Peace is notoriously difficult to define. It overlaps with wider questions of the meaning and purpose of human existence. In simple terms, one may differentiate negative peace that is the relative absence of violence and war from positive peace that is the presence of justice and harmonious relations.

We have many modern sources from various great personalities across the globe on the philosophy of peace.

Thomas Hobbes was one of them who was both a writer and a politician whose writings were motivated by an overarching concern on how to avoid civil war and the suffering resulting from this. He said that human nature is essentially self interested and thus the natural state of humankind is one of the chaos.

He points it as the main reason for violence. Similarly, we have many other philosophers rising up with this concern.

One interesting way to address the issue of the philosophy of peace is to think of war as representing the absence of philosophy, in that war is prosecuted on that assumption that one person or group itself possesses truth and the views of that group ought to be imposed and if not they use violent force. Similarly, social injustice is not sustainable as within social injustice we find the seeds of destruction and war.

Therefore, philosophy is by its essence is or should be a tolerant enterprise and it is also an enterprise which involves or should involve debate and discussion.

This means engaging philosophy may well be a useful start to a peaceful future.