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This thoughtful volume explores the connections
between philosophy and politics for questions of violence,
war, and peace in an international context. Thomas Hobbes
(1588-1679) identified in Leviathan the causes of
quarrel as "competition, diffidence, and glory."
In his somber view the human condition entails a war of
all against all, and only as individuals renounce their
individual sovereignty and vest authority in an external
sovereign can the certainty of civil war be avoided.
The international contributors to this volume
begin with Hobbes's theoretical formulations about human
society and expand his critique to today's global situation.
They consider questions of power, competition, sovereignty,
and nonviolence, and give a detailed analysis of the almost
universal assumption that violence, competition, and war
are constitutive of the human condition.
While the relationship of philosophy to
politics, especially in American life, may sometimes seem
tenuous, this volume elucidates the important role philosophical
considerations played in the founding of the American republic
and might play again in today's world. The mutual covenants
established in the American Constitution form a model solution
to Hobbes's problem for a national context, and the contributors
to this volume consider what kinds of solutions might be
found to these questions in an international context. The
role of philosophy in public life becomes especially important
as we recognize the need to strike international balances
between world government and regional government, old and
new patterns of family life and population control, individualism
and collectivism, and violence and negotiation.
Seeking for new ways to use the word "peace"
without ideological overtones and to imbue it with positive
content (rather than seeing it merely as the absence of
war), the contributors to this unique book look to find
new answers to the problems Hobbes raised nearly four hundred
years ago.
Peter Caws is University Professor of
Philosophy at the George Washington University and author
of Science and the Theory of Value and Sartre.
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