19. November 2010, 10.30 Uhr

Panel I: Contending Views on Justice and Peace

Introduction:

Christopher Daase

Peace and justice are central values of political imagination and practice. While both are considered to be equally important for constituting the ‘good life’, at times they come into conflict when peace is seen as demanding certain qualifications of justice, or justice is said to call for measures that are less than peaceful. The panellists approach the tension between justice and peace from two different perspectives, the theory of justice and peace research, respectively. Both inquire into the theoretical relation between peace and justice and explore the prospects for political strategies that try to balance
arguments of justice and pleas for peace.

Lecture 1:

Justice and Peace: Good Things Do not Always go Together

Harald Müller

Video:

Audio:

That good things go together is one of our inheritances of Enlightenment optimism: democracy and peace, justice and peace, and so on. Sometimes this expectation is mistaken. Conflicting justice claims or opposing justice principles employed in justification narratives can undermine normative orders and even lead to violent clashes. Therefore, among collectivities, justicebased orders enjoying sufficient legitimacy can only be based on the consent of the representatives of these collectivities.

Prof. Dr. Harald Müller received his doctorate in political science at Frankfurt University. In 1996, he became Director of the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt. In 1999 he was appointed Professor of International Relations at Frankfurt University. Since 1984 he has taught regularly at the Johns Hopkins University Center for International Relations, Bologna, Italy. From 1994 to 2005, Prof. Müller was a member of the Advisory Council on Disarmament Matters of the UN Secretary General, which he chaired in 2004. In 1999/2000 he served in the Defence Review Commission of the German Government. In 1995, 2000, 2005 and 2010 he participated as a member of the German Delegation in the Review Conferences of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. His most recent monograph is Building a New World Order: Sustainable Policies for the Future (2009, London, Haus Publishing). Since 2007 he is a member of the Board of Directors of the Frankfurt University’s Cluster of  Excellence ‘The Formation of Normative Orders’.

 

Lecture 2:

The Normative Order(s) of Justice and Peace

Rainer Forst

Video:

Audio:

Ideally, in a justifiable normative order, justice and peace coincide. But there are important differences between these normative concepts and corresponding aims and actions, and they can collide. Seeking or imposing peace can compromise justice, and seeking justice can lead to violent conflict. Are then the social orders of peace and justice essentially different, and is there a normative order between the two in the realm of reasons if we consider what it means to speak of a justifiable order?

Rainer Forst is Professor of Political Theory and Philosophy at the Goethe University Frankfurt. He is Co-Speaker of the Cluster of Excellence on the ‘Formation of Normative Orders,’ Vice-Director of the Centre for Advanced Studies ‘Justitia Amplificata’ and Member of the Directorate of the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities in Bad Homburg. He has taught at the Free University Berlin and the New School for Social Research in New York and has been invited to hold guest professorships at Harvard University and Dartmouth College. His work in moral and political philosophy focuses on questions of justification, justice and toleration; his major publications are Contexts of Justice (Suhrkamp 1994, Univ. of California Press 2002), Toleration in Conflict (Suhrkamp 2003, Cambridge UP forthcoming), The Right to Justification (Suhrkamp 2007, Columbia UP forthcoming), Justification and Critique (Suhrkamp and Polity Press, forthcoming).