Presents a collection of essays detailing Kant's views on politics, history, and ethics.

This is the first volume in the trilogy "Many Peaces" on transrational peace and elicitive conflict transformation. It proposes an innovative analysis of peace interpretations in global history and contemporary cultures of peace, the so-called five families of energetic, moral, modern, post-modern, and transrational.

The 'ethical commonwealth', the central social element in Kant's account of religion, provides the church, as 'the moral people of God', with a role in establishing a cosmopolitan order of peace. This role functions within an interpretive realignment of Kant's critical project that articulates its central concern as anthropological: critically disciplined reason enables humanity to enact peacemaking as its moral vocation in history. Within this context, politics and religion are not peripheral elements in the critical project. They are, (...) instead, complementary social modalities in which humanity enacts its moral vocation to bring lasting peace among all peoples. (shrink)

According to Keller, we have no hope of explaining what is or is not a Just Peace in global relations unless we pay more attention to the intellectual context in which international law was formed. From its birth in the 16th century, there was a progressive retreat by Europeans from conceding sovereign rights to specific non-European peoples, to then only recognizing a conditional sovereignty, and eventually to denying any right to self-determination of non-white peoples. However, there was a tradition (...) of thought that recognized and accommodated cultural diversity that can be found in the writings of Montesquieu and Rousseau, among others. This chapter argues that these writers proposed one of the cornerstones of the concept of a Just Peace, the principle of recognition. This notion was developed from an effort to understand another’s point of view and an appreciation of otherness. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant’s views on politics, peace, and history have lost none of their relevance since their publication more than two centuries ago. This volume contains a comprehensive collection of Kant’s writings on international relations theory and political philosophy, superbly translated and accompanied by stimulating essays. Pauline Kleingeld provides a lucid introduction to the main themes of the volume, and three essays by distinguished contributors follow: Jeremy Waldron on Kant’s theory of the state; Michael W. Doyle on the implications (...) of Kant’s political theory for his theory of international relations; and Allen W. Wood on Kant’s philosophical approach to history and its current relevance. (shrink)

Veteran scholar and peace activist David Cortright offers a definitive history of the human striving for peace and an analysis of its religious and intellectual roots. This authoritative, balanced, and highly readable volume traces the rise of peace advocacy and internationalism from their origins in earlier centuries through the mass movements of recent decades: the pacifist campaigns of the 1930s, the Vietnam antiwar movement, and the waves of disarmament activism that peaked in the 1980s. Also explored (...) are the underlying principles of peace - nonviolence, democracy, social justice, and human rights - all placed within a framework of 'realistic pacifism'. Peace brings the story up-to-date by examining opposition to the Iraq War and responses to the so-called 'war on terror'. This is history with a modern twist, set in the context of current debates about 'the responsibility to protect', nuclear proliferation, Darfur, and conflict transformation. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant’s views on politics, peace, and history have lost none of their relevance since their publication more than two centuries ago. This volume contains a comprehensive collection of Kant’s writings on international relations theory and political philosophy, superbly translated and accompanied by stimulating essays. Pauline Kleingeld provides a lucid introduction to the main themes of the volume, and three essays by distinguished contributors follow: Jeremy Waldron on Kant’s theory of the state; Michael W. Doyle on the implications (...) of Kant’s political theory for his theory of international relations; and Allen W. Wood on Kant’s philosophical approach to history and its current relevance. (shrink)

As the editor informs us in his Acknowledgements, most of the essays included in this collection stem from a pair of conferences held at the University of Michi.

Humankind is currently witnessing, and shaping, the most significant and rapid paradigm shift in human history - a paradigm shift of major demographic, economic, ecological, and geo-political dimensions. For the first time in human history - we are faced not with just one crisis - but a confluence of several crises; crises that are not related to a single tribe or community - a single nation -or a single region of the world - but are each global in (...) scale. To meet the challenges of these global crises will require an equally historic paradigm shift; a paradigm shift with a strong environmental ethic that restores ecological balance and integrity to our failing ecosystems, and that addresses the critical issue of climate change; a paradigm shift toward an economic system that brings about an end to poverty — and a paradigm that brings an end to war as a means to solving conflict, as it is only through a global family in harmony and peace with itself, that we can solve the unprecedented global issues facing our one common home, planet earth - and our one common future as a global family. The travel and tourism industry has, and will continue to play a vital and leading role toward this paradigm shift, and as the world's largest industry involving virtually every nation in the world — will be the central pillar of a Peace through Commerce movement. The dramatic growth of tourism in the past 60 years is one of the most remarkable economic and social phenomena of our time. The industry has grown from a total of 25 million international arrivals in 1950 to a projected 1 billion international arrivals in 2010, and a further projection to 1.6 billion by 2020. Beginning with the emergence of "Ecotourism" in the late 1980' s, there are an increasing number of tourism market segments which fall within a broad category that can be called "Peace Tourism," and classified within a framework that includes peace within ourselves, peace with others, peace with nature, peace with past generations, peace with future generations, and peace with our Creator. Since its birth in 1986, the International Institute for Peace through Tourism (IIPT) has been promoting these values of tourism together with its vision of Travel and Tourism as the world's first "Global Peace Industry" - an industry that promotes and supports the belief that every traveler is potentially an "Ambassador for Peace." This "higher purpose of tourism" includes the key role of tourism in promoting international understanding and collaboration among nations; environmental protection and preservation of biodiversity; enhancing cultures and valuing heritage; contributing to sustainable development and poverty reduction; and healing wounds of conflict. (shrink)

TABLE OF CONTENTS: Introduction. Bibliography. A Note on the Text. 1. Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Intent 2. An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment? 3. Speculative Beginning of Human History 4. On the Proverb: That May Be True in Theory, but Is of No Practical Use 5. The End of All Things 6. To Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch Glossary of Some German-English Translations. Index.

The paper consists of two parts. In the first one the author analyses the situation of mankind in the last decades of the 20th century, regarding it as tragic; in his reflections he refers mainly to the conceptions of Georg W. F. Hegel, Karl Marx and some Christian thinkers. The second part is a critique of Karl Popper’s conception of history, especially his main claim that history has no meaning.

How is peace to be understood? Does it make any sense to believe in its utopian realisation? Or is its failure necessary, its attempt always transforming into dystopia? Is there something to be saved in the ideal of utopian peace? Can one affirm that peace is in fact a pantopia an omnipresent reality? The collection of essays, Concerning Peace: New Perspectives on Utopia, investigates these questions. Its method resides in both a philosophical understanding of peace, (...) and its exemplification into concrete reality. Through the analysis of concrete examples of peace belonging to the diverse fields of metaphysics, politics, history and culture, the essays bring the idea of peace within our reach. Going from the particular to the general, from life to philosophy, the authors of the collected essays offer us more than an understanding of peace; they produce it before our eyes. If this book may interest peace and philosophy scholars, it was first intended for any citizen caring about the way the world must be, refusing to simply accept it as it is for anyone willing to believe in the reality of utopia. (shrink)

The legacy of classical antiquity -- War and peace in the medieval world -- Holy wars, crusades, and religious wars -- Humanism and Neo-Stoicism -- The search for a science of peace.

This Element addresses three questions about Kant's guarantee thesis by examining the 'first addendum' of his Philosophical Sketch: how the guarantor powers interrelate, how there can be a guarantee without undermining freedom and why there is a guarantee in the first place. Kant's conception of an interplay of human and divine rational agency encompassing nature is crucial: on moral grounds, we are warranted to believe the 'world author' knew that if he were to bring about the world, the 'supreme' good (...) would come about too. Perpetual peace is the condition that enables the supreme good to be realized in history. (shrink)

_Positive Peace _is a scholarly and creative compilation of articles on peace education, nonviolence and social change. Arun Gandhi sets the scene in his introduction with the challenge that positive peace is both a resisting of the physical violence of war and the passive violence of the psychological structures that lead to conflict. Peace education rises to meet that challenge. In twelve chapters, philosophers and educators look at a variety of topics from Gandhian nonviolence, to pragmatic (...) conflict solving; hope and the ethics of belief, to the way we use violent language; mothering and peace activism, to multiculturalism and peace. Recurring themes are: pragmatic nonviolence, the ethics of care as an antidote to violence, and hope in a violent world. Chapters on the use of film in peace education, song and nonviolent activism, and teaching art history and peace, demonstrate pragmatic possibilities for would-be peace educators. Arun Gandhi in his introduction asks, “For generations human beings have strived to attain peace, but with little or no success. … Why is peace so illusive? Is it unattainable? Are humans incapable of living in peace?” This book suggests that peace education has a large part to play. It is an important attempt to begin to meet the challenge. (shrink)

This book documents recent and historical events in the theoretically-based practice of peace development. Its diverse collection of essays describes different aspects of applied philosophy in peace action, commonly involving the contributors' continual engagement in the field, while offering support and optimal responses to conflict and violence.

In 1795 Immanuel Kant published an essay entitled "Toward Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch." The immediate occasion for the essay was the March 1795 signing of the Treaty of Basel by Prussia and revolutionary France, which Kant condemned as only "the suspension of hostilities, not a peace." In the essay, Kant argues that it is humankind's immediate duty to solve the problem of violence and enter into the cosmopolitan ideal of a universal community of all peoples governed by (...) the rule of law.The essay's two-hundredth anniversary, 1995, also marked the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II and of the establishment of the Charter of the United Nations. The essays in this volume were written for a conference held in Frankfurt in May 1995 to commemorate these three anniversaries. Together, the authors argue for the continued theoretical and practical relevance of the cosmopolitan ideals of Kant's essay. They also show that history has both confirmed and outstripped Kant's prognoses. As recent events have shown, we certainly have not emerged from the violence of the state of nature. Accelerating globalization also gives these reconstructions and reappraisals of Kant's cosmopolitan ideal a new urgency.Contributors : Karl-Otto Apel, Kenneth Baynes, James Bohman, Jürgen Habermas, David Held, Axel Honneth, Matthias Lutz-Bachmann, Thomas McCarthy, Martha Nussbaum. (shrink)

Modern coverage of world events suggest that war and violence are key to contemporary society. History can convince us that it has ever been so, and many theorist of international relations argue that nothing is likely to change. Roy Weatherford argues that a profound change in social relations is imminent as national sovereignty yields to a democratic world culture, speaking a world language and living as a world wide family - the human family. For too long world peace (...) has seemed a noble but unattainable ideal. Weatherford shows that it is now both economically and politically possible and is therefore our moral duty. (shrink)

CHAPTER I POLITICAL FAITH AND UTOPIAN THOUGHT In the three and a half centuries since Bacon and the miller prayed for peace among the willows, countless men ...

In “Peace and Proximity,” like in other texts of the 1980s, Levinas develops the idea of a guilty conscience of the European. This guilty conscience would be due to a contradiction between the old seduction of Europe by a peace resting on truth and, at the same time, a long history of perpetrating a violence inherent to Europe, its achievements, and its position in the World. But Levinas asks also whether this guilty conscience of the European doesn’t (...) have another and even more urgent source in the “You shall not kill” of the Bible. As a response to this commandment, the European vocation to peace would not consist in abolishing all violence—for it might be necessary in certain cases—but in the anxiety to kill, in a tremblement and shudder, even in such cases of necessary violence. (shrink)

_Positive Peace _is a scholarly and creative compilation of articles on peace education, nonviolence and social change. Arun Gandhi (grandson of Mahatma Gandhi) sets the scene in his introduction with the challenge that positive peace is both a resisting of the physical violence of war and the passive violence of the psychological structures that lead to conflict. Peace education rises to meet that challenge. In twelve chapters, philosophers and educators look at a variety of topics from (...) Gandhian nonviolence, to pragmatic conflict solving; hope and the ethics of belief, to the way we use violent language; mothering and peace activism, to multiculturalism and peace. Recurring themes are: pragmatic nonviolence, the ethics of care as an antidote to violence, and hope in a violent world. Chapters on the use of film in peace education, song and nonviolent activism, and teaching art history and peace, demonstrate pragmatic possibilities for would-be peace educators. Arun Gandhi in his introduction asks, “For generations human beings have strived to attain peace, but with little or no success. … Why is peace so illusive? Is it unattainable? Are humans incapable of living in peace?” This book suggests that peace education has a large part to play. It is an important attempt to begin to meet the challenge. (shrink)

While declaring victory, Washington did not yet declare peace : the bombing continues until the victors determine that their interpretation of the Kosovo Accord has been imposed. From the outset, the bombing had been cast as a matter of cosmic significance, a test of a New Humanism, in which the "enlightened states" open a new era of human history guided by "a new internationalism where the brutal repression of whole ethnic groups will no longer be tolerated". The enlightened (...) states are the United States and its British associate, perhaps also others who enlist in their crusades for justice. (shrink)

The ethics of war and peace -- Levinas and business ethics in the 'War on terror' -- The ten commandments of working robots in organisations : from history to the future of robot ethics, legislation, and management -- Closing the gap between promises and outcomes : how moral frameworks contribute to the realisation of United Nations deployment objectives -- Visualising success : the wisdom of John Wooden -- Rushing fools and wise women : tales for organisations aiming to (...) improve lives -- Strong identification, weak ideology, organisational culture or all : unethical pro-organisational behaviour in India -- Forsaking the mean for the extreme : a response to Provis. (shrink)

While some species have affiliative and even cooperative interactions between individuals of different social groups, humans are alone in having durable, positive-sum, interdependent relationships across unrelated social groups. Our capacity to have harmonious relationships that cross group boundaries is an important aspect of our species' success, allowing for the exchange of ideas, materials, and ultimately enabling cumulative cultural evolution. Knowledge about the conditions required for peaceful intergroup relationships is critical for understanding the success of our species and building a more (...) peaceful world. How do humans create harmonious relationships across group boundaries and when did this capacity emerge in the human lineage? Answering these questions involves considering the costs and benefits of intergroup cooperation and aggression, for oneself, one's group, and one's neighbor. Taking a game theoretical perspective provides new insights into the difficulties of removing the threat of war and reveals an ironic logic to peace – the factors that enable peace also facilitate the increased scale and destructiveness of conflict. In what follows, I explore the conditions required for peace, why they are so difficult to achieve, and when we expect peace to have emerged in the human lineage. I argue that intergroup cooperation was an important component of human relationships and a selective force in our species history beginning at least 300 thousand years. But the preconditions for peace only emerged in the past 100 thousand years and likely coexisted with intermittent intergroup violence which would have also been an important and selective force in our species' history. (shrink)

Founded on a commitment to social justice and health equity, community health centers in the United States provide high‐quality primary care to underserved populations and address social drivers of health disparities. Through an examination of two books on the history of community health centers, Peace & Health: How a Group of Small‐Town Activists and College Students Set Out to Change Healthcare, by Charles Barber, and Community Health Centers: A Movement and the People Who Made It Happen, by Bonnie (...) Lefkowitz, this essay provides insight into what it takes to center social justice in community‐based health care organizations. As bioethics reorganizes itself around an emphasis on justice, scholars in bioethics have much to learn from colleagues in community health. (shrink)

This collection of essays by eminent scholars on the reconstruction and critique of Kant's transcendental philosophy in the Indian context specifically discusses his ideas on perpetual peace, universal history, and critical philosophy.

A political discourse of peace marked the distribution and use of radioisotopes in biomedical research and in medical diagnosis and therapy in the post-World War II period. This occurred during the era of expansion and strengthening of the United States' influence on the promotion of sciences and technologies in Europe as a collaborative effort, initially encouraged by the policies and budgetary distribution of the Marshall Plan. This article follows the importation of radioisotopes by two Spanish research groups, one in (...) experimental endocrinology and one in molecular biology. For both groups foreign funds were instrumental in the early establishment of their laboratories. The combination of funding and access to previously scarce radioisotopes helped position these groups at the forefront of research in Spain. (shrink)

Francesca Y. Albertini (1974‐2011) compares Maimonides’ idea of peace, as developed in MT Sefer shofetim (Book of Judges), with Kant’s work on the notion of “eternal peace” ( Zum ewigen Frieden ). Both authors develop a historical vision pointed against the use of force and war in light of a framework not limited by historical time (messianic age, eternity). Despite all differences in method and historical context, the authors agree on the notion that universal ethics provides the basis (...) of a determination of right grounded in the will. Maimonides’ universal messianism as well as Kant’s universal history emphasize the pivotal role and decisive responsibility of the human being in realizing, through reason, the reign of peace and prosperity on earth first envisioned by the biblical prophets. These utopias continue to challenge us, especially in this day and age. (shrink)

Beilin was a former chief negotiator for the Israeli government in the Oslo process at Camp David and Taba. He brings a valuable contribution to this volume as a practitioner and political scientist involved directly in conflict negotiations. After fulfilling his post as the Minister of Justice for the Israeli government, he became one of the lead Israeli representatives in the Geneva Accord negotiations. In this sceptical work, Beilin points to the possible dangers of speaking about the combined concepts of (...) justice and peace, believing that there cannot be one without the other. Peace treaties have often been signed and implemented by the victors of conflict, but have left the population on either side out of the determinations of justice. Beilin presents a history filled with examples in which political leaders have bypassed opportunities for peace because they did not deem the conditions just, and thus perpetuated conflict with untold costs. (shrink)

In this paper, I shall try to elucidate the relationship between nature and providence with regard to the function of guaranteeing perpetual peace in Kant's 1795 essay, an issue which, presumably for the very reason of providence being granted some role in the first place, has led to noticeable unease in Kant scholarship. Providence simply does not seem to fit in well into Kant’s philosophical account of history given the emphasis he puts on the notion of human freedom. (...) The main idea grounding my approach is that the notion of providence is not only not a threat to human freedom, but perhaps the most important ingredient in Kant’s solution of the compatibility problem with regard to human freedom and natural causal determinism. This solution of the compatibility problem, as I have argued elsewhere, must be understood along the lines of a so-called “altered law-compatibilism” which makes the special laws of nature dependent on human freedom. The role of providence then is to elucidate or explicate how such a dependency is possible. Moreover, Kant’s own definition of “providence”, which he develops as an alternative to Baumgarten’s, provides the resources of identifying it – in a sense to be qualified below – with nature and hence provides the means for solving a long-standing riddle in Kant’s account. Of course, the compatibility problem does not take centre stage in the guarantor section in any way. Rather, what Kant is doing there can best be understood as presupposing and being closely related to his compatibility argument: He can be read as spelling out the dependency of laws on nature with regard to the course of history. (shrink)

This paper describes the central role of peace in the Bahá’í Faith. For Bahá’ís, peace begins at the level of the individual and migrates outward to the community, nation, and the world. The article explains how the Bahá’í Faith outlines a covenant – an agreement between Bahá’ís and between Bahá’ís and the world – made manifest in an Administrative Order in which the ascertainment of peaceful principles and the establishment of peaceful practices are developed. The paper explains how (...) concepts like the oneness of humanity, the symbiosis between science and religion, and the unity of religion and God combine with ideals like justice, equality, and consultation to form a Bahá’í approach to the creation and maintenance of peace. Integration and disintegration – broad-structured, dynamic effects that shift societies and the world – will help to usher in two main aspects of a present and future Bahá’í order: the Lesser Peace and the Most Great Peace. The Lesser Peace is defined by the efforts of nations and international actors to form a broad-based, global peace. The Most Great Peace describes the arrival and ascendance of the Bahá’í Administrative Order, which will result in an unprecedented level of global peace and security. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:PEACE EDUCATION AND THE NORTHERN IRISH CONFLICT André Lascaris Dominican Theological Center, Nijmegen The Northern Irish conflict can be interpreted as an anachronism. This is true in many aspects. However, in the last ten years we were confronted with many "anachronistic" conflicts: in former Yugoslavia, in Rwanda, Algeria, Colombia, and Afghanistan, to mention only some. In our postmodern times the division of the world into two rather neat (...) halves with two centers of power has gone, the nation state is weakening and in many societies the social glue seems to be losing its cohesive force. We have to live together in pluralistic societies in which we are all a minority at times. Wars between states become less likely, butcivil wars are on the increase. Terrorism becomes a power against which the traditional armies and their weapons are quite useless in spite of many technological developments. The ancient laws concerningthe protection of women and children in wartime are becoming obsolete. Women are invited to get involved in the armed forces. The child soldier is a well-known phenomenon. In our western society a child's world, which exists in isolation from the adult world, is no longer a possibility. Some lessons learned in dealing with theNorthern Irish conflict might turn out to be worthwhile taking up in other situations. In this essay, I reflect with the help ofthe mimetic theory on peace work done by some Dutch people on behalfofNorthern Ireland between 1973 and 1992. The Northern Irish conflict as such is not the subject ofthis paper; the mimetic interpretation of this conflict was admirably covered by people such as Duncan Morrow and the late Frank Wright to which I refer the reader in my bibliography. I will concentrate on the educational aspects ofDutch peace work done in the Northern Irish context. Here it suffices to say that the 136André Lascaris Northern Irish conflict is not a religious one, though religious labels are being used. It is aconflict between two cultures, an Irish one and an AngloSaxon or British one. I. Dutch peace work on behalf ofNorthern Ireland A. A short history In 1973 I was invited to become a member of staff of a conference for influential Northern Irishmen in the Netherlands. Glenn Williams, then secretary general of the KEK (Conference of European Churches) had asked the Dutch Council ofChurches whether it could do something on behalf of Northern Ireland. After some consultation Williams asked the Dutch adult education center 'De Haaf to accommodate "mixed Roman Catholic and Protestant Irish groups in a quiet and spiritual atmosphere." The director of this center, Aat van Rhijn, a Presbyterian minister, asked me to participate in the conference because he wanted a Catholic priest to make the Roman Catholic Northern Irishmen feel represented on the staff. A laywoman, Hermine Keuning, was the third member of the staff. The Dutch Reformed Church provided money. In April 1973 a visit was made to Belfast and contact was established with the Irish Council ofChurches; it soon became our Northern Irish counterpart. In Septembera firstconference was held, quickly followed by a second one. From participants of the first conference a new request for a conference was made and after this one even more conferences were organized, altogether 18 between 1973 and 1983. We worked with neighborhood groups, politicians, paramilitaries, social workers, police officers, adult educators, social workers, journalists and editors, Catholic and Protestant clergymen. In the conferences ofthe protestant politicians and the clergy it was not possible to have a mixed group; we had to be content with having some either Catholic or Protestant "observers" at the conference. Inthe late seventiesthesecurity situation inNorthern Ireland improved. The necessity oftraveling to the Netherlands to have a conference became less evident. Because our work remained in demand, we organized weekends in Northern Ireland itself from 1981 onwards, mainly in Corrymeela, an ecumenical adult education center near Ballycastle. Money was coming from several sources, but mainly from the Dutch Reformed Church. To handle the money well we decided in 1975 to become a trust: the "Dutch Northern Irish Advisory Committee." It was typical ofthis trustthat its constitution stipulated that no conference or any Peace Education andthe Northern Irish Conflict137 other activity... (shrink)

이 글은 19세기 이후 진행된 동아시아에서의 근대화, 산업화, 자본주의화, 식민지주의, 제국주의의 문제를 안중근이 제기하는 동아시아와 세계의 평화라는 문제의식을 중심으로 다룰 것이다. 먼저 안중근의 하얼빈 의거가 함축하고 있는 제국주의 제거의 세계사적 의미를 살펴보고, 그 다음 일본의 근대화 과정에서 드러나는 제국주의 형성 과정을 논의할 것이다. 이 글은 근대 물질문명이 지구적 차원에서 폭력화되어 군국주의와 제국주의로 드러나는 과정에 대한 니체와 고토쿠 슈스이의 비판을 비교하며, 안중근의 사상과 행위가 이러한 동시대적 문명비판의 궤도 위에서 움직이고 있었다는 것을 보일 것이다. 그리고 안중근의 사상이 물질문명과 제국주의 비판뿐만 아니라 평화로운 (...) 동아시아 공동체와 도덕적 정신문명의 형성에 주목하고 있다는 것을 살펴볼 것이다. 그의 동양평화론은 오늘날에도 세계평화에 기여할 수 있는 사상적 실마리와 정치철학적 함의를 지니고 있다. (shrink)

Because the goal of reducing violence is nearly universally accepted, the uniquely prescriptive character of peace and conflict studies is rarely scrutinized. However, prescriptive pacifism in social psychological peace research (SPPR) masks a diversity of opinion on whether nonintervention is more effective in promoting peace than intervention to punish aggression, restore stability, and/or prevent atrocity. SPPR’s skepticism is sharper in the post–9/11 era when states use public fear of terrorist threat to promote sometimes-unrelated domestic and geostrategic interests. (...) The most frequently proposed remedy for this kind of abuse is some form of international legal positivism that permits the use of force only in self-defense, per strict interpretation of the United Nations Charter, or not at all—a position the author calls ‘prescriptive pacifism." This project critically examines the metaethical premises of prescriptive pacifism, positivism, and realism, how these animate the moral and political skepticism of peace studies, psychology, and international relations, respectively, and meet in SPPR. After comparing the intellectual development of these fields and just war theory, I present influential psychologist Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theory (SCT) of moral judgment and aggression as a case study. I present evidence of the problematic nature of Bandura and others’ formulation of moral engagement and disengagement, tracing their contradictions to the named premises. In brief, I argue that SCT’s underlying skepticism of individual moral judgment implies elite or consensus-driven models of social and political change whose institutional gradualism contradicts these authors’ and SPPR’s stated progressive aims, and whose utilitarian ethos undermines the egalitarian individualism that underpins both the liberal conception of the rule of law and the international human rights regime. Finally, I present an alternative model of moral reasoning and engagement based on a Kantian constructivist understanding of international ethics, and the theory of the just war. I outline two instruments inspired by these related normative frameworks that in addition to being more internally coherent, operationalize moral engagement and disengagement in a manner more consonant with political liberalism, existing international humanitarian law, and the emergent norm known as Responsibility to Protect. Intended for use in the collection and coding of qualitative responses to survey research of public opinion on morally ambiguous issues in international politics such as intervention and territorial integrity, these instruments avoid the tendency of existing SPPR frameworks toward false positives of militarism and pacifism. Their presentation also makes mutually comprehensible the often-confusing professional idioms of international relations, political theory, moral philosophy, and social psychology, standing to make a contribution to each. (shrink)