The Process-Relational Metaphysics of/for Peace
摘要
The static-process framework developed in Chap. 2 distinguished static thinking and process thinking according to five basic orientations: abstract/context, closed/open, isolating/relational; passive/generative; and one/multi-dimensional. This chapter applies the static-process framework to develop a process metaphysics of positive peace, elucidating theories and practices of peace through a clear articulation of the process epistemology and process ontology, and corresponding values. It draws on Reardon’s (Betty A. Reardon: A Pioneer in Education for Peace and Human Rights. Springer International, [1989] 2015) outline of a paradigm of/for peace to evaluate the ways that process metaphysics aligns with, underpins and advances positive peace. This approach aspires to a vision of peace that addresses all forms of violence, including the less visible cultural and structural forms of violence. This includes and transcends the aims of negative peace, the absence of direct forms of violence, nesting negative peace within its more transformative vision and addressing the conditions that give rise to such violence. The aim of positive peace assumes a process epistemology of provisional realism, moving beyond both positivism and relativism by treating truth as an asymptote, polyphonic and always-in-process. Peaceful imaginaries find support in process ontologies, emphasising the participatory and emergent nature of life at every scale in a universe comprising part-wholes that together can co-create violence or peace.