015
Ebook (EPUB) : 9781771120784, 326 pages, April 2015
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Table of contents

Table of Contents The Question of Peace in Modern Political Thought, edited by Toivo Koivukoski and David Edward Tabachnick
Foreword | John Gittings
Introduction | Toivo Koivukoski and David Edward Tabachnick
Transition to Modernity: The Place of God and Myth
1 By the Grace of God: Martin Luther's Two Kingdoms | Jarrett A. Carty
2 A Secure and Healthy Life: Spinoza on the Prospects for Peace | Paul Bagley
Modern Definitions of Peace: State and Law as Means to Peace
3 Thomas Hobbes on the Path to Peace: Love of Glory versus Realist Foreign Policy | Laurie M. Johnson
4 John Locke's Liberal Path to Peace | Jeffery Sikkenga
5 Vattel on Morally Non-Discriminatory Peace | Benjamin Holland
6 In Search for Laws above Nations: Jean-Jacques Rousseau on Perpetual Peace | René Paddags
7 Kant, Cosmopolitan Right, and the Prospects for Global Peace | Leah Bradshaw
8 Hegel on Peace | Mark Blitz
Late-Modern Critiques of the Security of States as Approximations of Peace
9 Seeking Peace in Nature: A Reading of Thoreau on Ecology and Economy | Toivo Koivukoski
10 Heidegger's Polemical Peace: Outer Violence for Inner Harmony | David Edward Tabachnick
11 The State of Exception, Divine Violence, and Peace: Walter Benjamin's Lesson | Hermínio Meireles Teixeira
12 Hannah Arendt on Peace as a Means to Politics | Diane Enns
13 Defining Peace: Jacques Derrida's “Impossible Friendship” and “Democracy to Come” | Pamela Huber
14 Habermas on Peace and Democratic Legitimacy | David A. Borman
About the Contributors
Index

Description

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.

Reviews

This is a strong and integrated collection of insightful, informative essays, offering a critical account of philosophical reflections on the nature and conditions of peace from early modernity to the present. The authors skilfully trace the principal themes, theoretical divergences, and abiding problems in modern notions of peace, in relation to justice, rights, and freedom.

- Douglas Moggach, University of Ottawa / University of Sydney

Can the study of peace be separated from the study of war? In The Question of Peace in Modern Political Thought, editors Toivo Koivukoski and David Edward Tabachnick attempt to present an interrogation of peace as an independent strand of philosophical inquiry. ...[T]his volume contains some fine essays, notably by Benjamin Holland on Emer de Vattel and morally non-discriminatory peace, Toivu Koivukoski on Henry David Thoreau and seeking peace in nature and Herminio Meireles Teixeira on Walter Benjamin and divine violence, an essay that explores with great clarity and dexterity some extremely complex and difficult ideas. But, as one reads over this set of essays, and as one sees the so-called refugee crisis unfold across Europe, it is Leah Bradshaw’s essay on "Kant, Cosmopolitan Right, and the Prospects for Global Peac" that appears most compelling and timely. ... The Question of Peace in Modern Political Thought is to be highly recommended. ... [P]rovide[s] a good introduction to those thinkers whom we do not normally associate with the idea of peace.

- Alexander Blanchard, LSE Review of Books, 2015 October 23