Community, Violence, and Peace

Replaces communal altruism with communal egoism as a way of solving problems of too much violence and too little peace in the twenty-first century.

Community, Violence, and Peace explores the concept of community and the belief that it can resolve the dilemmas of excessive violence and insufficient peace in the twenty-first century. Herman begins by analyzing two fictional communities, the spiritual community of Plato and the materialist community of Aldous Huxley. He then investigates four historical communities, the biotic community of Aldo Leopold, the ashramic community of Mohandas K. Gandhi, the beloved community of Martin Luther King Jr., and the karmic community of Gautama the Buddha. All six communities call for and profess to lead to the reduction of violence and the increase in peace. After an extensive exploration of the characteristics of these communities and the quandaries that each generates and that renders them objectionable, Herman argues that substituting communal egoism for communal altruism will settle the predicament of violence and peace in the twenty-first century.