Peace is not built with boasts or patriotic fanfare. If you truly desire peace, defend life.
As St. Augustine wrote in the fourth century, peace is not merely the absence of war but “the tranquility of order.” Real peace—lasting, meaningful peace that transcends cosmetic appearances—cannot be achieved through violence. It emerges instead from a commitment to disarmed truth, to goodness, and to beauty. The ancient Romans used to say, “If you want peace, prepare for war.” But they watched their empire fall. Pope Paul VI, by contrast, offered a prophetic counterpoint: “If you want peace, defend life.”
True peace is grounded in unarmed truth—truth that does not force itself upon others, but persuades through its intrinsic beauty and coherence. It is the only kind of truth capable of sustaining a lasting peace. Reason and history both confirm this: only a courageous commitment to good ends through good means can halt the cycle of violence and destruction. When so-called “peace” is imposed by methods that contradict its nature, it breeds bitterness, obsessive hatred, and a culture of death.
Among philosophers, Hegel stands out as perhaps the most influential critic of this vision. For Hegel, the idea of peace grounded in disarmed truth is naïve—wishful thinking, born of moral idealism. In his dialectical worldview, truth and force are inseparable; indeed, force is how truth manifests in history. In this light, history’s victors are presumed to carry the highest spiritual principles. Within Hegel’s system, fragile, objective, disarmed truth has no place. Truth belongs to those who prevail—to those who dominate, subdue, and instruct others through conquest. In the eyes of the violent, force is always “the midwife of history.”
But authentic truth is discovered through dialogue, through a passionate love for wisdom, through reverence for the face of the other. This is entirely alien to the mindset of the violent. For them, truth is not something to be explored or contemplated—it must be imposed. Freedom, in their view, is not found in obedience to truth but in the assertion of one’s will over reality.
What will it take for our societies to recognize that trying to establish peace through violence is a trap—one that fuels the deepest impulses of resentment and revenge? What has to happen before we understand that peace is a fragile and precious good, and that it can only be rebuilt when we refuse to turn our adversaries into implacable enemies?
Even in her poverty and human limitations, the Catholic Church continues to offer the only true path forward: peace cannot be achieved through displays of strength or nationalist exaltation. It can only arise in the heart of the person who acknowledges their own fragility and recognizes the need for a standard beyond the self. In other words, without an encounter with a real and positive presence—one that embraces all people and all things—it is impossible to begin again.
This is the heart of the “common good” we are called to build today. If we fail, we risk facing a future that defies all reason: the needless death of more human beings—perhaps even our own children.
Image: Adobe Stock. By FotoMikv.
Rodrigo Guerra López is the secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.
Originally from Mexico City, he graduated in philosophy from the Free Popular University of the State of Puebla, Mexico; he was then awarded a higher degree in university humanism from the Ibero-American University, Mexico, and a doctorate in philosophy from the International Academy of Philosophy of the Principality of Liechtenstein.
He has held the role of academic coordinator of the John Paul II Pontifical Institute in Mexico City and has served as professor of metaphysics, bioethics, and philosophy of law at the PanAmerican University, Mexico. In 2013 he held the Karol Wojtyla Memorial Lectures at the Catholic University of Lublin, Poland.
From 2004 to 2007 he directed the Observatorio Socio Pastoral of the Latin American Episcopal Council. In 2008 he founded the Centro de Investigación Social Avanzada (CISAV), of which he is professor-researcher of the Division of Philosophy and member of the Consejo de Gobierno.
He is a member of the theological commission of the Latin American Episcopal Council and of the Pontifical Academy for Life, and is the author of numerous publications in the field of anthropology, bioethics, and social philosophy.
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