An eclectic and civilizationally rich theory of grand social change is the objective of this collection of essays focusing on historians--from Ibn Khaldun to Oswald Spengler and from Piritim Sorokin to Arnold Toynbee--who have helped shape our way of conceiving of ourselves.

During the last 42 years I have been a mediator in 48 countries, in some of them with success. One of the reasons for that success is that I have a certain skill: I've avoided any contact with journalists. For that reason it's with some trepidation that I enter this room and listen to the discussion today which was at such a high academic level and never touched reality.Let me start by posing some questions for you to consider. Are you (...) sure you know what Saddam Hussein stood for in the Gulf countries? I'm not thinking of anything we attribute to him but rather how he thought of it. Are you sure you know what the Serbian position was in the Yugoslavia conflict? Not the way others write it down but the way they thought it. Are you sure you know what Djakarta stood for in connection with East Timor? What were their goals? Do you know what is the meaning of N30 and A16? If you don't know what this N30 and A16 are, I don't think you live in this world. Do you know what it is and do you know what it means at the same time? There is absolutely no way reading the press for you to get behind any of the reasons why we have lousy media and that the media are major contributing factors to violence.So let me formulate it as a thesis: in a conflict you stand for something, you yearn for it but you have a feeling that there is something — whatever it may be — that makes it impossible for others to listen to it; you have a voice but they don't have an ear and whatever you say is twisted into unrecognition, and if you experience that over a period of let us say fifty years you may become tired and you may get the feeling that it doesn't matter the slightest, and you may just as well get violent because that seems to be the only language they understand. So I am saying that the major cause of violence is inattention to the subjective reality of the famous other. There is no other in the world. The construction of the other is: We are all human beings.We may not always like it but the Romans said it much more succinctly and much better than Habermas ever was able to say it: 'altera pars'. Listen to the other side. If you don't have that capacity you're lost. The psychological ability is called empathy. The people who know most about this are called actors, psychologists, sometimes religious people. It means the ability to get into the clothes of the other guy. You don't have to like him: empathy is not sympathy but you should understand his intellectual and emotional logic. (shrink)

The political ethics of Gandhi animated many of Arne Naess's philosophical projects, from argumentation theory to deep ecology. However, the value of Naess's own studies of Gandhi is less clear. This article focuses on the significance and utility of Naess's writings on Gandhi to the study and practice of peace. Naess's approach to Gandhi was distinctive; he attempted a systematic reconstruction of Gandhi, where the essence of Gandhi's action and speech was to be derived from the deeper layers of Gandhi's (...) thought. The definitive expression of this approach can be found in an appendix to Naess's book Gandhi and Group Conflict (1974), where a set of 25 norms and 26 hypotheses are presented as the bare bones of Gandhi's political worldview. As an image of Gandhi's world, the survey is brilliant. As a guide for conflict resolution and peace work, it is limited and even limiting. Naess assumed that moral-normative power radiates from first principles, along the lines of deduction, to norms and to action. But that makes the whole system vulnerable; if you have problems with the first principles, what happens to the normative power of the rest? (shrink)

The concept of balance of power can have considerable heuristic and explanatory power over the full range of conflict systems. But the concept requires analysis, to clarify both what it means and the conditions under which it can obtain. An empirically faithful analysis of 'balance of power' must take account of, among other things, the perceptions the opposing parties have of one another. These perceptions have structural and psychological determinants, and an analysis of their operations in power systems provides a (...) necessary part of the analysis of 'balance of power'. In terms of the frame of reference employed it is concluded that there is only one situation in which balance might obtain, though not for any length of time. (shrink)

This paper presents various personal reflections made about Peace studies find its new challenges, which will help to understand the reality and peace research from new globalizing dimensions. From the transnational and interdisciplinary perspective, we aim to go beyond what is established in order to open new ways to analyze and offer other benchmarks, such as equality and equity. In this sense, the text develops a convergence of different approaches to this research: sociology of peace, development, politics and culture, the (...) Taoist epistemology, and Gandhian and Buddhist ethics. This globalizing approach shows that the specificity of human functional diversity has been excluded, over time, in all peace theories and practices. The reconstruction of peace needs full inclusion of functional diversity in everything related to peace. The World Declaration is just a starting point. (shrink)