War for Peace: Genealogies of a Violent Ideal in Western and Islamic Thought
War for Peace: Genealogies of a Violent Ideal in Western and Islamic Thought
Assistant Professor of Politics
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Abstract
Peace is the elimination of war, but peace also authorizes war. We are informed today that this universal ideal can only be secured by the wars that it eliminates. The paradoxical position of peace—opposed to war, authorizing war—is encapsulated by the claim that “war is for the sake of peace.” War for Peace is a genealogy of the political theoretic logics and morals of “peace.” It examines peace in political theory, as an ideal that authorizes war, in the writings of ten thinkers, from ancient to contemporary thought: Plato, Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī, Thomas Aquinas, Desiderius Erasmus, Alberico Gentili, Hugo Grotius, Ibn Khaldūn, Thomas Hobbes, Immanuel Kant, and Sayyid Quṭb. It argues that the ideal of peace functions parasitically, provincially, and polemically. In its parasitical structure, peace is accompanied by other ideals, such as friendship, security, concord, and law, which reduces it to a politics of consensus. In its provincial structure, the universalized content of peace reflects its idealizers’ desires, fears, interests, and constructions of the globe. In its polemical structure, the idealization of peace is the product of antagonisms and it then enables hostility. As idealizations of peace are disseminated across political thought, a core that valorizes peace and necessitates war insistently remains. War for Peace uncovers the genealogical basis of peace’s moralities and the political functions of its idealizations, historically and into the present.
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Front Matter
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Introduction: Beyond Universal Peace
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1
Assigning Symmetry: Plato’s Laws and the Polis’s Wars
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2
Summoning Hostility: Al-Fārābī, Aquinas, and Warlike Peace
- Interlude I: Deflections: Friends, Neighbors, Advisers
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3
Loving Necessity: Erasmus between Christianity and Islam
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4
Ordering Legality: Gentili, Grotius, and Law for War
- Interlude II: Refractions: Missionaries, Nomads, Pirates
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5
Colonizing Frontiers: Ibn Khaldūn, Hobbes, and Commodious Violence
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6
Policing Humanity: Immanuel Kant, Sayyid Quṭb, and Shades of Empire
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Epilogue: Unmaking Peace
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End Matter
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