Ethics and Normative Traditions: Peace as a Fundamental Norm

At the core of the United Nations (UN) system sits the norm of peace; the very first sentence of the Charter’s Article 1, Section 1 notes that the purpose of the UN is to ‘maintain international peace and security’. Peace has long been a goal of the international community, albeit an elusive one. But what is peace? Peace has a strong ethical dimension to it, as reflected in the vast array of philosophical, religious, and ideological efforts to define and enact it. This chapter will use the norm of peace to explore the relationship between norms and ethics. The chapter argues that certain fundamental norms, such as peace, justice, and human rights, are inherently ethical, rather than accidentally so. In contrast to claims about the subjectivity or relativism of ethics, this chapter focuses on how traditions of thought and practice embody and enact certain norms, meaning they are shared across time and space rather than specific to individual persons or moments in time. The discussion contrasts the communal and historical vision of peace within Hinduism and Buddhism with the individualistic liberal tradition that has come to dominate the global system in recent years. The chapter concludes with some suggestions for how this alternative conception of peace might inform global politics and the normative contestations around peace in the contemporary world.