Prospects of Peace in the Light of Ethical Universalism

B a c k g r o u n d . The author examines the ethical problems of peacebuilding in the context of conclusions from Kant's philosophy of law and ethics, supplementing them with an analysis of alternative approaches to the ethics of compassion and empathy, as well as the conditions for restoring communication between the peoples of warring countries. M e t h o d s . Philosophical and general scientific methods are used, in particular historical and philosophical reconstruction, content analysis, observation and description of the phenomena of social life. R e s u l t s . The challenges of peace and the problems of restoring justice in the war in Ukraine and other regions of the world are analyzed The study explicates the meaning of ethical universalism in the philosophy of I. Kant and its potential in the theory and practice of ensuring sustainable peace.The author identifies the obstacles to achieving peace, which consist in the incomparability of the discourses of war, namely the pre-modern discourse of violence as a means of achieving the aggressive goals of the Russian Federation and other authoritarian regimes and the discourse of peaceful resolution of conflicts through diplomacy and compromises inherent in modern Western countries and international security organizations in the world. The analysis establishes that in the conditions of limited resources for resistance in Ukraine, the search for additional opportunities to influence the consciousness of the representatives of the country of the aggressor is urgent. For this purpose, it is proposed to expand the universalist approach of the ethics of duty in matters of achieving peace with the possibilities of the ethics of feelings, compassion as those that overcome the barriers of understanding and contribute to the restoration of communication regarding a just peace. C o n c l u s i o n s . Given the violation of international law and the creation of artificial barriers to understanding between peoples, which is characteristic of modern wars, the concept of a just peace needs to be refined. In particular, the a priori principles of reason and communication, on which Kantian and post-Kantian rationalism in ethics are based, are not sufficient to solve modern peace problems. In theory and practice, an indepth study of the problem of ethical motivation and countering the manipulation of people's consciousness, which creates barriers to understanding and deepens conflicts between countries, is necessary. The universalism of rationalist ethics, exemplified by Kant's ethics, should be complemented by the universality of the ethics of compassion, which reveals the ontological and anthropological foundations of the obligation and motivation of people to understand each other. Modern ethics in the analysis of discourse, the sphere of feelings, mechanisms of empathy, etc. combines the task of substantiating social norms and values with motivation for their application and action.