Between Specters of War and Visions of Peace

Mara's book goes beyond its ambitious promise. It provides not only a comprehensive outline of the dominant positions and concerns regarding the questions of war and peace in the history of Western political thought but also a deep and insightful discussion of ten significant authors in that tradition. Thus, this book should be of great value not only to students and scholars who are interested in the questions of war and peace but also to those who are generally interested in the history of political thought. * Avshalom M. Schwartz, Polis: The Journal for Ancient Greek and Roman Political Thought *
... the innovative interpretative readings themselves will be of interest to broad audiences. Mara's book is an extremely rich one, and it can be recommended on precisely this score. It consistently stimulates thought, and it opens up startling new pathways for thinking about politics, especially in its sensitive untangling of the dynamic relationships between political philosophy and the living, breathing world of politics. * S.N. Jaffe, John Cabot University, The Review of Politics. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of University of Notre Dame *
Mara moves effortlessly from Derrida to Thucydides via Hegel, Nietzsche, and many others, all the while providing a brilliant restatement and a spirited defense of democratic principle. In order to unearth critical resources for democratic citizens, Mara recreates a theoretical dialogue that will surprise and enlighten even the most sophisticated readers. In the process, he illustrates the continuities between theoretical debate and the everyday political discussions of democratic citizens. Mara's dialogic political theory is perfectly suited to grapple with the complexities of war and peace and is bound to transform our understanding of our own democratic ideals, judgments, and aspirations. * Ryan Balot, University of Toronto *
Ambitious, compelling, and immensely erudite, this book re-theorizes the history of political thought. Studying paired sequences of thinkers across time, whose philosophies about war or peace threaten to produce political theory as itself an art of war, Gerald Mara offers as a path-breaking antidote "dialogic political theory." With help from Plato and Thucydides, Mara demonstrates the persistent imperatives of both war and peace as framing conditions for thoughtful citizens in times of regime stress and human precarity. * Jill Frank, author of Poetic Justice: Rereading Plato's Republic *
By pairing contemporary and seminal thinkers, Mara allows them to interrogate and challenge each other, often discovering surprisingly commonalities. Each pairing, in turn, deepens the dialogue, which transcends binaries between war and peace, between the tragic recognition of inevitable conflict and the enlightened attempt at resolution. His exemplary and original approach to political theorizing deserves to become a major voice in both contemporary theory and in the study of political philosophy. * Mary P. Nichols, Baylor University *
Mara aims at nothing less than a new approach to the tradition of Western and pre-Western political philosophy, an approach that highlights the project of raising fundamental and usually unasked questions about war and peace, and about political life generally. This means rejecting the idea that the primary value to us of this philosophic tradition is that it supplies a series of systematic answers to such questions. Such answers are, for Mara, undeniably there in the texts of the tradition, and he pursues them with thought and care in chapter after chapter. * Stephen Salkever, Bryn Mawr College *
In his wonderfully perceptive and provocative book, Gerald Mara skillfully chastises those who would separate philosophy from politics. Through a series of startling juxtapositions of assorted texts from the history of Western thought, Mara masterfully uncovers the limits of a binary framing that opposes war to peace, until the final chapter where intertwined readings of Plato and Thucydides expose the interdependence of peace and disruption, of philosophy and politics. Mara thereby engages his readers in a "conversational political theory" that becomes the model for critical citizenship. * Arlene W. Saxonhouse, author of Free Speech and Democracy in Ancient Athens *
14/01/2019