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Early Advocates of Lasting World Peace: Utopians or Realists?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 September 2012
Abstract
This article reexamines the works of Erasmus, the Abbé de Saint-Pierre, Kant, and other pacifists who have advocated collective societal efforts toward a lasting world peace. In contrast to Thucydides' (Realist) view of the inevitability of war due to intrinsic human nature, the author presents the early Christian arguments of pacifism grounded in morality and religion, including the “just-war” views of Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas, who believed that war fought for self-defense, or other “justifiable” purposes, was morally and religiously grounded in efforts to punish wrongdoings and “convert unbelievers.” Is the state of peace a natural one or one that must be achieved through practical steps within moral constraints by leaders of nations and their citizens? Realist thinkers who once rejected, on strictly normative grounds, the moral claims of the possibility of a lasting world peace now take the strategic position that the goal of attaining lasting world peace is clearly worth striving for, “however utopian it seemed when first advocated.”
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References
1 For the works by Erasmus that contributed most to this tradition, see notes 3, 5, and 7 below. See also Mead, Edwin D., ed., The Great Design of Henry IV from the Memoirs of the Duke of Sully (1559–1641) (Boston: Ginn & Co., 1909)Google Scholar; Penn, William, “An Essay Towards the Present and Future Peace of Europe” (1693), in Tolles, Fredrick B. and Alderfer, E. Gordon, eds., The Witness of William Penn (New York: Macmillan and Co., 1957), pp. 140–59Google Scholar; deSaint-Pierre, Abbé, Selections from the 2nd Edition of the Abrégé du Projet de Paix Perpétuelle (1712) (London: Sweet & Maxwell, 1927)Google Scholar; Kant, Immanuel, “Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch” (1795), in Reiss, Hans, ed., Kant's Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 93–130Google Scholar; Jeremy Bentham, “Essay on Universal Peace. Essay IV. A Plan for a Universal and Perpetual Peace” (1789, first published in 1843), reprinted in Everett, Charles W., ed., Jeremy Bentham (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966), pp. 195–229Google Scholar.
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