PLATO & ARISTOTLE ON WAR & PEACE

War or Peaceful Transformation. Multidisciplinary and International Perspectives, 2020

The focus of this chapter is to provide a general survey of Graeco-Roman ideas about war and peace. War was a constant in the classical world, and yet Greek city-states developed a series of primary instruments to promote conflict resolution—from diplomacy, negotiations, and international treaties, to amnesties and arbitration. Unfortunately, the Greeks did not develop a concept of “universal peace.” The Romans advanced in the process of producing more diplomatic and legal tools to deal with matters of war and peace. The deditio and the expansion of rights of citizenship to defeated nations were two particularly successful procedures to assure pacification. The existence of rules of war limiting the indiscriminate use of violence was not always an assurance against the perpetrating of atrocities and brutality in the classical world, especially against non-combatants and civilian populations. Particularly brutal cycles of violence moved intellectuals to advance proposals for the advancement of peace in Greece and Rome, mostly at the theoretical or artistic level. Finally, civic militarism, ethnic and cultural bias, and received ideas about the role of emotions, passions, and human nature in interstate relations played a crucial role in the way Greeks and Romans conducted war and thought about the war/peace couplet. Keywords: war, peace, reconciliation, international relations, classical Greece, ancient Rome, ancient military history

The Apollonian and the Dionysian are, in Nietzsche's philosophy, two forces with characteristics derived from the Greek gods Apollo, the god of light, and Dionysus, the god of wine. While the Apollonian reflects order, consciousness, individuation and reason, the Dionysian expresses savage instinct, ecstasy, irrationality, frenzy. These two concepts are engaged in a struggle that is made visible at three levels of the existence: art, with references to the Greek tragedy, though, Nietzsche moving the dichotomy to a Socrates vs Dionysus one, and religion, hereby Dionysus being put into the antithesis with Christ.

Democratic Peace Theory is a pivotal trend in International Relations theory and particularly in post Cold-War international politics. The analysis will support the view that Democratic Peace Theory is a hegemonic ploy and is the primary cause of militarism in the 21st century as the cases of Afghanistan and Iraq fully reveal. The article supports the view that the Democratic Peace Theory differs from the Kantian Perpetual Peace. Kant argued for Republicanism rather than war-prone Liberal Democracy. However, it is important to note that the phenomenon of war has systemic origins and is not related to any particular system of government. As a final conclusion, the article supports the view that the Democratic Peace Theory is the main source of militarism in international system of the 21st century, primarily due to the fact that it is being used as a Trojan Horse to implement hegemonic schemes. 'To this the specter no reply did frame, But answer'd to the cause for which he came, And, groaning from the bottom of his breast, This warning in these mournful words express'd: 'O goddess -born! escaped, by timely flight, The flames and horrors of this fatal night. The foes already have possess'd the wall; Troy nod from high, and totters to her fall' Virgil, The Aeneid, Book II.

The Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence , 2021

This paper intends to confront Plato's thought on war and enmity in Laws 1 (625c-628e) to those of Thucydides and Heraclitus showing that Clinias' thesis that the state of perpetual war is the principle of legislation has a deep similarity with some aspects of their political thoughts. Next, I investigate how the refutation by the Athenian Stranger of the place and status of war and conflict at the root of political realism is a key argument in the whole process of the Laws and in the emergence of the platonic meaning of political philosophy.

Comparative study of concepts of peace ('universal', 'inner' and 'common' peace) in Axial Age China, India, Egypt, Greece and Rome, suggesting that certain types of state and social development are conducive to the development of particular concepts of peace - and that, contrary to modern historians' notions, the concept of lasting peace as the norm and goal of international relations was formulated in various ways at various times in antiquity and is not the invention of Immanuel Kant's Perpetual Peace of the late eighteenth century.

Edited with Michael Stuart Williams. Warfare has long been central to a proper understanding of ancient Greece and Rome, worlds where war was, as the philosopher Heraclitus observed, ‘both king and father of all’. More recently, however, the understanding of Classical antiquity solely in such terms has been challenged; it is recognised that while war was pervasive, and a key concern in the narratives of ancient historians, a concomitant desire for peace was also constant. This volume places peace in the prime position as a panel of scholars stresses the importance of ‘peace’ as a positive concept in the ancient world (and not just the absence of, or necessarily even related to, war), and considers examples of conflict resolution, conciliation, and concession from Homer to Augustine. Comparing and contrasting theories and practice across different periods and regions, this collection highlights, first, the open and dynamic nature of peace, and then seeks to review a wide variety of initiatives from across the Classical world.