Peace Education: How We Come to Love and Hate War

There is a huge volume of work on war and its causes, most of which treats its political and economic roots. In Loving and Hating War: An Approach to Peace Education, Nel Noddings explores the psychological factors that support war: nationalism, hatred, delight in spectacles, masculinity, religious extremism, and the search for existential meaning. She argues that while schools can do little to reduce the economic and political causes, they can do much to moderate the psychological factors that promote violence by helping students understand the forces that manipulate them. The following chapters are contained in this book: (1) The centrality of War in History; (2) Destruction; (3) Masculinity and the Warrior; (4) Patriotism; (5) Hatred; (6) Religion; (7) Pacifism; (8) Women and War; (9) Existential Meaning; and (10) The Challenge to Education.