These voices, ranging from the fields of theology, history, and the military, give original insight into the larger questions surrounding this essay’s topic, and its chosen paradigm set in the dour days when Habsburgs vied with Ottomans for the destiny of Europe, and inevitably, the West. To delve beyond the texts, oral accounts and sources on the theory and practice of peace and conflict, as well as those studied in centuries of Central European history are cited. The culmination of this struggle took place at the gates of Vienna in the year 1683. Few historical events conjoin such rich political perspectives as the momentous clash between a coalition of Christian nations and a mighty host brought forth by the empire of the Ottomans. This involves a narrative fusing together themes from Maritain and Augustine. In addition, a historical case with great pertinence shall be discussed. This essay shall show where the perspectives of these authors coincide and differ on the question of peace. It is the scope of this essay to address this by comparing Maritain’s writings on the subject to those of that Doctor of the Church most known for his political thought on the realms of the earthly and heavenly: St.
If peace is to possess greater meaning than mere moments of respite between chronic epochs of hostility, then it would be best to define what constitutes the virtues of peace. This raises some questions concerning peace and the potential for it according to Maritain’s writing, as well as the purpose of peace relative to the highest earthly aspirations of political philosophy. This temptation of despair may occur with more sobering severity as in the past three-and-a-half millennia, there have been no more that two hundred and sixty-eight peaceful years. For them the spiritual can furnish inspiration, light, and encouragement which men need in a very particular way, always more or less subject as they are to the temptation of despair.” “Peace and progress are things of the world or of the temporal order. He stressed it was not the province of the spiritual to be an agent of resolution for potential conflicts, yet this did not mean the spiritual should be removed from such matters. He was careful to separate these concepts from the transcendent and divine. Near the end of his life, Jacques Maritain wrote a reflective essay on the role the realm of the spirit played with regard to peace and progress. It is all the more ironic that it has not only survived them all, but it is a perfect example (perhaps the only real example) of what they called the Survival of the Fittest.įurthermore, political freedom, and especially that political freedom that justifies itself by the pursuit of human excellence, is not a gift of heaven it becomes actual only through the efforts of many generations, and its preservation always requires the highest degree of vigilance. In the days when Huxley and Herbert Spencer and the Victorian agnostics were trumpeting as a final truth the famous hypothesis of Darwin, it seemed to thousands of simple people almost impossible that religion should survive. It is one thing to win a war and impose peace on a vanquished enemy, and altogether another thing to cultivate one’s own victorious city or nation once the wolf has been held at bay. The question of the purpose of peace has troubled humanity from the time an ancient hand was first raised in anger.
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