Comments Elsewhere

Richard: Let “absolute pacifism” be the claim that engaging in warfare (or, in the strongest version, violence of any kind) is intrinsically wrong, always and everywhere, without exception. I don’t know if anyone could defend such an extreme view, so I’ll set it aside for now.

A-train: BTW, who makes the strongest arguments for pacificism? Who are the philosophers of pacificism?

Well, people have defended such a position, so if actuality entails possibility then people can defend it. The most famous defender of such a position is probably Leo Tolstoy (cf. for example The Kingdom of God is Within You). It was also defended by the American abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and his comrades in the American “non-resistance” movement (cf. for example http://fair-use.org/the-liberator/1838/09/28/declaration-of-sentiments-adopted-by-the-peace-convention ). On the interpretation of both Tolstoy and the Garrisonian non-resistants, a similar view was advocated by Jesus Christ.

A lot of their defense of absolute pacifism is scriptural, and insofar as it is scriptural, it can’t be expected to carry much weight with non-Christians. But they do also make some arguments that attempt to appeal to common sense, or to the ethical sense that underwrites the New Testament injunctions.

In particular they would not at all be convinced by your claim that the defensive use of violence is a regrettable necessity in a world where not everyone is a practicing pacifist. The standard response to the standard objection is that the fault for aggression lies on the aggressor, not on those who refuse to use violence to stop him. They generally held that everyone has a moral duty to stand with the innocent and to do what you can to help them avoid or frustrate their would-be persecutors. But not a duty to do so by absolutely any means necessary; the idea is that if you practice or endorse violence as a just means of protecting the innocent you cannot consistently condemn violence against the innocent as an evil—they object to the principle that it’s O.K. to shove people around to achieve your ends, however noble those ends are. In this connection they often stressed their opposition to the idea that anyone can permissibly do evil so that good may come; however noble the end, it cannot be achieved through ignoble means.

It’s important to note that the idea here is not just that universal peace is a constituent of an ideal world but also that peace is a constituent part of a virtuous human life. If you think that a virtuous human life just consists in doing whatever is conducive to producing an ideal world, and that producing an ideal world just consists in globally maximizing goods and minimizing evils, then this position will not make any sense, with or without the Christian underpinnings. But that’s just to say that absolute pacifism is incompatible with conventional consequentialism. True, but so are lots of things, and since the pacifists in question explicitly rejected consequentialist calculation, pointing out the incompatibility doesn’t provide a non-question-begging argument against them.

I reject absolute pacifism, but I don’t think that the main defenders of the position are foolish or refuted nearly as easily as most non-pacifists tend to think.

Richard: Anon (GNZ?) – you pose a false dilemma between “surrender unconditionally vs. fight back”. Cf. Gandhian non-violent resistence.

Bertrand Russell wrote an interesting article on just this subject in 1915 (“War and Non-Resistance,” Atlantic Monthly 116, 266-74). Here are some excerpts:

Let us imagine that England were to disband its army, after a generation of instruction in the principles of passive resistance as a better defense than war. Let us suppose that England at the same time publicly announced that no armed opposition would be offered to any invader, that all might come freely, but that no obedience would be yielded to any commands that a foreign authority might issue. What might happen in this case?

Russell noted that withdrawing from international power politics would make any threat of war immediately much less likely. But even supposing that some ravenous aggressor was hell-bent on invading and conquering England,

… Some of the more prominent would be imprisoned, perhaps even shot, in order to encourage the others. But if the others held firm, if they refused to recognize or transmit any order given by the Germans, if they continued to carry out decrees previously made by the English Parliament and the English government, the Germans would have to dismiss them all, even to the humblest postman, and call in German talent to fill the breach.

The dismissed officials could not all be imprisoned or shot; since no fighting would have occurred, such wholesale brutality would be out of the question. And it would be very difficult for the Germans suddenly, and out of nothing, to create an administrative machine. Whatever edicts they might issue would be quietly ignored by the population. If they ordered that German should be the language taught in schools, the schoolmasters would go on as if no such order had been issued; if the schoolmasters were dismissed, the parents would no longer send the children to school. If they ordered that English young men should undergo military service, the young men would simply refuse. … If they tried to take over the railways, there would be a strike of the railway servants. Whatever they touched would instantly become paralyzed, and it would soon be evident, even to them, that nothing was to be made out of England unless the population could be conciliated….

In a civilized, highly organized, highly political state, government is impossible without the consent of the governed. Any object for which a considerable body of men are prepared to starve and die can be achieved by … [nonviolent] means, without the need of resort to force. And if this is true of objects desired by a minority only, it is a thousand times truer of objects desired unanimously by the whole nation.

In one sense what Russell advocates is a universal policy “unconditional surrender” — i.e. just sitting by and letting any invader that wants to take the time and effort come over and take control of Parliament and Buckingham Palace. But since just taking over the buildings would convey no actual power and no mass concession of authority, what was “surrendered” would in the end be completely irrelevant.