Abstract
The current status of pacifism is considered in this chapter. After the arguments against pacifism presented in Chap. 7 and their rejoinders have been briefly commented upon, several noteworthy twentieth-century pacifists are cited, including Mahatma Gandhi and Bertrand Russell. In the Second World War, it is observed, there were American conscientious objectors, and later many Americans protested the Vietnam War and other American war efforts. While many of these protestors objected only to specific wars, some were pacifists. The effort of one contemporary philosopher to reconcile just war theory and pacifism is examined, and it is observed that, though just war theory and pacifism finally are logically and morally incompatible, because no modern wars meet the just war criteria just war proponents and pacifists in recent decades have been able to protest against these war efforts together.
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Notes
- 1.
Ronald W. Clark, The Life of Bertrand Russell (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976), pp. 273–74, 339, and 624.
- 2.
Clark, The Life of Bertrand Russell, pp. 274 and 332 (Russell’s emphasis).
- 3.
David Cartright, Peace: A History of Movements and Ideas (Cambridge UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 69–70. [electronic resource].
- 4.
Essays in Søren Dosenrode, ed., Christianity and Resistance in the 20th Century: From Kaj Munk and Dietrich Bonhoeffer to Desmond Tutu (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009) discuss different Christian resisters. Several, including Bonhoeffer and Munk, a Danish playwright and pastor, resisted the Nazi regime. The editor of the volume, Søren Dosenrode, in what amounts to an afterword characterizes Bonhoeffer’s resistance as partly-violent, Munk’s as violent, and the resistance of Desmond Tutu to apartheid as nonviolent (p. 280).
- 5.
Jeff Dietrich, Reluctant Resister (Greenboro NC: Unicorn Press, 1983).
- 6.
James P. Sterba, “Reconciling Pacifists and Just War Theorists,” in Just War, Violence, and Nuclear Deterrence: Philosophers on War and Peace, ed. Duane L. Cady and Richard Werner (Wakefield NH: Longwood Academic, 1991), pp. 48–50.
- 7.
Sterba, “Reconciling Pacifists and Just War Theorists,” p. 48.
- 8.
Roland H. Bainton, Christian Attitues Toward War and Peace: A Historical Survey and Critical Re-evaluation (Nashville TN and New York: Abington, 1960), p. 192.
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Kellenberger, J. (2018). The Status of Pacifism. In: Religion, Pacifism, and Nonviolence. Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95010-5_11
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