ABSTRACT
Peace, like war, is imagined in the minds of humans. This chapter develops the thesis that peace is an invention, but not a new one, and that the invention of peace has been the product of relentless and courageous acts of poesis. It argues that the poesis of peace, the invention of peace, is the result of the poetry of thinking that links memory and hope, remembrance and utopia, through the embrace of a vulnerable body, which suffers the sorrows of loss and yearns for a better future. Against the violence of time and the violence of war, Homer gives us the moments that as it were raise the characters above time into the eternity of memory. The chapter focuses on Ernst Bloch's Natural Law and Human Dignity, and his generative thesis that while social utopias are oriented towards happiness, natural law theories are oriented towards dignity. It highlights key ideas for the legal orthopedia of peace.
