Between Global Violence and the Ethics of PeaceISBN: 978-1-4051-9662-8
Hardcover
200 pages
February 2009, Wiley-Blackwell
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The book offers a philosophical analysis of violence as a global
problem and its challenges to ethics. In the nuclear age, the
use of military force as a political instrument threatens the
future of humanity. The contributors examine the problems of
structural and direct violence, war and peace, human rights,
toleration, and the ethics of international relations and
co-responsibility in a globalized world. Drawing on a vast
range of philosophical traditions – Taoist, Hellenic, and
Western – they show the relevance of an ethics of nonviolence
in search for peaceful alternatives. They examine Kant’s idea
of perpetual peace and its development by the theorists of
“discourse ethics” and of “cosmopolitan
democracy.” The true solution to the problem of securing
peace and protecting human rights can be achieved not by hegemonic
unilateralism and force, but only by peaceful means, based on
international law and institutions, such as a properly reformed UN.