Paradoxes of Peace


Book Description

Thoughtfully examines the paradox of peace activism in postwar Germany




Paradoxes of War


Book Description

Why do reasonable people lead their nations into the tremendously destructive traps of international conflict? Why do nations then deepen their involvement and make it harder to escape from these traps? In Paradoxes of War, originally published in 1990, Zeev Maoz addresses these and other paradoxical questions about the war process. Using a unique approach to the study of war, he demonstrates that wars may often break out because states wish to prevent them, and continue despite the desperate efforts of the combatants to end them. Paradoxes of War is organized around the various stages of war. The first part discusses the causes of war, the second the management of war, and the third the short- and long-term implications of war. In each chapter Maoz explores a different paradox as a contradiction between reasonable expectations and the outcomes of motivated behaviour based on those expectations. He documents these paradoxes in twentieth century wars, including the Korean War, the Six Day War, and the Vietnam War. Maoz then invokes cognitive and rational choice theories to explain why these paradoxes arise. Paradoxes of War is essential reading for students and scholars of international politics, war and peace studies, international relations theory, and political science in general.




Paradoxes of Peace in Nineteenth Century Europe


Book Description

'Peace' is often simplistically assumed to be war's opposite, and as such is not examined closely or critically idealized in the literature of peace studies, its crucial role in the justification of war is often overlooked. Starting from a critical view that the value of 'restoring peace' or 'keeping peace' is, and has been, regularly used as a pretext for military intervention, this book traces the conceptual history of peace in nineteenth century legal and political practice. It explores the role of the value of peace in shaping the public rhetoric and legitimizing action in general international relations, international law, international trade, colonialism, and armed conflict. Departing from the assumption that there is no peace as such, nor can there be, it examines the contradictory visions of peace that arise from conflict. These conflicting and antagonistic visions of peace are each linked to a set of motivations and interests as well as to a certain vision of legitimacy within the international realm. Each of them inevitably conveys the image of a specific enemy that has to be crushed in order to peace being installed. This book highlights the contradictions and paradoxes in nineteenth century discourses and practices of peace, particularly in Europe.




The Peacemaker's Paradox


Book Description

Expanding from her path-breaking work in Unspeakable Truths, Priscilla Hayner focuses on a new challenge in The Peacemaker¿s Paradox: the age-old problem of negotiating peace after a war of atrocities. Drawing on her first-hand involvement in peace processes and interviews from the frontlines of peace talks, the author recounts many heretofore-untold stories of how justice has been negotiated, with great difficulty, and what this tells us for the future. Those with the most power to stop a war are the least likely to submit to justice for their crimes, but the demand for justice only grows louder. She also asks how the intervention of an international tribunal, such as the International Criminal Court, changes how a war is fought and the possibility of brokering peace. The Peacemaker¿s Paradox looks far and wide, from Gaddafi¿s Libya to the FARC talks in Colombia, to provide an unparalleled exploration of these thorniest of issues. A combination of interview-based reporting and political analysis, The Peacemaker¿s Paradox brings clarity to a field fraught with both legal and practical difficulties.




Peacebuilding Through Community-based NGOs


Book Description

Peacebuilding Through Community-Based NGOs explores the contested but increasingly relevant role nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) play in processes aimed at bringing about international peace and security and in the invention of alternatives for resolving conflict. Through case studies of Partners In Health (Haiti), Women in Black (Serbia), and the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland highlight the range of ways these organizations are involved in post-conflict social reconstruction efforts and with whom and for what purposes they interact as they do so. The authors argue for analyses that take into account the rich mosaic that is the civil society sector rather than treating all of these entities with one broad brush. At once a celebration and a critique, this book provides guidance for those seeking to understand the complexities and potential of the civil society sector for facilitating social justice and transformation.




God's Hazard


Book Description

"God is said to have given humans freedom. Yet in the story of Genesis, God is a punishing father figure. Why have humans portrayed him this way? Here, a contemporary writer named Adam imagines God behaving as a good father should, seeing it is time for his children to leave home. Adam writes an account of this, and the story of his own child, Sophie, and his relationship with her. The scene moves from London to New York to Israel to Iran and Iraq. And might not God as well as Adam have a wife to take up the cause if things go wrong?"--BOOK JACKET.




The Power of Paradox: Impossible Conversations


Book Description

This book argues that all truths systems include paradoxes. Paradoxes, such as found in the sciences, philosophy and religion offer themselves as mutually shared partners in a dialogue of arguably incommensurable truths on the basis of their underlying truth. Paradoxes leap beyond the epistemic border of individual truth claims. A dialogue of truths, grounded in paradox, reaches before, and at the same time past singular truths. A paradox-based dialogue of truths elevates the communication of disciplines, such as the sciences and religion, to a meta-discourse level from which differences are not perceived as obstacles for dialogue but as complementary aspects of a deeper and fuller truth in which all truths are grounded.




Logic and How it Gets That Way


Book Description

In this challenging and provocative analysis, Dale Jacquette argues that contemporary philosophy labours under a number of historically inherited delusions about the nature of logic and the philosophical significance of certain formal properties of specific types of logical constructions. Exposing some of the key misconceptions about formal symbolic logic and its relation to thought, language and the world, Jacquette clears the ground of some very well-entrenched philosophical doctrines about the nature of logic, including some of the most fundamental seldom-questioned parts of elementary propositional and predicate-quantificational logic. Having presented difficulties for conventional ways of thinking about truth functionality, the metaphysics of reference and predication, the role of a concept of truth in a theory of meaning, among others, Jacquette proceeds to reshape the network of ideas about traditional logic that philosophy has acquired along with modern logic itself. In so doing Jacquette is able to offer a new perspective on a number of existing problems in logic and philosophy of logic.




Paradoxes of Political Ethics


Book Description




On Paradox


Book Description

In On Paradox literary and legal scholar Elizabeth S. Anker contends that faith in the logic of paradox has been the cornerstone of left intellectualism since the second half of the twentieth century. She attributes the ubiquity of paradox in the humanities to its appeal as an incisive tool for exposing and dismantling hierarchies. Tracing the ascent of paradox in theories of modernity, in rights discourse, in the history of literary criticism and the linguistic turn, and in the transformation of the liberal arts in higher education, Anker suggests that paradox not only generates the very exclusions it critiques but also creates a disempowering haze of indecision. She shows that reasoning through paradox has become deeply problematic: it engrains a startling homogeneity of thought while undercutting the commitment to social justice that remains a guiding imperative of theory. Rather than calling for a wholesale abandonment of such reasoning, Anker argues for an expanded, diversified theory toolkit that can help theorists escape the seductions and traps of paradox.




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