Abstract
The subject of this chapter is the fourth religious approach to war: the way of pacifism. Pacifism is a central concern of this book, and in the chapters that follow the implications of pacifism – what it requires and what is allows – are discussed, as well as animadversions of pacifism and its moral and religious support. In this chapter the history of pacifism and nonviolence in early Christianity are documented, and the roots of nonviolence in both Eastern and Western religious traditions are noted. Pacifism has been given different interpretations and several of these interpretations are examined in this chapter. The most coherent form of pacifism, this chapter’s discussion will conclude, is the moral or religious acceptance of nonviolence and the repudiation of war and violence in personal relations and in all its expressions.
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Notes
- 1.
Daniel A. Dombrowski, Christian Pacifism (Philadelphia PA: Temple University Press, 1991), p. 4.
- 2.
C. John Cadoux, The Early Christian Attitude to War (New York: The Seabury Press, 1982 [1919], p. 245.
- 3.
Cadoux, The Early Christian Attitude to War, pp. 121–23 and 245–46.
- 4.
Roland H. Bainton, Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace: A Historical Survey and Critical Re-evaluation (Nashville TN and New York: Abington, 1960), p. 78.
- 5.
Cadoux, The Early Christian Attitude to War, pp. 113–114.
- 6.
Cadoux, The Early Christian Attitude to War, pp. 105, 115, and 151.
- 7.
Bainton, Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace, p. 75.
- 8.
Bainton, Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace, p. 69.
- 9.
Cadoux, The Early Christian Attitude to War, pp. 137 and 140–41. Cadoux points out that there is no indication that Origen “has Christians in mind” in saying that “the wars of the bees perhaps constitute a lesson for the conduct of just and orderly wars among men.” And we should note that it is consistent with pacifism to argue that, though all wars are wrong, some wars are worse than others.
- 10.
Cadoux, The Early Christian Attitude to War, pp. 196ff.
- 11.
Cadoux, The Early Christian Attitude to War, p. 245.
- 12.
Bainton, Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace, pp. 67–68.
- 13.
Cadoux, The Early Christian Attitude to War, p. 261.
- 14.
Bainton, Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace, pp. 191 and 196.
- 15.
Bainton, Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace, p. 198.
- 16.
Bainton, Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace, p. 198.
- 17.
Bainton, Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace, pp. 193 and 215.
- 18.
Bainton, Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace, p. 199.
- 19.
Mohandas K. Gandhi, Autobiography: The Story of My Experiences with Truth, trans. Mahadev Desai (New York: Dover, 1983) p. 284.
- 20.
Gandhi, Autobiography, pp. 242 and 312.
- 21.
Jenny Teichman regards this as what “the very word pacifism was coined to mean.” Jenny Teichman, Pacifism and the Just War: A Study in Applied Philosophy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), p. 4.
- 22.
Dustin Elles Howes, Toward a Credible Pacifism: Violence and the Possibilities of Politics (Albany NY: State University of New York Press, 2009), pp. 10 and 146. Howes’s concern is with a pacifism that is credible – seen to be useful and acceptable – to those in the political sphere who are inclined to think that violence is the most effective way of gaining ends. He is not interested in moral arguments against violence (or for pacifism), such as those we will consider in the next two chapters. He undertakes to address those who follow a “Maciavellian pragmatism, materialism, and realism” (p. xii), to weigh the “effectiveness” of pacifism against the effectiveness of violence, and to argue that pacifism is or may be as effective as violence in gaining ends. At one point in a thought experiment weighing two counterfactuals against each other he compares the effectiveness of German Jews resisting the Holocaust by forming armed militias in response to the Nazi racial laws and mass deportations to ghettos and death camps with the effectiveness of a collective practice of Satyagraha and its peaceful resistance by German Jews. Perhaps neither would have halted the Nazi persecution of European Jews, Howes allows. But, he says, “the actual conduct of the Holocaust and what we know about the potential of satyagraha to change the dynamics of violence suggest that physical violence and satyagraha had similar prospects for success and failure” (p. 135).
- 23.
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, Ethics, Violence and Peace (Longwood Academic: Wakefield, New Hampshire, 1991) pp. 36–38.
- 24.
Dombrowski, Christian Pacifism, pp. 69 and 89.
- 25.
Dombrowski, Christian Pacifism, p. 5.
- 26.
Dombrowski, Christian Pacifism, p. xi.
- 27.
Robert L. Holmes, Pacifism: A Philosophy of Nonviolence (London, Oxford, New York, New Delhi, Sydney: Bloomsbury, 2017), pp. 74 and 319.
- 28.
Dombrowski, Christian Pacifism, pp. 89 and 93–94.
- 29.
Dombrowski, Christian Pacifism, p. 73.
- 30.
Various other forms of pacifism can be distinguished. Holmes in Pacifism: A Philosophy of Nonviolence discusses in addition to private or personal pacifism absolute, pragmatic, and existential pacifism, as well as other forms. The various forms of pacifism that we have identified in this chapter capture the main divisions pertinent to our discussion.
- 31.
Sutta Nipāta quoted in Shundo Tachibana, Ethics of Buddhism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926) p. 195.
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Kellenberger, J. (2018). The Approach 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_7
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