What is Pacifism?
I have already posted on Realism, and after a longer-than-expected delay I am now going to address Pacifism. Thank you for bearing with me as I study for exams.
Pacifism is the moral renunciation of war. A "contingent" pacifism may say that war in general might be okay, but this particular war is not (Vietnam, perhaps). Some pacifists may object to certain forms of warfare, perhaps saying that nuclear or biological war is intrinsically evil, because they are unavoidably "total" and violate the principle of proportionality. More strict pacifists would say that modern war itself has destroyed the moral possibilities of war, as nuclear weapons take trench warfare and obliteration bombings to the logical extreme so that "the age of the just war has ended." Absolute pacifism, however, shares with Realism a denial that war can ever be subject to moral limitation.
Tolstoy, an ardent pacifist, worried about the desensitizing aspect of war, and James Douglas is concerned that in modern war "it is not certain that the modern warrior will ever experience that moment of truth when war reveals its killing nature through a sudden insight into the enemy's humanity. With the perfection of military technology, the warrior no longer has contact with the enemy, and with increased killing-distance, the moral conception of the act of killing diminishes."
The Pacifist regards non-violent action in much the same way that the militarist regards war: as an expressive rather than instrumental activity, with the power to transform man and the world. Non-violent action is seen as a positive good, not simply a way of avoiding moral contamination. Pacifists are not passive but engage and contend with violent society (King and Gandhi). The real task of peacemaking is to achieve the genuine pacification of society and the transformation of a militarist culture into a pacific one. Pacifists believe that "human nature" should be viewed as a historical and social phenomenon, so that warlike human nature tells us about the human environment to date, not about an intrinsic, static human nature. Because our social institutions ensure a place for war, we must radically transform them and our beliefs and practices, must reconstitute society into a peace economy.
Pacifists believe that the demilitarized society is not powerless; all rulers rely on the cooperation of the seemingly powerless, so if the people refuse to cooperate--in sufficient numbers and for a sufficient length of time--the country will become ungovernable and the government will be forced to capitulate. In the case of occupation, they assume that their actions would make the logistics so bad as to undermine occupiers' will; they assume that an occupation cannot succeed without collaboration, and recognize that civilian populations would suffer, but less so than in war. Both pacifism and violent defense require a readiness for self-sacrifice, but non-violent resistance doesn't include readiness to kill.
Häring points out that this tactic works only when the adversary has certain virtues. British didn't run over Indians on railroad tracks, but the Nazis wouldn't have hesitated. Tolstoy says that the holders of power could be morally regenerated if met by non-resistance, but he didn't know the Nazis. Porsch says that Pacifism is violent in that it causes the opponent to commit violent acts and ignores the key role that it has played in the unleashing of the cycle of violence. (I suppose this is somewhat like causing the opponent to become a murderer, just as the Church is against murder because it makes one a murderer.)
All comments welcome. More to come soon.
Source: A. J. Coates, The Ethics of War. Manchester UP: 1997.
Pacifism is the moral renunciation of war. A "contingent" pacifism may say that war in general might be okay, but this particular war is not (Vietnam, perhaps). Some pacifists may object to certain forms of warfare, perhaps saying that nuclear or biological war is intrinsically evil, because they are unavoidably "total" and violate the principle of proportionality. More strict pacifists would say that modern war itself has destroyed the moral possibilities of war, as nuclear weapons take trench warfare and obliteration bombings to the logical extreme so that "the age of the just war has ended." Absolute pacifism, however, shares with Realism a denial that war can ever be subject to moral limitation.
Tolstoy, an ardent pacifist, worried about the desensitizing aspect of war, and James Douglas is concerned that in modern war "it is not certain that the modern warrior will ever experience that moment of truth when war reveals its killing nature through a sudden insight into the enemy's humanity. With the perfection of military technology, the warrior no longer has contact with the enemy, and with increased killing-distance, the moral conception of the act of killing diminishes."
The Pacifist regards non-violent action in much the same way that the militarist regards war: as an expressive rather than instrumental activity, with the power to transform man and the world. Non-violent action is seen as a positive good, not simply a way of avoiding moral contamination. Pacifists are not passive but engage and contend with violent society (King and Gandhi). The real task of peacemaking is to achieve the genuine pacification of society and the transformation of a militarist culture into a pacific one. Pacifists believe that "human nature" should be viewed as a historical and social phenomenon, so that warlike human nature tells us about the human environment to date, not about an intrinsic, static human nature. Because our social institutions ensure a place for war, we must radically transform them and our beliefs and practices, must reconstitute society into a peace economy.
Pacifists believe that the demilitarized society is not powerless; all rulers rely on the cooperation of the seemingly powerless, so if the people refuse to cooperate--in sufficient numbers and for a sufficient length of time--the country will become ungovernable and the government will be forced to capitulate. In the case of occupation, they assume that their actions would make the logistics so bad as to undermine occupiers' will; they assume that an occupation cannot succeed without collaboration, and recognize that civilian populations would suffer, but less so than in war. Both pacifism and violent defense require a readiness for self-sacrifice, but non-violent resistance doesn't include readiness to kill.
Häring points out that this tactic works only when the adversary has certain virtues. British didn't run over Indians on railroad tracks, but the Nazis wouldn't have hesitated. Tolstoy says that the holders of power could be morally regenerated if met by non-resistance, but he didn't know the Nazis. Porsch says that Pacifism is violent in that it causes the opponent to commit violent acts and ignores the key role that it has played in the unleashing of the cycle of violence. (I suppose this is somewhat like causing the opponent to become a murderer, just as the Church is against murder because it makes one a murderer.)
All comments welcome. More to come soon.
Source: A. J. Coates, The Ethics of War. Manchester UP: 1997.
posted by English Professor | 1:20 PM
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