Epistemic Peacebuilding: Daoist Philosophy Critique of Moral Authority and the Case for Cultivating Contextual Pluralism for a Sustainable Peace

Abstract

Background and Objectives: Recent peace and critical studies increasingly recognize epistemic violence as a key form of harm embedded in knowledge systems that authorize domination and exclusion. While existing scholarship has exposed its colonial and structural dimensions of epistemic violence, most approaches remain confined to critique and reform within dominant epistemic frameworks, risking the reproduction of epistemic hierarchies. Drawing on Daoist philosophy as interpreted through Johan Galtung’s peace theory, this article seeks to reconceptualize peace beyond a negative peace by developing Daoist epistemic peacebuilding as an ethical condition of non-imposition and relational harmony.

Methodology: This study adopts a qualitative theoretical approach grounded in philosophical analysis and critical literature synthesis. Comparative conceptual analysis is used to contrast dominant paradigms of epistemic critique with an alternative framework emphasizing epistemic release rather than resistance.

Results: The analysis demonstrates that dominant approaches to epistemic violence remain tied to representational politics and normative correction, emphasizing inclusion, voice, and epistemic justice within existing knowledge regimes. While these approaches successfully expose structural inequalities, they often preserve the authority of epistemic judgment itself. In contrast, Daoist epistemology reframes conflict and violence as relational energies requiring balance rather than elimination. Applied to peace studies, this perspective reveals that epistemic violence arises not only from exclusion but from the compulsion to define, categorize, and govern knowledge. Daoist epistemic peacebuilding, therefore, rejects the pursuit of epistemic supremacy, whether hegemonic or counter-hegemonic, and instead emphasizes non-judgment, fluidity, and coexistence without epistemic control. Peace emerges not through institutional regulation or epistemic reform, but through the de-centering of epistemic authority altogether.

Discussions: The findings suggest that Daoist epistemic peacebuilding fundamentally challenges the assumptions underpinning both negative peace and critical peace paradigms. Whereas epistemic violence scholarship often calls for structural reform, Daoist philosophy introduces an ontological shift that suspends the logic of domination embedded in knowledge production. This reframing complicates prevailing notions of emancipation, resistance, and progress, suggesting that peace cannot be engineered through epistemic governance, even in emancipatory forms. Instead, peace is understood as an ethical condition of non-imposition, where difference is neither corrected nor assimilated. This perspective contributes to ongoing debates on decoloniality by offering a mode of peace that does not rely on counter-hegemonic truth claims, thereby avoiding the reproduction of epistemic violence under the guise of critique. This suggests rethinking human nature beyond control, highlighting ethical coexistence, spontaneity, and different understandings of the world. All of this becomes possible when it is understood that epistemological standpoints cannot be fully judged against one another.

Conclusions: This article concludes that sustainable peace requires moving beyond epistemic justice toward an epistemic condition without hierarchy or moral supremacy. Daoist epistemic peacebuilding provides a novel theoretical contribution by reconceptualizing peace as harmony without epistemic governance. By shifting attention from institutional solutions and epistemic reform to relational balance and non-coercive coexistence, the study opens new possibilities for peace theory, decolonial thought, and educational practice. Future research may explore how this framework can inform empirical studies and pedagogical models that seek to cultivate peace without reproducing epistemic domination.