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Politics, Polarity, and Peace
Series: - Value Inquiry Book Series, Volume: 386
- Philosophy of Peace, Volume: 386
Volume Editor:
The arguments within the contemporary literature paint a clear picture: popular discourse is marked with extreme partisanship and polarization, threatening democracy, tolerance, diversity, pluralism, and cooperation. Polarization simplifies and deforms language, ideas, and people. Polarization reduces the complexities of social life into an oppositional binary based on crude distinctions revolving around partial and harmful reified conceptions of self and other. Since the egocentric “us versus them” narratives catalyze conflicts which tend to violence, polarization is itself a cause of violence. The project of peace, then, is aided by the project of depolarization. But what can we do to bring about a transformation away from polarity to peace? What are the real polarities obscuring the path to peace? Is it a question of freedom versus control? Is it one of absolutism versus open-mindedness? Is it good versus evil? In a time of increasingly poisonous national politics, widening tribal polarity, and fragmented and fragmenting communities, what sense does it even make to appeal to reason, discourse, and compromise? The authors in this volume attempt to answer these and other questions relating to polarity and politics in the pursuit of peace and justice, the guiding ideals of the Concerned Philosophers for Peace and Brill's Philosophy of Peace series.
Will Barnes is the author of multiple articles and book chapters on 20th-century Continental ethical, social, and political philosophy and Indo-Tibetan Buddhist epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics. His monograph A Critique of Liberal Cynicism: Peter Sloterdijk, Judith Butler, and Critical Liberalism was published in 2022. He is on the editorial board for The Acorn Journal: Philosophical Studies in Pacifism and Nonviolence, appears as an academic expert on the Ethics Now podcast, and is currently teaching philosophy at New Mexico Highlands University.
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
Part 1
Deconstructing Polarity
1 Uncivil Obedience: a Method for (Potentially) Decreasing Political Polarization
Jennifer Kling
2 At Peace, with Polarity: Left Cynicism, Cheekiness, and Satire
Will Barnes
3 Democracy and Partisanship
Fuat Gürsözlü
4 De-polarization, Nonviolent Agonism, and the Anarchy of Difference
Andrew Fiala
Part 2
Issues in Contemporary Liberal and Moral Theory
5 Democracy, the Carceral State, and the Carceral Ethos: toward a Discourse Democratic Critique of the American Criminal Justice System
Seth Mayer
6 Security, Education, Public Opinion, and Truth Invoking Mill’s Utilitarianism as a Guide to Sustainable Peacemaking in a Fragmented and Frightened World
Phillip Todd
7 Our Hazardous Polarized World: Exploring the Viciousness of Non-responsive Wrongdoing
Court Lewis
Part 3
Language
8 Hate Speech as Antithetical to Free Speech: the Real Polarity
Tiffany Montoya
9 Accounting for Moral and Epistemic Culpability in the Contemporary Discourse of Racism
Leland Harper
10 How Pejorative Language Encourages Physical Violence
William Gay
11 The Healing Power of Awareness: Nonviolence in Thought, Word, and Deed
Anthony White
12 The Deadliness of Doing: Agamben, Oakeshott, and Withdrawing from Activity
David Liakos
Index
Introduction
Part 1
Deconstructing Polarity
1 Uncivil Obedience: a Method for (Potentially) Decreasing Political Polarization
Jennifer Kling
2 At Peace, with Polarity: Left Cynicism, Cheekiness, and Satire
Will Barnes
3 Democracy and Partisanship
Fuat Gürsözlü
4 De-polarization, Nonviolent Agonism, and the Anarchy of Difference
Andrew Fiala
Part 2
Issues in Contemporary Liberal and Moral Theory
5 Democracy, the Carceral State, and the Carceral Ethos: toward a Discourse Democratic Critique of the American Criminal Justice System
Seth Mayer
6 Security, Education, Public Opinion, and Truth Invoking Mill’s Utilitarianism as a Guide to Sustainable Peacemaking in a Fragmented and Frightened World
Phillip Todd
7 Our Hazardous Polarized World: Exploring the Viciousness of Non-responsive Wrongdoing
Court Lewis
Part 3
Language
8 Hate Speech as Antithetical to Free Speech: the Real Polarity
Tiffany Montoya
9 Accounting for Moral and Epistemic Culpability in the Contemporary Discourse of Racism
Leland Harper
10 How Pejorative Language Encourages Physical Violence
William Gay
11 The Healing Power of Awareness: Nonviolence in Thought, Word, and Deed
Anthony White
12 The Deadliness of Doing: Agamben, Oakeshott, and Withdrawing from Activity
David Liakos
Index
This volume will be of interest to those within and outside academia interested in polarity, politics, and peace from sociological, philosophical, and historical perspectives. It will be invaluable to scholars, activists, and practitioners interested in non-violence, social justice, and progressive socio-political movements. This volume will be an invaluable resource for educators teaching in peace studies, politics, sociology, history, philosophy, as well as in the humanities and social sciences more generally. It is an accessible, clearly argued, and pluralistic contribution to the discipline and practice of open critical dialogue oriented to improving the collective human lot.