THE GENERAL CONCEPT ANDVARIOUS MODELS OF PEACE

BY EDMUND AGBO

1.0 Introduction

All human beings are ontologically and metaphysically imbued withthe capacity to have peace of spirit, mind, and body. The negation ordiminution or suppression of the endowment is the major cause ofstrife. The strife caused could either be intrapersonal or interpersonal.

As composite beings, we sometimes have conflicts between some ofour components. The spirit might will an exercise that the mind orthe body might not want. The mind might will something that thespirit or the body might not want. There is always a conflict of interestbetween these component parts, and such a conflict undermines ourprimordial peace. The resolution of such conflicts often leads us intoinventing different systems or methods to keep spirit, mind, and bodyin their ontological harmony.

As a relational being, we sometimes find ourselves in harmony withothers, confirming our primordial state of harmony, goodness, andhappiness. While at some other times, discord and conflict becomethe order of the day. Peace is negated, diminished, or suppressed. Weneed to restore the peace in order to return to our original harmoniousand peaceful state. Conflict management and transformation becomea possible way out.

This chapter will review the general and special concepts of peace,with a view to identifying the various methods employed to retainor restore primordial peace. We will also underpin the variouspeace models available to us and more so, collocate the peace modelof Emmanuel Edeh, a reverend Catholic clergy of the Holy GhostCongregation, professor of philosophy, peace ambassador, thefounder of the famous Centre for Peace, Justice, and Reconciliationin Elele, Rivers State of Nigeria, and the founder of the prestigiousMadonna International Charity Peace Award (MICPA).

1.1 General Concepts of Peace

"Peace" is a household term. The word is familiar to most people,but it is very difficult to know its true meaning. The fact that peopleof different walks of life also approach peace from the point of viewof their respective disciplines makes it more cumbersome to give aconcise definition to it. This departmentalization of the concept ofpeace has, to a larger extent, led to its adulteration or obfuscation.

Politics attempts to appropriate the concept wholly to itself. Philosophylays a claim to its final definition. Religion, on its part, asserts themeaning of peace as its proper patrimony. Economics considersitself the best discipline to render the meaning of peace. Sociologytenaciously holds that peace is central to the existence of any givensociety and for that reason, it should be a strictly sociological term.Anthropology arrogates to itself the exclusive competence to definepeace because it is humans who ask about the meaning of peace andwho are also concerned with peace; peace in the ecosystem, in thesocio-economic sphere, in the politico-legal arena, and in the ethico-religiouscontext are all aspects of peace. In summary, each disciplinelays claim to peace as its own material and renders peace's meaningfrom its point of view.

The conception of peace as the exclusivity of each discipline hasineluctably created some misconceptions. If each discipline'sdefinition is right, then there will be confusion. More so, there hasbeen a traditional misrepresentation of peace as the absence of war,which inversely means that war is the absence of peace. This type ofdefinition is inapplicable in situations of structural violence (Galtung1990, 3, 27). Oke Ibeanu underscored that this misconception ofpeace as absence of war and vice versa is not only tautological butcircular in logic (Best 2011, 3). He further stated that common sensesuggests that peace does exist independent of war. Thus, he continued,there can be peace even when there is war, as in situations whenthere are peaceful interactions between countries that are engagedin active war. For instance, the Palestinians and Israelis have beenable to establish peaceful use of water resources, even as the warbetween them has raged. Moreover, Ibeanu observed that as war isonly one form of violence, which is physical, open, and direct, thereis yet another form of violence that is not immediately perceived assuch. He enumerated some of them: poverty, exclusion, intimidation,oppression, want, fear, and psychological pressure (Ibeanu 2001, 3).

The foregoing observations confirm the intractability in the definitionsof peace and also underscore the general concern of people of differentwalks of life on peace. A cursory look at the consideration of peaceby some disciplines would help one appreciate the problems posed bypeace and the various solutions these disciplines have over the yearsbeen able to proffer. They will, at the same time, enable one to assessthe adequacies and inadequacies of those solutions and further equipone with how to find the way forward.

1.2 Special Concepts/Various Approaches to Peace

A. Politics and Peace

Politics, which has the management of the life and governmentalactivities of a given society as its duty, has always been concernedwith the question of peace. The essence of any good political systemand the expectation of any political group are to cater to the basicneeds of the citizens, by providing them with basic necessities: healthcare delivery, education, social amenities, and above all, security oflife and property.

To talk about security, our composite nature comes to focus.Therefore, the security we need must be of mind, body, and spirit.Without this holistic approach, the question of security should beout of place. Partial security produces, paradoxically, total insecurity.Total insecurity is a negation of peace.

In agreement with the above, it becomes evident that peace is thehighest security. Every political organization is therefore evaluated onits ability or inability to attain this highest form of security: peace. Thepreamble of most countries' constitutions (e.g., the Federal Republicof Nigeria, the United State of American, the Republic of Ghana, thePeople's Republic of Cameroon, and the Republic of Benin) re-echothis need for peace.

The need for peace and its advantages have also been underlined bythinkers throughout the ages. Empedocles (born in Agrigento circa484 BC), who was not only a philosopher, a mystic, and a medicaldoctor, he was also very active in public life, responded to the physicalquestion raised by Thales on what the world...