Call for papers: War/peace (2023)

Guest editor: Luca Valera (Universidad de Valladolid/Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile)

The war/peace dichotomy is not self-evident. Indeed, we cannot reduce the absence of war to peace, or, on the contrary, the absence of peace to war. Conversely, it is true that the fear of war is to be considered among the main causes of the love for peace, as history has shown on several occasions. In this sense, the disvalue of war would constitute the fundamental justification for the value of peace, thus reducing peace to a merely negative concept: consequently, peace becomes the simple negation of war. Furthermore, the reduction of peace to mere non-war necessarily implies, as a correlative, the reduction of war to mere violence, understood as pure action coming from outside. This double reduction configures, thus, a way of thinking that leads to recognize the primacy of war over peace, both at the epistemological and ethical/political and, finally, ontological levels. On the other hand, in this way, reality would be presented as primordially conflicting: war would fall within the sphere of the “natural”, “primitive”, and “spontaneous”, while peace would be considered as something “artificial”, “constructed”, or “pursued”.

This dichotomy –and these problems– have been studied and deepened on several occasions by thinkers and philosophers (e.g., Kant, Freud, or Walzer) and have always gone along –with lesser or greater depth and accuracy– the pattern of human history. Today, at a time when the problem of war –and even more, the problem of peace– is extremely urgent, it is appropriate to stop and meditate on this dichotomy, so that peace should not only be considered a utopia to be built on the basis of an originally negative reality.

Possible lines of research on which the authors are invited to reflect are, among others, the following:

• Which authors have reflected, in the history of philosophical and political thought, with greater depth on the dichotomy war/peace?
• What are the main ethical issues that arise in times of war? What, on the other hand, are the ethical consequences of war (or, conversely, of peace)?
• One of the most common approaches to the war/peace dichotomy is certainly a jus-philosophical one. Can a war be considered “just”? Is a war necessary, at the political level? Is peace only a political construct or does it is a “primitive” concept? Is the project of peace a utopian reality or is it always actual?
• War has its own iconography. Which are the images that go with war, and which with peace? Is there an aesthetic of war and an aesthetic of peace?
• History has shown how the question of war has had important relations with the question of religion. Is an interreligious dialogue based on a culture of peace possible? On the other hand, is it appropriate to consider the different religious tendencies as necessarily conflicting? 

“Filosofia” accepts submissions in Italian and English. The articles should comply with the following standards: 

https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-2.html

All contributions will undergo peer-review. Authors will be notified of the result of the selection and will receive a detailed referee report on their submission.

Deadline for submission: 31 March 2023.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

All submissions should be sent to the following address redazionefilosofia.dfe@unito.it

Each contribution should include:

• one .doc file (no .pdf et alia) intended for a blind referee. The text should be anonymous and preceded by an abstract in English of no more than 150 words;
• a .doc file intended for the editorial board, which should include the author’s name, academic affiliation and an e-mail address.

All files should not exceed 40.000 characters (including spaces and footnotes).

For further information please contact: redazionefilosofia.dfe@unito.it