A glance at world history reveals an endless chain of conflicts among communities, cities, peoples, and nations — wars, violence, suffering, and a disregard for life.
On the surface, many of these clashes are waged in the name of political and economic interests, nationalisms, ideologies, religions, and prejudice.
Even in the name of peace and development, vast empires have been built on the power of a dominant center, yet they yielded only a fleeting peace. Monuments to peace are unveiled, and a few years later the same conflicts reappear.
In 1932, in a letter to Einstein, Freud argued that the main impulse driving human beings to war is a natural desire for aggression. The inclination to hostility among humans — present everywhere and the greatest obstacle to civilization — is, for him, a fundamental psychological fact. Even if every political and economic difficulty were resolved, the tendency to destroy and humiliate one another would persist. Freud wrote that these two instincts — life (Eros) and death or destruction (Thanatos) — are in perpetual conflict and interwoven.
In this light, Krishnamurti held that it is not enough to change the outer world; what is needed is a total psychological revolution within. This inner conflict is far more complex—and it is the root of outward conflicts. Such a transformation would, naturally and inevitably, bring change to social structures, to our relationships, and to everything we do.
The question we pose links two deep philosophical traditions: Hermetic thought and the thought of Heraclitus, both of which address the clash of opposites, though by different routes.
Freud mirrors Heraclitus’s view that the world is made of conflict—and that such conflict is necessary and eternal. There is no creation without destruction, no health without illness, no justice without injustice.
For Heraclitus, opposites are not a problem to be overcome, but the very fabric of life. Without conflict there is no movement; without opposition, no identity. Conflict is the wellspring of reality: it sets the world in motion and brings about transformation. Things define themselves by their opposites.
Krishnamurti, in turn, aligns with the Hermetic idea that honors the essential unity of Being — free of opposites — and a return to a divine consciousness in which all is one.
Hermetic thought points to the possibility of ending all conflict, since it sees the dual world (light/shadow, good/evil, self/other) as a fallen state of consciousness.
Within that tradition, the material world — shot through with conflict, death, limitation, and opposition — is viewed as an illusion or a spiritual prison. The aim of the soul, then, is to return to Unity by transcending opposites.
Confronted with these perspectives, we are led to reconsider what we mean by peace. Is it the absence of conflict — as Hermetic thought seeks — or the clear-eyed acceptance of its inevitability — as Heraclitus proposes?
If Freud warns us about the power of destructive instincts and Krishnamurti points to the urgency of inner transformation, perhaps the answer lies not in an external utopia but in a path of self-knowledge, in which we acknowledge the opposites within ourselves.
Permanent peace, then, may not be a final state but a dynamic process of integrating contraries — a continual search for balance between Eros and Thanatos, between light and shadow, between the world as it is and the world as it might be.
Thus the question “Is permanent peace possible?” remains open—not as a challenge to be settled once and for all, but as an invitation to build a consciousness capable of transcending conflict without denying its presence at the heart of existence.
References:
Einstein, A.; Freud, S. Why War? International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation. Paris, 1933. Open Letters Series, no. 2. Electronic resource. Available at: https://archive.org/details/freud-einstein-1933-war
Krishnamurti, J. On Conflict [e-book]. 1ª ed. New York: Harper Collins e-books, 2013. EPUB Edition. ISBN 9780062312600.
Heraclitus. Fragments. Translation, introduction, and notes by José Cavalcante de Souza. São Paulo: Abril Cultural, 1973. (The Thinkers Collection).
Trismegistus, Hermes. On the Punishment of the Soul. Jarinu, SP: Rosicrucian Press, 2004. (Crystal Series 1).
