University of Richmond UR Scholarship Repository Religious Studies Faculty Publications Religious Studies 2006 Introduction: Comparative Ethics and the Crucible of War G. Scott aD vis University of Richmond,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.richmond.edu/religiousstudies-faculty- publications Part of the Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Davis, G. Scott. "Introduction: Comparative Ethics and the Crucible of War." In The Ethics of War in Asian Civilizations: A Comparative Perspective, edited by Torkel Brekke, 1-36. New York: Routledge, 2006. This Book Chapter is brought to you for free and open access by the Religious Studies at UR Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Religious Studies Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of UR Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. INTRODUCTION Comparative ethics and the crucible of war G. Scott Davis Michael Howard takes the title of his recent essay, The Invention ofPeace, from the nineteenth-century jurist and historian of comparative law Henry Maine, who wrote that "war appears to be as old as mankind, but peace is a modem invention."' We modems tend to assume that the great wars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were aberrant eruptions marring the peaceful status quo, but the opposite better describes the long view. Outside the Garden of Eden, human communities have always been involved in political conflict and that conflict has regularly escalated to the use of lethal force, both within the community and between com munities. The ways in which peoples have both justified and constrained the use of such force are windows into how they see themselves and the other peoples with whom they share, often reluctantly, the world around them.