The Role of Philosophy in War and Peace
by
Chanroeun Pa
A Paper presented in the World Philosophy Day, 17-18 November 2006, Rabat, Morocco
(Draft)
“If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.”
- Mahatma Gandhi
1. Introduction
People all over the world desire peace, law and order, and security form of life, but things are happening the other ways round. There is restlessness and nameless unquiet flows at the heart and hands of humanity. In the age of modernization and globalization, science and technology have played a very important role in producing unlimited wealth, so that with a judicious management, there would be enough good things of life for all humans.
On the other hand, man continues to live in indescribable suffering, degradation, poverty, social injustice, and dehumanization. There are conflict and violence everywhere both in the heart and hands of humankind due to the inequality, misunderstanding, and injustice in the society and so forth. The result of these problems can be seen in one form or another in every corner of the world in rich and poor countries alike.
Man becomes not only the victim of the unpreventable; for example, natural disasters, but also the victims of man himself. Therefore, what is the meaning of life? Is there any way to solve these life obstacles in order to make this world more peaceful and a better place to live in?
2. What is Peace?
In a narrow sense, peace has been understood as the absence of war and conflict. However, this definition is not sufficient. In a dynamic sense, peace means the creative elimination of the causes of conflicts and violence and the promotion of human dignity and humanization.
Peace requires harmony within a person, harmony between human beings, harmony between human beings and nature, and the harmony between human beings and the ultimate source of life. Peace does not happen spontaneously, we will have to build and maintain it. There are some causes, which obstruct the way to peace such as:
(1) Culture: pride in one’s heart, closed culture;
(2) Religion: religious intolerance, hatred, misunderstanding, lack of proper religious education;
(3) Politics: system of balance of terror based on nuclear arms race, physical forces or military conflict, unjust oppressive government, aggressiveness, lust of power;
(4) Economics: development, structures of economic exploitation, poverty, disparity, lack of opportunities for education, jobs and service;
(5) Historical Cause: extremist nationalism;
(6) Information Explosion: people are conditioned by mass medias–papers, journals, books, radio, television, internet and so on,meaning to say some information is not what people should know, but what some other want people to know for the sake of their interests;
(7) Ethnicity: discrimination, racism;
(8) Nature: environmental degradation, dwelling natural resources, natural disasters and so on.
3. What Are the Roles of Philosophy?
These major causes of war and conflict grow in the heart of man. Therefore, in order to solve the above problems we have to cultivate peace in the heart of man as well. A Philosopher says: “What we want to put something into a nation put it into her school.” This means that we can promote peace through education because education plays a very important role in shaping the heart and the way of thinking of human person. Hence, philosophy education for peace can also work as a moving force in weaving or building culture of peace from within.
It is necessary for philosophy education to promote universally shared values for the development of peaceful, democratic and pluralistic society such as human rights, democracy, tolerance, non-violence, solidarity, mature understanding, intercultural acknowledgment and so forth. In other words, the goal of philosophy education for peace is to promote the broad and critical understanding of the root causes of all forms of conflicts and violence at all levels no matter it is personal, family, interpersonal, community, society or the world.
4. Conclusion
The role of philosophy is not to interpret the world, but also to challenge people to shape their world and provide solutions to make the world to be a better place to live in. Students need to be taught only knowledge and skills, but also values and attitudes especially the respects and love of life.
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