Toward an Ontology of Peace II

Ricoeur on the Heart of Conflict and Thumotic Peace

Authors

• Brian Gregor California State University, Dominguez Hills

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30664/ar.146536

Keywords:

Paul Ricoeur, Thumos, Saint Augustine, peace, philosophical anthropology, desire, virtual ethics

Abstract

Following Part I, this essay (Part II) continues my attempt to develop an ontology of peace by drawing resources from Ricœur’s thought. I begin with Augustine, Dionysius, and Aquinas to show that peace is not contrary to our humanity but is a natural desire that runs with the grain of our being. This account is complicated by the category of the irascible, however, which Ricœur interprets as an appetite for difficulty, suggesting the human desire for peace is not directly continuous with the simple animal desire for rest and repose. Instead, there is a fundamental conflict at the heart of human being, which Ricœur identifies as thumos. I argue that thumos is not opposed to peace, but instead plays the essential role of mobilizing peace, just as it mobilizes other virtues like courage, moderation, and justice. Moreover, the right ordering of thumos does not eliminate the constitutive conflict of the self; right ordering is right conflict, with the right proportion of the disproportion of finite and infinite. As a result, this essay deepens our understanding of peace as more than rest and repose, and in turn also deepens our understanding of what rest is—in faith and hope as the finely tuned affective tension that makes up the self.