A few years ago, Margaret Van Every of Open Circle asked me to give a presentation appropriate for Remembrance Day. I immediately declined. I felt very conflicted about war. I could think of nothing appropriate to say. But that started me thinking and I have been thinking a lot about the topic ever since.

This year I volunteered for the task and I am now scheduled to speak at Open Circle on November 10, 2019. As part of my preparation, I am doing something I rarely do, reading a book for a second time. I am again reading How to Think About War and Peace by Mortimer J. Adler.

This remarkable book was written in 1943 and published in 1944, obviously a significant time for the topic. At midlife, I discovered a love for philosophy and began browsing that section in local book stores. How to Think About War and Peace was republished in 1995 concurrent with the 50th anniversary of the United Nations. I bought the 1996 paperback second printing edition which I brought with me to Mexico.

This book is not available as an ebook but is available on The Internet Archieve. How to Think About War and Peace.

 

 

 

PART ONE - THE PROBLEM OF PEACE

Chapter 1 - The Questions Men Must Face

Summary

These are the questions which every sober free man must face in the modern world.

  1. Will there be a world war after this one?
  2. If so, will it occur in my lifetime or in the lifetime of my children and grandchildren?
  3. If there is to be another world war, what can we do to postpone it?
  4. Will there ever be peace on earth—not just a breathing spell between wars, but lasting peace?
  5. If so, will it come in my lifetime, in my grandchildren’s, or centuries from now?
  6. If there is any probability of perpetual peace, what can we do to hasten its coming?

Chapter 2 - The Answers Men Have Given

Summary

In Chapter 2 Adler summarizes answers to the questions he raises in Chapter 1 - the pessimistic position and the optimistic position. The pessimistic position is based on the idea that wars, including world wars, are inevitable. The optimistic position is based on the idea that all wars are preventable and permanent peace is achievable.

The essence of the means to achieve a permanent peace is the subordination of national interests to a world government.

The course of the present inquiry is determined by all these questions and issues. It aims to expand the agreement between the liberal pessimist and the clearsighted optimist. Accepting the principles in which they already concur, it seeks the reasons and evidences which can bring open minds into fuller agreement.

PART TWO - THE POSSIBILITY OF PEACE

Chapter 3 - The Inevitability of War

Summary

Adler observes that no decade has ever passed without war somewhere in the world. But can we infer from this that war is inevitable? Is war a consequence of the intrinsic nature of human beings?

Adler points out that slavery once seemed a natural part of society but this changed in the eighteenth century. He also points to the current belief that, unlike the past, there are no incurable diseases, not even cancer. Is war like death, inevitable, or like slavery and disease?

Is war, asks Adler, a violation or a fulfillment of human nature?

Chapter 4 - The Abnormality of War

Summary

In this Chapter Adler asserts that war is abnormal. He notes two historical facts, that there have always been wars and that there has always been peace. Wars are between groups of people, usually countries. Peace is found both between wars and internally within countries. He rejects as contrary to fact the claim by Thomas Hobbes that the natural state is “the war of all against all.”

Human beings are by nature social animals that seek to flourish which aligns with peace not war. Furthermore, writes Adler, only in constitutional democracies can all people live well, again aligning with peace. He contrasts this with fascism which aligns with war and abnormality.

Chapter 5 - What Peace Is

Summary

Adler makes a distinction between internal peace, civil peace, and external peace between nations and sovereign states. An internal war is called a civil war and is different from war between countries. The words war and peace have different meanings depending on the context.

Peace does not mean perfect peace. Adler uses family as an analogy. Within families there can be arguments and conflicts while at the same time the family enjoys peaceful association most of the time. Families that fracture are no longer at peace. Likewise, countries can have conflicts amongst its subordinate internal organizations while maintaining a cohesive whole that is seen as peaceful.

Chapter 6 - How Peace Is Made

Summary

In this Chapter Adler asserts that it is effective government that makes and keeps peace. In villages, towns and cities local governments and their institutions bring about peace when they function effectively. This model, says Adler, can be extended to countries and to the whole globe.

Adler draws on history at the time when Thirteen Colonies merged to become the United States of America. He quotes the motto of the newly formed country - e pluribus unum - out of many, one. This motto, claims Adler, is the principle that achieved a local peace and is the principle for world peace.

Alder next describes the rule of law in very much the way we would describe it today. He outlines the appropriate use of authority and force as the means towards the obtaining of peace. He integrates the role of courts into this model.

And finally in this chapter, Adler claims that this model aligns with the rational nature of the human animal.

Chapter 7 - The Only Cause of War

Summary

In Chapter 7 Adler displays either/or thinking. He suggests that human beings (he uses the term “men”) face one of two alternatives - either government or anarchy. He asserts that anarchy, the absence of government, is the only cause of war.

He lists six other purported causes of war. These, he says, have been tamed within countries by government action. Likewise, these can be controlled by government globally.

Adler also briefly touches on the idea of just wars, the difference between a truce and peace, the role of diplomacy and the ever-present potential for war.

Chapter 8 - The Right and Wrong of Sovereignty

Summary

In Chapter 8 Adler turns his attention to the concept of sovereignty and he challenges the views of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, a German philosopher of the nineteenth century. Hegel believed that sovereignty was an inalienable right of nations, that world government would destroy that right, that world government was necessary for peace but impossible to obtain, and that therefore peace was impossible and war was inevitable. Adler disagrees.

Internally, the individual subjects of nations are subordinate to the authority and coercive power of government and the result is an internal peace. This same model, says Adler, can work globally. In theory, nations can be subordinate to a world government and that subordination need not extend beyond matters of foreign affairs.

Adler discusses differences between a federation and a confederation. Writing in 1943, Adler attributes the failure of The League of Nations being the result of its structure as a confederation. Any confederation of fully sovereign, independent states does not eliminate anarchy from the world.

Chapter 9 - The Peace of Angels

Summary

Adler quotes Alexander Hamilton: “If men were angels, no governments would be necessary.”

Adler challenges the Popes who apparently believed that world government was not necessary for world peace.

Adler also challenges John Chamberlain, a writer for the New York Times.

Chapter 10 - Civil War

No summary and no comments, only 3 pages in this chapter.

Chapter 11 - The Degrees of Peace

Summary

In the first paragraph of this chapter Adler states, “Peace in the world will never, to the end of time, relieve man of the search for peace in his own heart.”

The theme of this chapter is an analysis of degrees of peace from its minimum conditions in primitive communities to mature, civilized countries. Adler continues with his assertions that what is now known about internal peace can be applied globally. That peace will never be perfect and a better degree of peace will always require government.

Adler discusses three kinds of internal strife: rebellion, sedition and revolution, each with historical examples, all well understood.

Adler also clarifies his vision for the future with this statement: “A community of the world’s peoples, living together under government, will not be a society of nations, but a society of men, divided into subgroups only according to divisions of local government.”

Adler discusses and renounces the Pax Romana model for peace, the peace imposed by the Romans on the territories they conquered.

Near the end of this chapter Adler asserts, “None of the conditions required for perfect peace is unattainable. None demands a utopian transformation of human nature or human society… political institutions and economic systems can be perfected to the point where civil peace is no longer threatened by any form of justified civil violence. That is perfect peace. And perfect peace is perpetual peace.”

Chapter 12 - A Society of Men

Summary

The first sentence of this chapter reads, “It has now been proved that universal and perpetual peace is possible" and in two pages Adler summarizes that proof. He then imagines ways that the proof can be rejected and he counters those arguments. He describes the differences between a world government and a federation of countries.

Adler categorizes world affairs into four possibilities:

  1. a confederacy or league of independent states which may or may not include all nations and which may or may not be supported by alliances;
  2. a world community including all peoples under world government, federal in structure;
  3. a world state which consists of a world community under government that is not federal in structure1;
  4. a plurality of independent, sovereign states which may enter into alliances with one another by treaty.

Adler next outlines ten criteria for evaluating the above possibilities in regards to the presence or absence of external sovereignty. Adler concludes only world government eliminates external sovereignty and, again, leads to world peace. The best that others can do is achieving a temporary truce.

Chapter 13 - The Inexorable Alternative

Summary

In chapter 13 Adler begins by repeating his distinction between a truce and peace. He observes, writing in 1943, that the failure of the League of Nations could easily have been predicted. It was nothing more than a league of independent, sovereign states which structurally could never do more than achieve a temporary truce.

Adler then uses maturing humans (“men” is the word Adler usually uses) as an analogy. “Men mature slowly… Human society and social institutions mature even more slowly than human individuals.” He continues, “To shift the metaphor, peace is like a living thing. It has taken root, has grown, has flourished in local communities.”

Adler next returns to the four possibilities he presented in Chapter 12. He now describes them as four stages of development. The present world, (in 1943) has only reached the beginnings of possibility 2, stage 2. He asserts that in order to achieve world peace, it will be necessary for human society to reach maturity of stage 2, then grow through stage 3, and ultimately reach stage 4 and, finally, a fully mature stage 4.

PART THREE - THE PROBABILITY OF PEACE

Chapter 14 - An Optimistic View of History

Summary

Adler begins by pointing out that the idea of progress is a modern idea. Until modern times, the past was not a long enough period of time for discerning trends useful for forecasting the future. Meaningful speculation about the future only began a few hundred years ago.

Adler asserts that by looking back over the past three thousand years, the general course of the human story for the next five hundred years can be predicted with high probability.

Adler identifies two generalizations. “One is that history repeats itself. The other is that history moves in a straight line of development from inferior to superior conditions… Both are too simple to be true.”

History, says Adler, is neither a straight line nor a circle but rather follows a spiral path going forward.

“... the fundamental basis for optimism remains the same… a belief in the beneficence of nature or in the goodness of Divine Providence and a belief in human freedom to choose between good and evil.”

Chapter  15 - The Future of Democracy

The first paragraph of this chapter reads,

The prediction of world peace within five hundred years acquires its probability from the facts of past history and from the emergence of certain tendencies in the reality of the present. Apart from the philosophical tenets of optimism, no set of facts might encourage such a prediction. But even with an optimistic frame of mind, we must still go to the facts to estimate probabilities and to talk in terms of eventualities which have a date.

Looking back over twenty-five hundred years, Adler observes constitutional government and democracy spreading and despotism receding. Again, he observes a spiral path of progress punctuated with many temporary setbacks. The progress reached to date, writing in 1943, is far from optimal.

He again uses slavery to illustrate his point. Slavery was once unquestioned but steps were taken to improve the lives of slaves. What followed was progress which eventually led to universal acceptance that slavery is unjust and has no place in civilized society.

Adler grants that the story of political progress is very complicated but a path to progress can be discerned. It began in ancient Greece only to fall and rise again. With each new rise, Adler says, constitutional government was strengthened. The story of the achievement of universal suffrage is similar.

The last paragraph of this chapter reads,

Either the history of the last twenty-five hundred years has no meaning at all or its meaning indicates that men can do what must be done to complete the progress so far accomplished. The growth of world peace is inseparable from the political developments which history makes probable in the next five hundred years.

Chapter 16 - Progress Toward Peace

Summary

The first paragraph of this chapter reads,

In the field of political history, there seem to be two laws of growth. One formulates the tendency of political development from despotism to constitutional government and, under the auspices of constitutional government, from oligarchy to democracy. The other formulates the tendency of political expansion from communities small in area and sparse in population to states which embrace vast territories and populations, heterogeneous as well as numerous. Both of these laws are merely probable generalizations from the facts of history. Both have predictive significance.

Adler outlines political growth as expansion from a family group to a village to a city-state to a nation-state. He allows for expansion followed by contraction followed by renewed expansion. But the long term direction is, he says, toward expansion.

He describes with examples and details the superiority of the nation-state over previous earlier stages of expansion. He then makes the case that the nation-state, writing in 1943, is the latest, but not necessarily the last, stage of political expansion. It is reasonable to assert, as he does, that that expansion can continue until it encompasses the whole world.

Chapter 17 - The Physics of Peace

Summary

Adler uses the word physics differently than how the word is used today. He means physical conditions. The two he focuses on are transportation and communication. He notes that faster transportation effectively shrinks the world. Communication facilitates political communities reaching beyond their physical boundaries. The only constraint on the impact of transportation and communication is the size of the globe itself.

Beyond his focus on physical conditions, Adler brings in another dimension of his topic but does not elaborate on it in this chapter.

As physical conditions affect politics from beneath, so spiritual forces affect it from above…Sometimes it is necessary for spiritual aspirations to wait for certain physical changes in order to become practically feasible… In the progress toward world peace, the physical conditions have outrun the spiritual.

Chapter 18 - The Economic Community

Summary

Foreign trade and foreign wars are related aspects of the same fundamental fact of economic interdependence between communities… Commerce between separate communities requires certain conventions to be observed… Commercial interchange thus creates an economic community in the absence of a political community.

Adler notes that technological advances promote increasing trade. The distribution of natural resources also greatly impacts trading patterns. And he observes that all states will have a tendency to seek self-sufficiency, mitigating the desire to trade.

...we can expect industrialization to spread from the economically more advanced to the economically more backward peoples… All the peoples of the earth now belong to a single economic community.

For nations to try to remain politically independent when they belong to one economic community runs counter to natural tendencies…

And again in this chapter, Adler returns to a theme introduced in chapter 17.

If world peace depended only on essentially technical matters, it could be brought to pass within our lifetime. That event is highly improbable because of the obstacles to peace, all of which are moral or spiritual.

Chapter 19 - The Obstacles to Peace

Summary

The first paragraph of this chapter reads,

Men want peace, said Eric Gill, but they do not want the things that make for peace. To desire an end, but not its requisite means, is obviously self-defeating. Obvious but not uncommon: men frequently want things for which they are unwilling to pay the price.

Adler adds, “But there are also good things which men rightly desire more than peace, and for which they will always fight.” and he identifies liberty and justice as two such things. And he adds other things “men” sometimes want more than peace - money, fame, power and the excitement of war.

All of the moral obstacles to peace arise from disordered desires, desires for things in the wrong order, or unlimited desires for things which are good in their place and under some limitation of quantity which respects the needs of others… we can see that the moral obstacles to peace are both individual and national.

Starting from different historical origins, and developing under the influence of different environments, the nations of the world have not marched abreast in the path of political progress. Some communities are politically much more advanced than others. In the backward countries or among the more primitive peoples, vast numbers of men lack the sort of political experience which comes only with a long tradition of constitutional government and which can be universalized only by democracy. Let us call these factors the cultural obstacles to world peace.

Taken together, these moral and cultural factors comprise the spiritual difficulties in the way of world peace.

There is a prevalent tendency to overemphasize cultural differences, and to minimize or neglect the profound similarities between diverse cultures. These common elements lie deep, because they are rooted in the underlying humanity of men everywhere. The differences, being accidents of place or breeding or history, are necessarily superficial.

Nothing but education for citizenship and the concrete experience of civil life will produce political maturity in a people. This seldom happens under imperialistic domination, precisely because it defeats the purpose for which the imperialist is willing to be paternal. He indulges in benevolence not as an act of charity, but as a condition of efficiency in gaining his own ends. Otherwise he ceases to be an imperialist and becomes a missionary.

I turn now to the moral factors which make world peace highly improbable in the immediate future… (1) Race prejudice… (2) Economic nationalism… (3) Political nationalism… (4) Patriotism.

To exemplify these obstacles at work, I quote from an editorial in an influential American newspaper, the Detroit Free Press. The editorial puts the following questions to its readers:

1. Are you willing to exchange our Stars and Stripes for any other flag?

2. Are you willing to have the United States of America lose its rights as an independent nation?

3. Are you willing to have any man world ruler, for life, with unlimited powers?

4. Are you willing to have unrestricted immigration from all countries?

5. Are you willing to risk bringing the American standard of living down to the average of the rest of the world?

6. Are you willing to encourage the transfer of our great industries to foreign countries where labor is cheaper? The writer obviously thinks the questions are rhetorical. He thinks that most Americans would readily answer them all in the negative. He is quite right.

Chapter 20 - Revolution for Peace

Summary

Adler begins this chapter with comments about a discussion on world peace between Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Cardinal Fleury early in the eighteen century.

For the last time, let us face the question whether peace is possible. It is certainly impossible if the obstacles to it reside in any unchangeable features of human nature. If peace required men to be angels, or even most men to be saints, it would be a human impossibility. But the requisite changes in moral attitude and intellectual outlook do not entail superhuman aspirations or counsels of perfection.

There is, in short, no intellectual impediment to peace which sound education, supported by some experience, cannot cure.

The crux of the matter, therefore, lies in moral education—in the redirection of human desires.

These are not difficult matters to teach or learn—so far as the great mass of mankind is concerned. The great mass of mankind consists of poor men.

In proportion as education becomes more democratic, both in intention and execution, it will become morally and intellectually sounder in content. When, following government, education becomes for, of, and by the people, it will be able to teach doctrines now regarded as subversive.

My comments - Using language of today, Adler is participating in the nature-nurture debate. Adler obviously leans heavily in the direction of nurture. But the science in recent decades seems to be leaning in the other direction, although the debate remains unresolved. And the more light shone by science, the more complex the matter seems. To what degree, ultimately, war results from the innate nature of human beings seems to me to be a question with no definitive answer at this time.

There is not the slightest hint in this book that Adler has any knowledge of Buddhism. I think that he would have been quite interested in what Buddhism has to say about human desires and human happiness. But everyone necessarily has incomplete knowledge so I do not mean this as criticism of Adler. However, Adler reflects western male thinking and missing is both feminine thought and eastern thought.

Chapter 21 - Education for Peace

Summary

Adler begins this chapter by noting that until the middle of the nineteenth century only a very small percentage of the population received an adequate education. This changed over the next hundred years until most youth received twelve years of schooling. That was followed by a period of rising enrollment in colleges and universities.

The definite and clear progress of the last hundred years must, and probably will, be completed during the next century, by removing every economic and social impediment to making liberal education as universal as suffrage and citizenship.

The freedom of citizenship can be legally granted and protected, but it cannot be actually realized, apart from the development of free men through free minds. Men are by nature born for such freedom, but nothing less than liberal education can discipline men for the political use of freedom which is the meaning of citizenship.

The quantitative extension of general education has been incompletely accomplished in a hundred years. That it can and will be completed in another century is a matter of little doubt. But the qualitative improvement of popular education remains to be initiated.

Liberal discipline can be begun in schools, but the trained mind must be helped to complete its education during the years of adult life.

They will understand and see these things when the theory of world peace—of world community and world government—become common knowledge everywhere in the world. To teach this theory, both in school and through every medium of adult education, by radio and motion picture as well as by printed page, becomes the great intellectual task which future education for peace must perform.

These educational accomplishments will be reinforced by an enlarging experience of, and participation in, the work of all sorts of international agencies. The League of Nations and the World Court we have known so far are merely the beginnings of international organization. Though every form of international organization falls short of world government, and hence remains inadequate for peace, such agencies and institutions are truly intermediate and evolutionary steps between unregenerate nationalism and the world polity. They will be more useful educationally, in the way of the concrete experience they provide, than in preventing the wars which will occur during their regime. They will bring about a gradual, almost imperceptible, change in the outlook of men on world affairs.

Any man who arose today and campaigned for world peace under the slogan “America second!” would be lynched. As a creature of my time, I myself shudder when I realize that this is exactly what I am advocating.

PART FOUR - THE PRACTICALITY OF PEACE

Chapter 22 - Ends

Summary

In this chapter Adler examines the positions of the pessimist and the optimist.

...the pessimistic position... to reject the major claim of the optimist that we can do something now about perpetual peace… the extreme pessimism which denies the possibility of a durable peace…

The optimist tends to be the sort of idealist who disdains, as undesirable, such immediate goals as a prolonged truce.

The issue between the idealist and the realist is a false issue because it creates two false positions—the man with his head in the clouds and the man with his feet on the earth.

We must agree with the pessimist that there are going to be more wars, general as well as local.

We must agree with the optimist that a perpetual and universal peace is entirely possible...

I am fully aware of the hazards of prophecy when I predict that, under the accelerating conditions of technical progress, economic revolution, and social emancipation, five hundred years is enough to allow. Within that time, perhaps even in half of that time, all the conditioning factors will have matured to the point where no external impediments will remain. Within that time, educational progress and the spread of education to the common people in all lands will have instructed men everywhere concerning the institutions it is within their power to erect, if they want peace.

...a social revolution lies ahead—wider and more drastic than any the world has ever known. The names “citizen” and “comrade” are the most revolutionary words in any language. They will sweep the world free when “all men” finally comes to signify each and every human person.

Postponing the next war and securing perpetual peace are not incompatible goals to work for at the same time.

Chapter 23 - Means

Summary

Adler begins this chapter by restating the primary purpose of his book.

Throughout this book we have been concerned with peace, with real peace, not the “peace in our time” which is nothing but a temporary truce.

Adler gives six criteria for making a good truce.

1. That they commit no political or economic injustice, by way of inequitable distributions or unfair discriminations.

2. That they contemplate no alliance which will, directly or indirectly, preserve a status quo built upon already existing injustices.

3. That they use power, whether or not through the methods of coalition, to support international good faith, not to supplant it; to safeguard freedom, not to suppress it.

4. That they anticipate the direction of social, economic, and political changes so that no measures positively taken will operate as impediments to progress anywhere in the world…

5. That they permit, encourage, and even perhaps institute international agencies, such as the League of Nations and the World Court…

6. That they multiply such agencies as the International Labor Office which deal with problems common to all nations from the point of view of a common good that transcends national interests…

Adler informs us about what we can and should do now.

We cannot make peace, but we can promote it, by action along the following lines:

1. A JUST AND EQUITABLE TRUCE

2. International agencies

3. A WORLD CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION

4. Reform and revolution

5. Education

...These, when fully explicated in the light of history and political theory, provide the evidence and reasons for believing in the possibility and probability of peace.

Chapter 24 - The Long Run

Summary

Adler begins his final chapter with the following paragraph:

Granted, says the practical man, that perpetual peace is possible. Granted that it is highly probable—in the long run! The trouble with the long run is that it has a way of stretching out into infinity. Meanwhile there are things right at hand…

Perpetual peace may look far off, but how far off it is depends, in some part, on what we do.

The man who aims at perpetual peace goes a little further. He must ask us to consider the grandchildren of our grandchildren. They, too, will be flesh of our flesh. The trouble is that our imagination fails here. If we could but imagine them concretely as belonging to us, we might feel as deeply about their welfare.

The building of democracy in the new world, like the building of Gothic cathedrals in the old, followed a plan which took for granted that no single generation could raise the structure from foundation to spire.

Perpetual peace will never be made unless the work is begun and carried on by generations of men who will not live to see it accomplished.