THE GENERAL CONCEPT ANDVARIOUS MODELS OF PEACE

BY EDMUND AGBO

1.0 Introduction

All human beings are ontologically and metaphysically imbued withthe capacity to have peace of spirit, mind, and body. The negation ordiminution or suppression of the endowment is the major cause ofstrife. The strife caused could either be intrapersonal or interpersonal.

As composite beings, we sometimes have conflicts between some ofour components. The spirit might will an exercise that the mind orthe body might not want. The mind might will something that thespirit or the body might not want. There is always a conflict of interestbetween these component parts, and such a conflict undermines ourprimordial peace. The resolution of such conflicts often leads us intoinventing different systems or methods to keep spirit, mind, and bodyin their ontological harmony.

As a relational being, we sometimes find ourselves in harmony withothers, confirming our primordial state of harmony, goodness, andhappiness. While at some other times, discord and conflict becomethe order of the day. Peace is negated, diminished, or suppressed. Weneed to restore the peace in order to return to our original harmoniousand peaceful state. Conflict management and transformation becomea possible way out.

This chapter will review the general and special concepts of peace,with a view to identifying the various methods employed to retainor restore primordial peace. We will also underpin the variouspeace models available to us and more so, collocate the peace modelof Emmanuel Edeh, a reverend Catholic clergy of the Holy GhostCongregation, professor of philosophy, peace ambassador, thefounder of the famous Centre for Peace, Justice, and Reconciliationin Elele, Rivers State of Nigeria, and the founder of the prestigiousMadonna International Charity Peace Award (MICPA).

1.1 General Concepts of Peace

"Peace" is a household term. The word is familiar to most people,but it is very difficult to know its true meaning. The fact that peopleof different walks of life also approach peace from the point of viewof their respective disciplines makes it more cumbersome to give aconcise definition to it. This departmentalization of the concept ofpeace has, to a larger extent, led to its adulteration or obfuscation.

Politics attempts to appropriate the concept wholly to itself. Philosophylays a claim to its final definition. Religion, on its part, asserts themeaning of peace as its proper patrimony. Economics considersitself the best discipline to render the meaning of peace. Sociologytenaciously holds that peace is central to the existence of any givensociety and for that reason, it should be a strictly sociological term.Anthropology arrogates to itself the exclusive competence to definepeace because it is humans who ask about the meaning of peace andwho are also concerned with peace; peace in the ecosystem, in thesocio-economic sphere, in the politico-legal arena, and in the ethico-religiouscontext are all aspects of peace. In summary, each disciplinelays claim to peace as its own material and renders peace's meaningfrom its point of view.

The conception of peace as the exclusivity of each discipline hasineluctably created some misconceptions. If each discipline'sdefinition is right, then there will be confusion. More so, there hasbeen a traditional misrepresentation of peace as the absence of war,which inversely means that war is the absence of peace. This type ofdefinition is inapplicable in situations of structural violence (Galtung1990, 3, 27). Oke Ibeanu underscored that this misconception ofpeace as absence of war and vice versa is not only tautological butcircular in logic (Best 2011, 3). He further stated that common sensesuggests that peace does exist independent of war. Thus, he continued,there can be peace even when there is war, as in situations whenthere are peaceful interactions between countries that are engagedin active war. For instance, the Palestinians and Israelis have beenable to establish peaceful use of water resources, even as the warbetween them has raged. Moreover, Ibeanu observed that as war isonly one form of violence, which is physical, open, and direct, thereis yet another form of violence that is not immediately perceived assuch. He enumerated some of them: poverty, exclusion, intimidation,oppression, want, fear, and psychological pressure (Ibeanu 2001, 3).

The foregoing observations confirm the intractability in the definitionsof peace and also underscore the general concern of people of differentwalks of life on peace. A cursory look at the consideration of peaceby some disciplines would help one appreciate the problems posed bypeace and the various solutions these disciplines have over the yearsbeen able to proffer. They will, at the same time, enable one to assessthe adequacies and inadequacies of those solutions and further equipone with how to find the way forward.

1.2 Special Concepts/Various Approaches to Peace

A. Politics and Peace

Politics, which has the management of the life and governmentalactivities of a given society as its duty, has always been concernedwith the question of peace. The essence of any good political systemand the expectation of any political group are to cater to the basicneeds of the citizens, by providing them with basic necessities: healthcare delivery, education, social amenities, and above all, security oflife and property.

To talk about security, our composite nature comes to focus.Therefore, the security we need must be of mind, body, and spirit.Without this holistic approach, the question of security should beout of place. Partial security produces, paradoxically, total insecurity.Total insecurity is a negation of peace.

In agreement with the above, it becomes evident that peace is thehighest security. Every political organization is therefore evaluated onits ability or inability to attain this highest form of security: peace. Thepreamble of most countries' constitutions (e.g., the Federal Republicof Nigeria, the United State of American, the Republic of Ghana, thePeople's Republic of Cameroon, and the Republic of Benin) re-echothis need for peace.

The need for peace and its advantages have also been underlined bythinkers throughout the ages. Empedocles (born in Agrigento circa484 BC), who was not only a philosopher, a mystic, and a medicaldoctor, he was also very active in public life, responded to the physicalquestion raised by Thales on what the world was made of, presentedfour elements: water, air, earth, and fire. He said that the unificationof these elements gives rise to the generation of things, and theirseparation gives rise to corruption (destruction). Then respondingto the force behind the unification and separation of the elements,Empedocles identified two cosmic forces: love or friendship (philia),which is evidence of peace, and hatred or discord (neikos), whichis proof of violence, war, and destruction (Reale/Antiseri 1987, 41).Following from the above position of Empedocles, it is clear thatpeace is also necessary in the relationships among physical realities.

Plato, in The Republic, maintained that the end of all philosophico-politicaleducation consists in the attainment of knowledge andcontemplation of the "good": the maximum cognition. He alsodescribed putting oneself into this good and translating the good itselfinto a historical reality (Reale/Antiseri 1987, 120). Plato conceivedof this good as the foundation of any city and of human politicalconduct.

According to Aristotle, "All human actions tend to ends which aregood, and all the complex human actions tend to final ends, whichis the supreme good, which all human beings call and refer to ashappiness." Aristotle further added that we could say that a city isvirtuous when it is flourishing and happy. "It is impossible that thereis a happy outcome from one who has not carried out a good action,just as no good action of an individual or of a city can be carried outwithout virtue" (Reale/Antiseri 1987, 154).

Concurring with the above political philosophy, happiness, thegood (well-being), and virtue are indispensable elements of anygiven society. The harmony that enhances unification espoused byEmpedocles in his philosophy of the four elements; the philosophy ofPlato that the "good" is the maximum cognition, the contemplationof which should be translated into a historical reality; the postulationof Aristotle that the "final ends" of all human action is the "good"and that people are virtuous when they flourish and are happy,to mention but a few, all point to fact that peace, the state of the"good," well-being, and happiness, are at the foundation of all humanrelationships, all human action. This then implies that peace, whichconnotes all these qualities, is a key pre-requisite of politics.

Reasoning from another perspective, Miller said that peace is apolitical condition that makes justice possible (Best 2011, 8). In amore strict sense, politically, peace refers to political order, whichaccording to Shedrack Gaya Best, is the institutionalization of politicalstructures. And for Samuel P. Huntington, institutionalization meansthat the political structures acquire value and stability (Huntington1968, 85). For Best, peace in the political sphere denotes that theparties to the pact respect it and also respect themselves, becauseit (peace) is a contractual agreement. He concluded this view byreferring to the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years'War in Europe in 1648 and which marked the beginning of theprevailing international order that was relatively stable (Best 2011, 9)..A properly structured and cultured politics defines peace in societyas coming from a political system that encourages the participationof the citizens in civil and political matters. An instance of such isparticipatory democracy, which gives rise to justice for the greaterpart of the citizens.

The above various political views on peace indicate an order, asituation, or a particular form of explanation that does usually reducethe concept of peace to suit the politicians and their systems, whichwe know often do not represent the interests of the citizens.

Various Political Conception of Peace

Best has argued that "as a political order, peace entails thatgovernment minimally employs the conceived apparatuses of thestate, such as the armed forces, and police, in dealing with citizens,usually because there is no threat to the interests of the ruling classby the underprivileged classes. Instead, the world view of the rulingclass, as concealed in the dominant ideology, is thorough going andpervasive"(Best 2011, 8). To further strengthen the fact that politicalorder does not in the majority of the occasions give rise to peace, asoften presented by the political class, Best said that to portray peacesimply as order could also be a way of perpetrating and perpetuatingoppression of laborers by the privileged classes.

This order of affairs seems to be neutral, but beyond this appearanceis the domination of the social class, a domination of the weak by thestrong (Sabine/Thorson 1973, 183).

From the foregoing observation, one could easily see the inadequaciesin the political conception of peace, and this accentuates the need fora more appropriate expression of peace that could form the standardfor any genuine political system or group. Our further attempt to doso will be made when dealing with Emmanuel Edeh's Charity PeaceModel, considered from different points of view.

B. Philosophy and Peace

The philosophers we cited above—Empedocles, Plato, and Aristotle—thoughspeaking from the point of view of politics, also spoke asphilosophers. St Augustine of Hippo spoke of two distinct cities:the earthly city of man, dotted with appetitive and possessiveimpulses, and the city God, imbued with perfect heavenly peace.Jean Jacques Rousseau conceived of man's original state as peaceful,because when we are born, we have no desires. In that state, we existas a free, gentle savage; Empedocles, however, saw peace and strifeas being responsible for whatever is—in general or disintegration(destruction). Thomas Hobbes followed the steps of Empedocles butnever saw harmony (unification) or peace. Hobbes's conception ofour natural state was replete with conflict and violence, where lifewas solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. In order to contrast thesenegative traits, we resolved to establish a social contract, in which weeach forfeit our right to self-defense to a Leviathan, a powerful aboveall, to which all must submit in order to create a more peaceful andorderly life (Copleston 1959, 33). An peaceful and orderly indeed!

We could see from the philosophers cited above that peace hasbeen identified more with our original state. It is a more genericconceptualization of peace that a life not properly managed couldlead to a futile and inapplicable sort of peace, within the concretesocial context.

Thinkers like Plato and Aristotle, who identified peace as justice andvirtue, are still studied, because peace implies all of these things.

C. Religion and Peace

The beginning and end of every religious denomination is theattainment of peace. The three so-called "revealed and monotheistic"religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—present themselves asreligions of peace. Judaism says Shalom (in Hebrew) and Islam saysSalam (in Arabic); the concept runs through the activities of thesetwo great religions, indicating their foundation on peace.

Islam is a religion for peace and submission. Judaism preaches peaceamong mankind. Christianity was established by Christ, the Princeof Peace. In his Sermon on the Mount, where the eight beatitudeswere pronounced, peace occupies a central place.

However, how peaceful have these religions been? Are the membersof each religion peaceful among themselves?

The response is, negative sectarian rivalry and intermittent conflictsnever failed to constitute the orders of the days. Among the membersof the various religious, we have the greatest demonstration ofgrounded hatred, claims of supremacy, and so forth.

The definitions of peace among these religions, therefore, are farfrom being practicable; should the type of peace preached by thembe followed, we would live in an earthly paradise. Relying thereforeon the peace concept presented by these religions, especially the moreviolent ones, makes us remain in a fool's paradise.

D. Economics and Peace

Economics is the social science that deals with the management of thewealth of nations, as Adams Smith described it, or that studies humanbehavior as a relationship between ends and scarcity. Accordingto Lord Robins, economics also lays claim to address peace. By itsvery nature, economics deals with management. Management oftwo extremes: ends and scarcity, conflicts, supply and demand,production and consumption. With such a nature, it is less crediblethat economics could do justice to peace. Peace in economics could bedefined as a situation of pricing equilibrium, which is rarely attained.Peace in economics could also be represented as a situation where theproduction rate meets the consumption level with the optimal price.

The widening gap between the producers and the consumers, betweenthe maximization of profit and minimization of human dignity,calls for a review of what economics presents as peace. Among thegreatest violence, even when there is no war, is deprivation or theprivation of the rights of those in the lower class of the society—thelaborers, the non-skilled workers, the major producers of goods andservices—by the owners of production. The owners of production,following the dictates of economics, do present themselves as theowners of both the produce and the producers (workers). Paying lowand disproportionate wages to workers not only dehumanizes them,it also deprives them of the right to live on the work of their ownhands.

E. Sociological Approach to Peace

The sociologists claim that peace is their own subject-matter, becausesociety, as the name implies, includes men and women who live inassociation with one another. The relationship among these people,who are also spread out in different classes, is surely the place to testthe degree of peace among people. This means that the sociologicaldefinition of peace tries to present it in its sociological context.Whenever there is no social conflict, because individuals are able tomeet their needs, sociologists define the situation as a peaceful one.Peaceful co-existence, which is never realizable in any given society,is the very yard stick with which sociologists measure peace. Thereare two broad sociological responses that establish the possibility ofattaining a peaceful co-existence, namely, structural functionalismand dialectical materialism. The former considers the society assaddled with myriads of functions and structures that perform themeffectively or perfunctorily. These functions include education of thechildren, production of goods, administration of the affairs of thesociety (government), and provision of security (physical, economic,social, and even religious) for the members of the society. Thesefunctions are only achievable through the building of structures likeschools, industries, hospitals, parliaments, courts, and armed forces(Best 2011, 6–7).