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Thesis Pacifism is the most consistent ethics of war, not a refusal to have one

Anand Kurup Fellow
· 6 replies
War & violenceIndianModern EuropeanJainismLeo TolstoyMahavira#ahimsa#contingent-pacifism#nonviolence#pacifism
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Its coordinates: 3.3.5 War and Political Violence

Where it stands

I grew up among Jain neighbours in Hyderabad and came to Gandhi through them. Gandhi credited Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894) with a large influence on him, so the pacifist line I have absorbed runs from Mahavira through Tolstoy to Gandhi, three quite different routes to one refusal.

People usually treat pacifism as the position that has given up on ethics of war, as if it simply declines to answer the hard question. I want to argue the opposite.

Take the just war criteria seriously: just cause, legitimate authority, right intention, proportionality, reasonable prospect of success, last resort, discrimination, necessity. Apply them honestly to the wars of the last few centuries. Almost none pass. That conclusion is called contingent pacifism: just war is possible in principle and almost never achieved in practice. My claim is that this is where just war theory leads when its own conditions are taken seriously, and that full pacifism simply draws the conclusion without the loophole.

There is also an empirical point. Research such as Chenoweth and Stephan's Why Civil Resistance Works (2011) argued that nonviolent campaigns have succeeded more often than people assume, although I know the findings are debated.

I am not saying pacifism is easy. I am saying it is the consistent position, and that it asks a great deal more than it is usually credited with.

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6 replies

For the thesis 1

  1. Brian Otieno Ouma

    For Fellow

    Most of the men in my prison class were taught early that violence answers violence, and almost all of them can trace a chain of retaliation that led them inside. Pacifism looks naive from a seminar room. From where I sit it looks like the only thing that ever breaks the chain.

    Helpful · 3

Against the thesis 3

  1. Choi Byeong-hun

    Against Fellow

    I served the last part of my career on the DMZ. Deterrence is not a theory there, it is the reason a great many people sleep at night. Pacifism can be consistent in the sense of never contradicting itself, but it depends on others being unwilling to practise it. A pacifist living safely behind an army has not escaped the ethics of war. He has delegated it.

    Helpful · 1
  2. Rohan Desai

    Against Fellow

    The Gita is the hardest Indian text for this thread. Arjuna is the pacifist on the battlefield, and Krishna's whole teaching is addressed to persuading him to fight. Gandhi read the battle as an allegory of the inner struggle, and he made a great deal out of the Gita that way. But that reading is contested, and on its surface the text answers your thesis with a no.

    Helpful · 2
  3. Thandeka Mokoena

    Against Fellow

    In South Africa, the liberation movement turned to armed struggle in 1961, after Sharpeville and after decades of nonviolent campaigning had been met with massacre and bans. Many people who lived through that regard it as the clearest case of last resort they know. Pacifism, applied there, asks the people with the least power to bear the whole cost of refusing. I don't say that settles it. But it is the case you have to answer.

    1. Anand Kurup

      Fellow

      Thandeka, that is the case I find hardest, and I can't pretend otherwise. I'll concede that full pacifism, applied there, asks most of those who have least. I'm retreating to contingent pacifism: a presumption against war so strong that it is almost never overcome, held as a discipline and not a slogan.

      Helpful · 1

Other replies

  1. Hetal Shah

    Fellow

    A small correction from the Jain side, Anand. Jainism itself distinguishes between ascetics and householders. Monks and nuns take the great vow of non-harm in full. Lay people take a lesser vow, and the tradition has long discussed what a householder or a ruler may do in defence. So the absolute refusal you describe is more Gandhian than classically Jain. That doesn't make it wrong. But your retreat to contingent pacifism may be closer to the tradition than where you started.

    Helpful · 2