Visions of Peace: Asia and the West ed. by Takashi Shogimen and Vicki A. Spencer (review)

Peace, compared to war, receives scant attention. Comprised of nine essays drawn from a 2009 conference, the essays collected in Visions of Peace: Asia and the West, edited by Takashi Shogimen and Vicki A. Spencer, reach wide and far to push against that neglect. The essays focus on different conceptions of and plans for political peace. Even more impressively, they generally avoid well-trodden paths like Kant’s Toward Perpetual Peace and instead draw upon Asian traditions and more obscure Western traditions. The first essay, for instance, discusses the Greek goddess of peace and, contra various modern scholars, how peace was in fact an ideal for the Greeks and thought to be achievable. The final essay is on Jeremy Bentham’s international peace plans, particularly his discussions of colonialism and non-Western states. Other Western-focused essays examine Christian pacifism, medieval European concepts of peace, Enlightenment accounts of war and peace, and Herder’s peace woman. All continue the theme of focusing on less well known accounts—the essay on medieval Europe eschews Aquinas and concentrates on Dante and John Wycliffe—and are aware that to be pertinent today, the concepts and plans of peace must be applicable beyond the West. Thus, each essay is commendably concerned not just with reconstructing past ideas, but with contemporary relevance as well.

The three essays on Asian visions of peace are Kaushik Roy’s “Concept of Peace in Hinduism: A Historical Analysis,” Kam-por Yu’s “The Confucian Vision of Peace,” and Shin Chiba’s “A Historical Reflection on Peace and Public Philosophy in Japanese Thought: Prince Shotoku, Ito Jinsai and Yokoi Shonan.” Roy’s piece focuses on three main traditions: one of nonviolence represented by the Mahābhārata; another represented by the Manusamhita (the laws of Manu), which recognizes that warfare, while deeply regrettable and to be avoided when possible, is inevitable; and a third, militaristic tradition represented by Kautilya. Roy stresses that these traditions have modern-day representatives, concluding with an examination of how they approach nuclear weapons.

Where Roy describes attitudes toward peace (and war), Yu concentrates on the Confucian understanding of peace. More than simply a cessation of conflict—the opposite of war—peace for Confucians is harmonious, the balancing and not the eradication of difference. Furthermore, in outlining the Confucian way to peace, he stresses that it is about resolving conflicts to the satisfaction of all parties, not the triumph of one side over another.

Finally, Chiba’s essay, like Yu’s, also focuses on harmony. But instead of one approach to one school of thought, he examines three different conceptions of it by three very different people—Prince Shotoku, Ito Jinsai, and Yokoi Shonan—from three very different times: the Asuka period and the early and late Tokugawa era, respectively. When the essay was originally written, these conceptions served as a corrective to Japanese imperialism as well as inspiration for Japan’s pacifist policies. Given the recent passage of Japanese security legislation, this essay has gained additional importance.

In short, this collection of essays discusses peace in various Asian and Western traditions in a way that purposely does not limit the discussion to these traditions and connects it to contemporary problems. It nicely helps fill a scholarly lacuna.