Pioneers of peace research V: Anatol Rapoport: Apostle of collective rationality

Rapoport challenged the strategic theory of rationality in terms of individual interest, because this theory of rationality led to its own contradiction when confronted with game theory. In order to avoid the irrationality of self‐contradiction, Rapoport defined rationality in terms of social interest. On this basis, Rapoport challenged and criticized the rationality of the two superpowers, whose war machines were a threat to humanity. Rapoport saw war as an organized crime, rather than as a natural disaster or a disease or a political instrument. He proposed that peace researchers should try to show that these war machines were illegitimate, immoral, and irrational. If war were seen as an organized crime, this would facilitate dismantling the war machines. At the same time that he challenged and criticized the war machines of this world, Rapoport also challenged the value‐free notion of science, which enabled scientists to serve the war machines without making any value judgments about the ethics of their behavior. But scientists, like everyone else, should be held responsible for their behavior and its consequences. In order for science to be ethical, scientists should ally the truth with other basic values such as love, freedom, and equality. Far from being value‐free, a science without value would be a contradiction in terms. Peace research cannot be value‐free, but neither can military research.