How to Think About War and Peace

by Adler, Mortimer Jerome

• ISBN13: 9780823216437
• ISBN10: 0823216438
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-02-01
• Publisher: Fordham Univ Pr

Summary

Mortimer Adler writes in his introduction: "In thinking about war and peace, as in thinking about other basic practical problems, the man who brings general ideas and principles to bear upon particular problems and formulations has a unique advantage. He can make effective contact with the concrete and the immediate without losing a dispassionate vision of the universal and the timeless. He can exercise that critical detachment necessary for a thoughtful, rather than an emotional, judgement upon the conflicting policies which solicit his adherance." How to think About War and Peace discusses immediate issues in terms of eternal principles, viewing present problems in the large perspectives that history and philosophy can provide. This book engages in a timeless project not contingenton current events, but cumulated from a continuing history of the battle between war and peace. Written in the midst of the Second World War, Adler's purpose was not to proffer how to make peace after the end of the war, but rather to instruct how to think about peace and war and how to continue this process to maintain peace, or, how to effect its establishment.

Author Biography

Mortimer J. Adler was the director of the Institute for Philosophical Research in Chicago and a member of the board of editors of the Encyclopedia Brittanica.

Table of Contents

Introduction to the 1995 Edition
A Plea to the Reader
Preface
The Problem of Peace
The Questions Men Must Face	p. 3
The Answers Men Have Given	p. 8
The Possibility of Peace
The Inevitability of War	p. 27
The Abnormality of War	p. 32
What Peace Is	p. 44
How Peace Is Made	p. 55
The Only Cause of War	p. 69
The Right and Wrong of Sovereignty	p. 84
The Peace of Angels	p. 101
Civil War	p. 110
The Degrees of Peace	p. 113
A Society of Men	p. 136
The Inexorable Alternative	p. 152
The Probability of Peace
An Optimistic View of History	p. 167
The Future of Democracy	p. 178
Progress Toward Peace	p. 188
The Physics of Peace	p. 209
The Economic Community	p. 221
The Obstacles to Peace	p. 230
Revolution for Peace	p. 254
Education for Peace	p. 265
The Practicality of Peace
Ends	p. 281
Means	p. 288
The Long Run	p. 296
Bibliography of Quoted Matter
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