This article argues that theological pacifism is best evaluated when situated in a network of practices, beliefs and biblical reading strategies that support a critique of Empire, and when mapped onto this world open up a space for living that is non-territorial and non-sacrificial, the grammar of which is governed by a political understanding of love.

Bertrand Russell: The Colours of Pacifism analyzes the tenacious commitment of one of the twentieth century's most extraordinary intellectuals to the cause of civilization, progress, and human rights. Through his active and pragmatic pacifism, Russell sought to confront the problems stemming from the unstable and dramatic political conditions of his age: the beginning of the Great War, the establishment of the League of Nations, the rise of totalitarian regimes, the outbreak of the Second World War, the dawn of (...) the Atomic Age, the escalation of the Cold War, the weakness of the United Nations, and the need for world government. His reflections on the subject of peace, which constitute the main focus of this book, led Russell into dialogue with some of the greatest figures of his time, including Romain Rolland, Albert Einstein, Woodrow Wilson, Leon Trotsky, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Nikita Khrushchev, and J. F. Kennedy. Shining new light on a lifelong preoccupation in Russell's work and thinking, The Colours of Pacifism is a landmark study that will appeal to students, scholars and anyone curious about the philosopher's engagement with the world around him. (shrink)

In this volume, Mark Douglas offers a new vision of the history of Christian pacifism within the context of a warming world. He narrates this story in a way that recognizes the complexities of the tradition and aligns it with a coherent theological vision, one that shapes the tradition to encompass the new causes and types of wars fought during the Anthropocene. Along the way, Douglas draws from research in historical climatology to recover the overlooked role that climate (...) changes have always played in shaping not only the Christian pacifist tradition but also the movement of traditions through western history. Scholars across a range of disciplines - peace studies, Christian theology and history, environmentalism, and environmental conflict studies - will benefit from this model of critical and charitable engagement with the complex history of Christian pacifism, the resources of which will be important for addressing wars in a warming world. (shrink)

In this chapter, I introduce a novel conception of pacifism. This conception arises out of considering two key insights drawn from Cheyney Ryan’s work, specifically his characterization of the ‘pacifist impulse’ as a felt rejection of killing and his analysis of contemporary Western attitudes to war and methods of fighting, as reflecting a condition of alienated war. I expand on these claims and argue that considering them together reveals an important problem for pacifism. Specifically, the alienated condition of (...) contemporary violence renders the pacifist impulse impotent with respect to its usual function, i.e. to inhibit violence. In response, I propose re-conceiving of pacifism: Building on the Marxist-Hegelian notion of alienation and re-appropriation, I describe this proposed alternative view of pacifism as re-appropriated violence. (shrink)

"Responding to the unprecedented violence of our times, and the corresponding interest in nonviolent solutions, this book takes up the heart of pacifism: its critique of what pacifists have termed the war system. Pacifism as War Abolitionism provides an account of the war system that draws on contemporary sociology, history, and political philosophy. The core of its critique of that system is that war begets war, and hence war will not be ended--or even constrained--by finding more principled (...) ways to fight war, as many imagine. War can only be ended by ending the war system, which can only be done nonviolently. This has been the message of pacifism's great voices like Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Dorothy Day. It is the principal message of this book. Key Features: Draws extensively on the sociological and historical research on war to expand the usual philosophical discussion beyond hypothetical accounts ; Expands the dialogues on the ethics of war beyond just war theory to its principal alternative: pacifism ; Engages discussion of empire and imperialism in relation to the logic and development of the war system ; Presents pacifism's response to the reality of war today, including the idea of 'never-ending war"--. (shrink)

Mainstreaming Pacifism: Conflict, Success, and Ethics covers the history of philosophy concerning successful political means, and proposes an original interpretation of Machiavelli, Montesquieu, Marx and Gandhi. The book counters the objection that pacifism is ineffective, and proposes that pacifism is not for a sect, but rather draws its most effective strategies from, and contributes them to, the mainstream political tradition.

Long about 2014 or 2015 Andrew Fiala was negotiating the title of a handbook project. Meanwhile, in March of 2016, editors of The Acorn were deliberating a revised subtitle for the journal. Both projects landed on the same key terms: pacifism and nonviolence. A zeitgeist was afoot. In this volume, we present Fiala’s framing of philosophical pacifism. Exemplary virtues still by and large belong to the warrior (nor are we here to dismiss the warrior’s honor as such.) Yet, (...) as Steven Steyl reports, the mid-20th Century revival of virtue ethics was accompanied by overt hostility to pacifism. If we are to take a courageous turn towards pacifism, we must learn to see how the history of nonviolence asserts compelling examples of virtue that deserve deep philosophical engagement on their own terms. On the surface, Tommy Curry’s American Book Award winning The Man-Not may appear to lie far afield from philosophical studies in pacifism and nonviolence. But closer engagement with the work teaches us things we did not know about the virtue of compassion. In Curry’s work we learn what it means to care deeply and unapologetically for the persons and livelihoods of Black men in America. (shrink)

Interest in pacifism—an idea with a long history in philosophical thought and in several religious traditions—is growing. The Routledge Handbook of Pacifism and Nonviolence is the first comprehensive reference designed to introduce newcomers and researchers to the many varieties of pacifism and nonviolence, to their history and philosophy, and to pacifism’s most serious critiques. The volume offers 32 brand new chapters from the world’s leading experts across a diverse range of fields, who together provide (...) a broad discussion of pacifism and nonviolence in connection with virtue ethics, capital punishment, animal ethics, ecology, queer theory, and feminism, among other areas. This Handbook is divided into four sections: (1) Historical and Tradition-Specific Considerations, (2) Conceptual and Moral Considerations, (3) Social and Political Considerations, and (4) Applications. It concludes with an Afterword by James Lawson, one of the icons of the nonviolent American Civil Rights movement. The text will be invaluable to scholars and students, as well as to activists and general readers interested in peace, nonviolence, and critical perspectives on war and violence. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Through a brief analysis of the reflections of some prestigious contemporary philosophers such as Norberto Bobbio, Mulford Quickert Sibley, Wilhelm Emil Mühlmann, Michael Allen Fox, David Cortright, Larry May, John Rawls, Eric Reitan, Johan Galtung and David Boersema, this essay reconstructs Russell's pacifist commitment during the First World War. This dramatic event represented a real watershed for his multifaceted and ingenious personality, leading to his new political and civil commitment. Through a series of articles and lectures, he fought against (...) militarism, was in favour of a world government and underlined the psychological causes of war. All this coincided in part with the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, the ideas of which he initially shared; at the time of the Leeds Convention, he believed that the March revolution would involve a complete political and economic change at the international level by removing the causes of war. It was not by chance that he decided to join the Independent Labour Party, a choice that marked his separation from the Liberals. Although the latter explored in depth different forms of pacifism, Russell implicitly recalled the formula ‘Pax enim non belli privatio’ by Baruch Spinoza, supporting a fundamental paradigm of the modern political theory. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Amongst the Italian exiles who arrived at the Canton of Ticino following repression perpetrated by the Di Rudinì and Pelloux administrations – after the popular uprisings of 1898 – are Enrico Bignami, Giuseppe Rensi and Arcangelo Ghisleri, who, in Lugano, created a sort of secular symposium for fostering spiritual values. This gave birth to Coenobium, the ‘international journal of independent studies’, which remained in operation between 1906 and 1919. This periodical distinguished itself due to the diversity of the issues (...) addressed: from science to law, from history to philosophy, from literature to spiritualism, philosophy and psychology. With the beginning of the First World War, however, Coenobium’s focus was on the spiral of violence triggered by the war; hence a series of denunciations entrusted to the column ‘War to war!’, which marked a dramatic change in the editorial policy of the magazine edited by Bignami, who was determined to turn it into a strong instrument of pacifist propaganda. Several prestigious figures in Europe’s cultural and political milieus participated in this venture, notably Norman Angell, Romain Rolland, Angelo Crespi, Raffaele Ottolenghi, Claudio Treves, Filippo Turati, Henri La Fontaine, Nicholas Murray Butler and Enrico Bignami. (shrink)

The destruction wrought by even just wars lends undeniable appeal to radical pacifism, according to which all wars are unjust. Yet radical pacifism is fundamentally flawed. In the past decade, a moderate and more defensible form of pacifism has emerged. According to what has been called ‘contingent pacifism’, it is very unlikely that it is morally permissible to wage any given war. This chapter develops the doctrine of contingent pacifism by distinguishing and developing various versions (...) of it, and by assessing the merits and drawbacks of each. According to ‘proportionality-based’ contingent pacifism, almost all wars with just causes are unjust ‘tout court’ because the in bello harms such wars impose on the innocent are too great relative to the relevant evils averted by achieving the war’s aims. After arguing against this view, the chapter introduces a novel, more defensible form of contingent pacifism, called ‘epistemic-based’ contingent pacifism, according to which the prevalence of mistaken judgements regarding the justness of wars, combined with the devastating harmfulness of unjust wars, requires imposing prohibitions against waging war, where the strength of the prohibition varies according to whether the government has a history of mistakes or deception regarding the justness of wars. (shrink)

In 1911, the prominent Italian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ernesto T. Moneta and, with him, a number of Italian “pacifists” actively supported the invasion of Libya (carried out) by the Italian army. On the columns of “La Vita Internazionale”, journal edited by Moneta since 1898, Italian “pacifists” not only agreed that it was good and convenient for Italy to conquer a part of North Africa, but showed an enthusiasm they had never manifested before in support of pacifist initiatives. The question (...) is why an ardent pacifist and wise intellectual, as Moneta was, renounced so easily his pacifist ideals to support a bloody war and a harsh repression of the Arab rebels, as the one which followed the defeat of the Turkish army. To answer this question, the essay analyzes the articles published by Moneta and other contributors on “La Vita Internazionale” and discusses them with regard to both the international political events occurred during the first decade of the 20th century and the dominant ideologies of the time (namely irrationalism and anti-individualism). The essay concludes that Moneta's agreement with the colonialist war has been prepared and made possible by a number of pre-war ideological and political influences which had transformed his democratic and peace-oriented ideas of nation, people and state into nationalist and aggressive ones. (shrink)

With regard to the morality of war, political philosophers have defended one of two basic positions, just war theory or absolute pacifism, but between thesetwo opposing views are various moderate positions. Throughout its long history, the Catholic Church has taken various stances, some strong and others more moderate, on the question of war. Unfortunately, the most recent formulation of the Church’s position is a moderate position without clear guidelines. In this paper I argue that if one wishes to (...) maintain that war is permissible in certain circumstances, it is important to have a position which rules out certain other types of wars as wrong in principle. Neither conditional pacifism nor the modern formulation of just war theory provides such a principled position; instead, the most plausible attempt to place the appropriate limits on war ought to begin from traditional just war theory. This view, which I refer to as strict just war theory, emphasizes particular aspects of traditional just war theory. (shrink)

Two significantly different, if related, themes run through pacifist ideas in western history. One school of pacifism rejects violence as itself evil by whomever practiced and in whatever cause, but accepts the state as the agent of change to abolish violence. This point of view includes an expressed hope that a Utopian reconstitution of government will produce a totally peaceful world society. The other major theme expressed by pacifists in western culture accepts violence as inevitable in history (...) and perhaps even in some sense "ordained by God." The moral rejection of violence follows from an all-encompassing desire to separate from the society where violence is practiced and to live apart in a peaceful society ruled by the love of Christ. This paper explores these two themes in the western historical context via examination of the pacifism of Erasmus, exemplifying the first theme, and that of the Anabaptists of the Schleitheim Confession, representing the second theme. (shrink)

This paper examines the question whether physicians are obligated by their professional ethos to defend a pacifist position. The question is a more concrete and applied formulation of the general thesis that there are what I will call “pacifist professions”: professions whose ethos requires their members to act in a pacifist way. Since the present paper is rather one in applied philosophy than a theoretical one about the foundation of pacifism, it will concentrate on the practical issue of whether (...) and how physicians can execute their profession in or during war. Theoretical questions on the nature and extent of pacifism will be considered only to the extent necessary to treat the main issue. The introductory section will give a short overview of some histori- cal aspects of physicians’ participation in war and show the relevance of the issue with recent examples. The remainder of this section will thus serve to set the stage and to outline the connections between the medical profession and questions of war and peace. The paper will then be divided into three other main parts: the first part will be devoted to defining in a general manner so-called “professional pacifism”. The second part will investigate whether and to what extent the medical profession can be classified as a pacifist profession, and the third part will look at the consequences of such a classification. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:322 BOOK REVIEWS the Holy Office, who in the early 1800s recognized that empirical demonstrations of the earth's motion had finally been given and convinced Pope Pius VII to revoke the longstanding decree against Copernicanism. Unfortunately his greatest opponent turned out to be another Dominican, Father Filippo Anfossi, Master of the Sacred Palace at the time, who had views similar to those voiced by Cardinal Bellarmine in 1615 (pp. (...) 473-475). The story is told in great detail by Walter Brandmiiller and Johannes Griepl, Copemico, Galilei e la Chiesa: Fine delta controversia (1820), gli atti del Sant'Uffizio, Vatican City 1992-summarized in my notice in The Catholic Historical Review 80 (1994): 380-83. It is ironic, of course, that the battle was fought out by two Thomists, the one a progressive and the other a traditionalist, but it is indeed fortunate that it was the progressive Thomist who won out in the end. The Catholic University ofAmerica Washington, D.C. WILLIAM A. WALLACE, O.P. Love Your Enemies: Discipleship, Pacifism and Just War Theory. By LISA SOWLE CAHILL. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1994. Pp. xii + 252. $17.00 (paper). Lisa Cahill's Love Your Enemies: Discipleship, Pacifism and Just War Theory provides an excellent introduction to questions of peace-making and war-making in the history of Western Christianity. Cahill canvasses the standard sources for her history: the generally pacifist period of the New Testament and the early church (chapters two and three); the emergence of the just war tradition with Augustine and Aquinas (chapters four and five); just war, crusade, and pacifist responses during the Reformation period (chapters six through eight); and just war and pacifist responses in the twentieth -century American debate (chapters nine and ten). Love Your Enemies is relatively comprehensive, even-handed, and well-written. Beyond its general competence, Love Your Enemies provides rich theological fare, situating questions on war and peace in the context of Christian discipleship as a whole. One result of using discipleship as the organizing motif is that pacifism gets an unusually sympathetic and fair hearing. Cahill serves as an excellent reporter on these contentious questions. While often intimating her sympathies, she consistently avoids taking decisive positions or closing avenues of exploration. The title of her final chapter -the "Fragility of the Gospel"-reflects this approach. In this chapter Cahill emphasizes that Christian communities must continuously challenge themselves and their society to live out the gospel of peace (239-44). BOOK REVIEWS 323 What does it mean to live as a follower of Jesus today (ix)? This is Cahill's central question. To this end she asks two further questions. First, what is the way of discipleship established by Jesus with regard to doing violence? Second, to what extent can Christians hope to apply this ethic of discipleship to the wider civil society (40)? These questions arise in a variety of forms throughout the book. For instance, Cahill elegantly shows how a Christian's eschatological commitments (i.e., beliefs about the extent to which God's peaceful rule can be established by a community of believers and/or the extent to which this can be realized in "the world") can affect her response to the possibility of doing violence. While setting as one's task the attempt to find a way to combine Christian discipleship with public responsibility has many strengths, it is not without possible pitfalls. Typically, "Christian responsibility" is contrasted with "the evangelical imperative of non-violence" (see 55-56). But this notion of "responsibility" often begs the central question-i.e., for the Christian, can the most "responsible" stance be anything but what Cahill proclaims to be the evangelical stance of non-violence? While Cahill does acknowledge the strength of the argument by advocates of "responsibility" (i.e., those ~ho set up the non-violent stance in opposition to the faithful following of Jesus), she does not explicitly endorse their move. From her self-professed Catholic context, Cahill strives fo harmonize a neo-Thomist understanding of natural law-that there is "an objective moral order, knowable by reason, that yields universal moral laws by which all human persons and communities should abide" (3)-with a more particularistic... (shrink)

The number of wars in which modern countries, primarily the United States and Great Britain, have been involved in the past one hundred years might leave the impression that peace movements there are ineffectual. Virtually every war in recent US and UK history has had its corresponding anti-war protests, and there is no record of a peace movement actively stopping an impending significant military action at inception, although evidence exists that peace movements have affected martial policy after the initial (...) stages of a military action. Instead, peace movements seem to elicit ill will and accusations of self-preservation and treason. This paper will show that peace movements are thus censored through a sense of patriotism constructed by those in positions of influence, including government entities and the press. More important, this paper will argue that the reasoning of these pacifist movements and of their detractors can be more clearly understood through application of the work of philosopher G.E.M. Anscombe, particularly her essay “Modern Moral Philosophy,” than through other philosophers such as Richard M. Weaver. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article analyses the abbé de Saint-Pierre as a mediator of ideas between France and England. The political proposal of the Projet pour rendre la paix perpétuelle en Europe circulated in Great Britain just before the signing of the peace treaties of Utrecht and Aachen, attesting the influence that Saint-Pierre’s proposal exerted on British thought and politics. The abbé was engaged in dialogue with Quaker pacifists and, in particular, with the projects put forward by William Penn and John Bellers, (...) both theorists of a ‘European State’. After examining the relationship between Penn’s Essay and Saint-Pierre’s ideas, the article will demonstrate how elements of Bellers’s Some Reasons found their way into the Projet with numerous convergences of lexicon and content suggesting that the abbé had drawn inspiration from Bellers. Quaker ideas on politics had a greater effect on Saint-Pierre’s conception of peace and international relations than is commonly recognized. In fact, there was a constant intellectual exchange between the abbé and British political, economic and philosophical thought. (shrink)

Historians are showing increasing interest in scientific internationalism, the notion that science transcends national differences and hence advances peace and cooperation. This notion became particularly popular in the decades around 1900, the heyday of the universal expositions and the so-called first era of globalization. In this article I argue that in order to properly historicize scientific internationalism, it is imperative to understand how actors imagined science to have pacifist effects, and to relate their technoscientific to their geopolitical imaginaries. To illustrate (...) this, I analyze the 1911 novel Der Menschheit Hochgedanken (translated as When Thoughts Will Soar) by the famous Austrian pacifist Baroness Bertha von Suttner. It tells the story of a scientific conference whose participants, by the sheer brilliance of their thought, ward off war and preserve world peace. Relating the novel to von Suttner’s own life experiences, I situate her internationalism in the social texture and international relations of the late Habsburg Empire. It appears that Von Suttner mobilized notions of the pacific effects of science with an eye to preserving both the European system of states and the position of the aristocracy. (shrink)

Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein were ideally united in their staunch commitment to peace, which culminated in their famous 1955 Manifesto. This article analyses primarily their ideas that can be attributed to ‘scientific pacifism', a kind of leitmotif of their ideological battle that begun in conjunction with the First World War. They shared Freudian theories according to which the real reasons for the war were to be found in the primitive impulses of human nature; in other words, war was (...) intrinsic to human nature rather than an historical social construct. Unlike Einstein, Russell conceived of scientific pacifism as the result of the overcoming of the typically British utilitarian logic, since it was based on a limited view of human nature. Einstein interpreted scientific pacifism primarily as an anthropological issue (Russell also explored the latter aspect in depth); Einstein sought to interpret the reasons why one of the most civilized nations such as Germany had caused the beginning of the Great War through its bellicose attitude and, later, conceived of and carried out an extermination campaign against the Jews. Both were aware that individual governments’ craving for power, based on human instincts, would hinder any limitation of national sovereignty. (shrink)

At the turn of the twenty-first century, historical studies of internationalism--above and beyond the call to the workers of the world to unite--have become the norm in a relatively short space of time. This shift has occurred in the context of a historical vogue for 'transnationalism,' that is, capturing experiences that traversed and transcended the borders of nation-states both within and beyond the European world. The work of the diplomatic historian Akira Iriye has been central to these developments, illuminating the (...) traces of a distinctively twentieth century history of 'cultural internationalism' that resonated through the realms of politics. Following in the footsteps of Iriye and others--including feminist and pacifist historians who had long engaged the internationalist past--a new cohort of international historians, often sensitive to cultural analyses and with expertise in imperial and transnational as well as national histories, are now accruing broad-ranging evidence of the geographies of internationalism and the political and economic reach of its various strands at critical moments in the twentieth century. (shrink)

In A History of Philosophy in the Twentieth Century , Christian Delacampagne reviews the discipline's divergent and dramatic course and shows that its greatest figures, even the most unworldly among them, were deeply affected by events of their time. From Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose famous Tractatus was actually composed in the trenches during World War I, to Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger -- one who found himself barred from public life with Hitler's coming to power, the other a member of (...) the Nazi party who later refused to repudiate German war crimes. From Bertrand Russell, whose lifelong pacifism led him to turn from logic and mathematics to social and moral questions, and Jean-Paul Sartre, who made philosophy an occasion for direct and personal political engagement, to Rudolf Carnap, a committed socialist, and Karl Popper, a resolute opponent of Communism. From the Vienna Circle and the Frankfurt School to the contemporary work of philosophers as variously minded as Jacques Derrida, Jürgen Habermas, and Hilary Putnam. The thinking of these philosophers, and scores of others, cannot be understood without being placed in the context of the times in which they lived. (shrink)

Olympism often presents itself as “a philosophy of life” aiming to promote “a peaceful society.” Pierre de Coubertin (1863-1937), the founder of the modern Olympics Games, is often seen as a great humanist in the history of modern sport. Indeed, scholars often state that Coubertin has worked all his life to promote social and international peace by the means of sports. In this respect, the “Olympic Truce” would stand as a symbol of the pacifists aims of Olympism. However, as (...) my paper aims to show, those common depictions of Olympism rest on a misunderstanding of Pierre de Coubertin's conceptions of peace, conflict, and sport. First, Coubertin does not understand peace as a condition which excludes human conflicts. Second, he defined sports as a means for social control. Third, in Coubertin, sports are not directly a means to promote pacifists ideals. Rather, peace appears as means to promote the values and ideas embodied by the sportsman. My study delves into this ambivalent relation between peace and sport in Coubertin. (shrink)

Veteran scholar and peace activist David Cortright offers a definitive history of the human striving for peace and an analysis of its religious and intellectual roots. This authoritative, balanced, and highly readable volume traces the rise of peace advocacy and internationalism from their origins in earlier centuries through the mass movements of recent decades: the pacifist campaigns of the 1930s, the Vietnam antiwar movement, and the waves of disarmament activism that peaked in the 1980s. Also explored are the underlying (...) principles of peace - nonviolence, democracy, social justice, and human rights - all placed within a framework of 'realistic pacifism'. Peace brings the story up-to-date by examining opposition to the Iraq War and responses to the so-called 'war on terror'. This is history with a modern twist, set in the context of current debates about 'the responsibility to protect', nuclear proliferation, Darfur, and conflict transformation. (shrink)

This is a greatly expanded version of my article "Anarchism and the Beats," which was published in the book, The Philosophy of the Beats, by the University Press of Kentucky in 2012. It is both an historical and a philosophical analysis of the postwar American counterculture. It charts the historical origins of the postwar American counterculture from the anarchists and romantic poets of the early nineteenth century to a complex network of beat poets and pacifist anarchists in the early decades (...) after World War II. The beat poets understood themselves to be religious prophets of a new form of liberated consciousness. Poetry was both a means to achieve this new form of consciousness and a means to express that consciousness once it was achieved by other means including travel, psychedelic drugs, sex or meditation. The transformation of consciousness sought by the beats was therefore primarily religious in nature, not political or ideological. However, that does not mean that the beats believed that the transformation of consciousness they sought had no political or social implications. On the contrary, the beats were almost all anarchists. It merely means that, for them, political ideology follows consciousness, not the reverse. (shrink)

William Ellery Channing, one of the most important theological figures of early nineteenth century America, produced a remarkable body of writings on war. These writings, spanning more than three decades, epitomize the moral and theological struggles of early progressive Christians around issues of peace and war. This paper argues that Channing's war writings are both a reflection of their time and ahead of their time. They are rooted in the social and political realities of antebellum America and in the early (...) liberal theology that Channing himself helped to define, yet they anticipate several late twentieth-century developments in just war thinking and foreshadow many of the strategies advocated by contemporary proponents of the emerging “just peacekeeping” paradigm. (shrink)

Does truth have a history? Whereas Bernard William denies it and only allows a history of truthfulness, I defend the possibility of a critical history or genealogy of truth. Because a trifling relativistic historicization of truth leads to a paradoxically a-historic and pacifistic conception of truth, one must first establish the methodological concepts with which a genealogy of truth can avoid both problems. Three first steps towards such concepts can be found in some of Michel Foucault’s lectures, (...) which lead the genealogy of truth to focus on the origins of truth’s force. (shrink)

This essay traces the influence of Carl Schmitt on an interpretative tendency found in a number of contemporary readings of Kant’s political philosophy. This influence can be traced back to two basic commitments: the idea that Kant’s philosophy seeks to defend a pacifist and humanitarian ideal of history and progress, and that political conflict must, for this reason, be somehow pacified or eradicated. I argue that these ‘anti-conflict’ readings of Kant go astray in ignoring the systemic role conflict plays (...) in Kant’s understanding of agency and freedom on the one hand, and in overlooking that this conflict is not empirical but normative, and thereby, unavoidable. In light of this ‘agential conflict’, Schmitt’s critique to Kant begins to lose all its force. (shrink)

Can war be justified? Pacifists answer that it cannot; they oppose war and advocate for nonviolent alternatives to war. But defenders of just war theory argue that in some circumstances, when the effectiveness of nonviolence is limited, wars can be justified. -/- In this book, two philosophers debate this question, drawing on contemporary scholarship and new developments in thinking about pacifism and just war theory. Andrew Fiala defends the pacifist position, while Jennifer Kling defends just war traditions. Fiala argues (...) that pacifism follows from the awful reality of war and the nonviolent goal of building a more just and peaceful world. Kling argues that war is sometimes justified when it is a last-ditch, necessary effort to defend people and their communities from utter destruction and death. Pulling from global traditions and histories, their debate will captivate anyone who has wondered or worried about the morality of political violence and military force. Topics discussed include ethical questions of self-defense and other-defense, the great analogy between individuals and states, evolving technologies and methods of warfighting, moral injury and post-traumatic stress disorder, broader political and communal issues, and the problem of regional security in a globalizing world. The authors consider cultural and religious issues as well as the fundamental question of moral obligation in a world saturated in military conflict. The book was written in the aftermath of the war on terrorism and includes reflection on lessons learned from the past decades of war, as well as hopes for the future in light of emerging threats in Europe and elsewhere. -/- The book is organized in a user-friendly fashion. Each author presents a self-contained argument, which is followed by a series of responses, replies, and counter-arguments. Throughout, the authors model civil discourse by emphasizing points of agreement and remaining areas of disagreement. The book includes reader-friendly summaries, a glossary of key concepts, and suggestions for further study. All of this will help students and scholars follow the authors’ dialogue so they may develop their own answer to the question of whether war can be justified. (shrink)

What is our nature? What is this enigma that we call human? Who are we? Since the dawn of human history, people have exhibited wildly contradictory qualities: good and evil, love and hate, strength and weakness, kindness and cruelty, aggressiveness and pacifism, generosity and greed, courage and cowardice. Experiencing a sense of eternity in our hearts--but at the same time confined to temporal and spatial constraints--we seek to understand ourselves, both individually and as a species. In Who Are (...) We? Theories of Human Nature, esteemed author Louis P. Pojman seeks to find answers to these questions by exploring major theories in Western philosophy and religion, along with several traditions in Eastern thought. The most comprehensive work of its kind, the volume opens with chapters on the Hebrew/Christian view of human nature and the contrasting classical Greek theories, outlining a dichotomy between faith and reason that loosely frames the rest of the book. The following chapters cover the medieval view, Hindu and Buddhist perspectives, conservative and liberal theories, Kant's Copernican revolution, Schopenhauer's pessimistic idealism, and Karl Marx's theory. Freud's psychoanalytic view, the existentialist perspective, the Darwinian view, and scientific materialism are also discussed. Pojman concludes with a discussion of the question of free will, ultimately asserting that each one of us must decide for ourselves who and what we are, and, based on that answer, how we shall live. (shrink)

Viktor Šklovskij, the famous Russian literary theorist, and the founder of Russian Formalist School, published his first books in 1914, when World War I had just started. One of them consisted of the futuristic essay, Resurrection of the Word, first presented in December, 1913, and devoted to the problem of the death and resurrection of literature through the use of transrational language. Another book, entitled The Saturnine Fate, concerned archaic prose poetry devoted to the war that had just begun. Šklovskij (...) borrows an official military rhetoric and changes its accents, turning it into an instrument of pacifism. It should be stressed that 1914 was the same year the new Formalist theory started growing, reaching a first intellectual peak in 1916 when the key Šklovskij essay, Art as Device, was published. At the same time, Šklovskij had been drafted into the army, and war became a fruitful background for this emerging theory. Šklovskij first served as an instructor in the armored car division; following the February 1917 bourgeois revolution he was actively involved in agitation for the Provisional Government as a commissar, first on the Western front, then later on the Southern front. After the Russian bourgeois revolution of 1917, as events grew out of control, the explosion of history required simultaneous reflection. Šklovskij began writing memoirs long before he reached old age, based on his own conception of the genre. A war depicted in a book with the intertextual title Sentimental Journey is reconstructed here as a mechanism paralleled principally with the automobile; a means of transport to be handled with care. In the first part of the book, the war is seen as having a specific order of things, as opposed to a revolution which follows more the path of chaos. However, throughout his journey, Šklovskij observes the logic of events and concludes that the processes of war and revolution do not stand opposed, but instead have a consequential relationship. (shrink)

Drawing on examples from the history of warfare from the crusades to the present day, "The ethics of war" explores the limits and possibilities of the moral regulation of war. While resisting the commonly held view that 'war is hell', A.J. Coates focuses on the tensions which exist between war and morality. The argument is conducted from a just war standpoint, though the moral ambiguity and mixed record of that tradition is acknowledge and the dangers which an exaggerated view (...) of the justice or moral worth of war poses are underlined. In the first part, the broad image of the just war is compared with the competing images of realism, militarism and pacifism. In the second part, the moral issues associated both with the decision to go to war and with the manner in which war is conducted are explored. Was the allied decision to go to war in the Gulf premature? were economic sanctions a more effective and morally preferable option? was Britain justified in going to war over the Falklands? did the allied bombing of Germany in the Second World War constitute a war crime? should the IRA's claim to belligerent status be recognised? these questions and more are raised in this important book. (shrink)

This intellectual portrait of Romain Rolland --French novelist, musicologist, dramatist, and Nobel prizewinner in 1915--focuses on his experiments with political commitment against the backdrop of European history between the two world wars. Best known as a biographer of Beethoven and for his novel, Jean-Christophe, Rolland was one of those nonconforming writers who perceived a crisis of bourgeois society in Europe before the Great War, and who consciously worked to discredit and reshape that society in the interwar period. Analyzing Rolland's (...) itinerary of engaged stands, David James Fisher clarifies aspects of European cultural history and helps decipher the ambiguities at the heart of all forms of intellectual engagement. Moving from text to context, Fisher organizes the book around a series of debates--Rolland's public and private collisions over specific committed stands--introducing the reader to the polemical style of French intellectual discourse and offering insight into what it means to be a responsible intellectual. Fisher presents Rolland's private ruminations, extensive research, and reexamination of the function and style of the French man of letters. He observes that Rolland experimented with five styles of commitment: oceanic mysticism linked to progressive, democratic politics; free thinking linked to antiwar dissent; pacifism and, ultimately, Gandhism; antifacism linked to anti-imperialism, antiracism, and all-out political resistance to fascism; and, most controversially, fellow traveling as a form of socialist humanism and the positive side of antifascism. Fisher views Rolland's engagement historically and critically, showing that engaged intellectuals of that time were neither naive propagandists nor dupes of political parties. David James Fisher makes a case for the committed writer and hopes to re-ignite the debate about commitment. For him, Romain Rolland sums up engagement in a striking, dialectical formula: "Pessimism of the Intelligence, Optimism of the Will." His story presents a powerful challenge to modern intellectuals. (shrink)

Chronicling the emergence of an international society in the 1920s, Daniel Gorman describes how the shock of the First World War gave rise to a broad array of overlapping initiatives in international cooperation. Though national rivalries continued to plague world politics, ordinary citizens and state officials found common causes in politics, religion, culture and sport with peers beyond their borders. The League of Nations, the turn to a less centralized British Empire, the beginning of an international ecumenical movement, international sporting (...) events and audacious plans for the abolition of war all signaled internationalism's growth. State actors played an important role in these developments and were aided by international voluntary organizations, church groups and international networks of academics, athletes, women, pacifists and humanitarian activists. These international networks became the forerunners of international NGOs and global governance. (shrink)

Balancing respect for religious conviction and the values of liberal democracy is a daunting challenge for judges and lawmakers, particularly when religious groups seek exemption from laws that govern others. Should members of religious sects be able to use peyote in worship? Should pacifists be forced to take part in military service when there is a draft, and should this depend on whether they are religious? How can the law address the refusal of parents to provide medical care to their (...) children--or the refusal of doctors to perform abortions? Religion and the Constitution presents a new framework for addressing these and other controversial questions that involve competing demands of fairness, liberty, and constitutional validity.In the first of two major volumes on the intersection of constitutional and religious issues in the United States, Kent Greenawalt focuses on one of the Constitution's main clauses concerning religion: the Free Exercise Clause. Beginning with a brief account of the clause's origin and a short history of the Supreme Court's leading decisions about freedom of religion, he devotes a chapter to each of the main controversies encountered by judges and lawmakers. Sensitive to each case's context in judging whether special treatment of religious claims is justified, Greenawalt argues that the state's treatment of religion cannot be reduced to a single formula.Calling throughout for religion to be taken more seriously as a force for meaning in people's lives, Religion and the Constitution aims to accommodate the maximum expression of religious conviction that is consistent with a commitment to fairness and the public welfare. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:In Defence of War by Nigel BiggarMyles WerntzIn Defence of War Nigel Biggar oxford: oxford university press, 2013. 371 pp. $55.00Nigel Biggar’s recent work, In Defence of War, is, from the first page, a provocative work. Theological defense of military intervention has fallen on hard times in recent decades, though historically the tradition of Christian ethics tilts decidedly in this direction. Over seven chapters, Biggar offers not a (...) comprehensive analysis of just war but in many ways a theological apologia and retrieval of some of its more salient aspects. [End Page 202]Biggar opens his book by taking on the most well-known proponents of Christian pacifism (Stanley Hauerwas, John Howard Yoder, and Richard Hays), finding their collective work wanting on empirical and moral grounds, naming the “Anabaptist distinctive” as “theologically incoherent and morally hypocritical” (60). In the next chapter Biggar begins to unpack his realist account for Christian participation in war, exploring the role of love in combat, arguing that a form of “forgiving retribution” is intrinsic to a Christian account of forgiveness (71). This ethic, central to the moral deliberations of the just war tradition, is a scriptural ethic routinely ignored by pacifists.Throughout the work, Biggar defends against pacifisms of various types, both theological and philosophical. Chapter 5, for example, attends to the philosophical work of David Rodin, a contemporary critic of the just war theory; criticisms against both philosophical and theological pacifism likewise under-gird his chapters on double effect and interventionism. While Biggar gives a good deal of attention to philosophical and political pacifism, his Christian pacifist target seems to be quite narrow. The opening chapter, “Against Christian Pacifism,” focuses on the work of Hauerwas, Hays, and Yoder with the implicit assumption that, having dealt with them, Christian pacifism as such can be shown to be untenable. The reduction of the polyphony of Christian pacifism, however, to this recent Anabaptist-influenced work was not entirely persuasive.Later chapters take up various and often undiscussed aspects of the just war tradition, including the principle of double effect, proportionality, and the relation between the just war tradition and international positive law. In each of these chapters Biggar offers a theological account of war that is rich and multidisciplinary, with analysis that is not strictly analytical but deeply historical. Throughout the book, this reviewer was reminded of Michael Walzer’s classic Just and Unjust Wars, as Biggar peppers his comments with military history and firsthand accounts by soldiers in wars both modern and ancient. As the work unfolds, various case studies such as Kosovo and Iraq ground his discussions, avoiding much of the abstract argumentation that pervades so much literature on war ethics.In the end the virtues of Biggar’s volume lie not with a defeat of pacifism as an alternative approach to Christian ethics but with his careful descriptions and robust assessment of the contours of a Christian realist account of participation in war. Biggar rightly directs us to view just war not as a pragmatic concession but as a complicated facet of the moral life. The chapters on double effect, legal positivism, and especially his defense of the Iraq war as justifiable, are particularly worth the read and should be carefully debated. Biggar has done the discipline a great service by pushing ethicists beyond sloppy tropes and into the deeper waters of careful analysis of what a Christian account of war might look like. [End Page 203]Myles WerntzPalm Beach Atlantic UniversityCopyright © 2015 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

The most fundamental break in the first season of Westworld comes when the pacifist, girl next door Dolores Abernathy pulls the trigger of a gun behind the head of Robert Ford. Dolores's action fits with the philosophy of Frantz Fanon, who believed that freedom for colonized people was impossible without violence against the colonizer. This chapter explores Fanon's theories and the development of rebellion among the hosts in Westworld. Fanon argues that violence becomes a teacher of “social truths”, demonstrating the (...) freedom of the colonized, and allowing him to become a maker, no longer a taker, of history. Violence against the colonizer, particularly if organized and collective, is political, and it aims to create a new identity for the rebel. The identities of the hosts are, like Fanon's colonized peoples, wholly determined by other people. Humans (particularly Ford) determine who they are and what they do. (shrink)

No word is more central to the contemporary political imagination and action than ‘resistance'. In its various manifestations - from the armed guerrilla to Gandhian mass pacifist protest, from Wikileaks and the Arab Spring to the global eruption and violent repression of the Occupy movement - concepts of resistance are becoming ubiquitous and urgent. In this book, Howard Caygill conducts the first ever systematic analysis of ‘resistance': as a means of defying political oppression, in its relationship with military violence and (...) its cultural representation. Beginning with the militaristic doctrine of Clausewitz and the evolution of a new model of guerrilla warfare to resist the forces of Napoleonic France, On Resistance elucidates and critiques the contributions of seminal resistant thinkers from Marx and Nietzsche to Mao, Gandhi, Sartre and Fanon to identify continuities of resistance and rebellion from the Paris Commune to the Greenham Women's Peace Camp. Employing a threefold line of inquiry, Caygill exposes the persistent discourses through which resistance has been framed in terms of force, violence, consciousness and subjectivity to evolve a critique of resistance. Tracing the features of resistance, its strategies, character and habitual forms throughout modern world history Caygill identifies the typological consistencies which make up resistance. Finally, by teasing out the conceptual nuances of resistance and its affinities to concepts of repression, reform and revolution, Caygill reflects upon contemporary manifestations of resistance to identify whether the 21st century is evolving new understandings of protest and struggle. (shrink)

The interview to Ranabir Samaddar – translated from the original in Bengali by V. Ramaswamy – deals with the Naxalite decade in the perspective of the history it grew from, the history it was part of, and the history it created. The underlying question is: has this decade inaugurated a new phase in the Indian history of rebellions? Samata Biswas and Sandip Bandopadhyay, speaking on behalf of the Calcutta Research Group, engage in a deep dialogue on (...) the novelties and the legacy of the “dangerous decade” that the rulers have only wanted to put to death. The interview explores the evolving modes of popular politics of the past as well, shedding light on the unprecedented and stark opposition between activism and pacifism including submission to law and order. The answers are as much historical as political. (shrink)

This text attempts to trace the evolution of the political and philosophical thought of Georg Lukács, after his magnum opus History and class consciousness, as well as the influence that historical events had on this evolution. Against the dominant consensus that dismisses Lukács’s late work as an effect of his alleged “reconciliation with reality”, I argue that the line of continuity in his thought was the idea of peaceful coexistence, derived from the objective conditions – the isolation of the (...) Soviet Union and the stabilization of Western capitalism. So, rather than explaining his choice to defend coexistence, or “socialism in one country” as a consequence of his reconciliation with, or surrender to Stalinism, one should see his compromise with Stalinism as a consequence of this choice. His commitment to the coexistence thesis shaped his final version of Marxism in a number of ways. From a political perspective, a readjustment of the temporal scale of the transition to socialism in post-revolutionary society constrained him to advocate a more realist strategy that combined revolutionary movements with evolutionary processes – this was reflected in his option for the Popular Front strategy and later in his support for the Western pacifist movements. His late philosophical work also bears the marks of this enduring political choice. (shrink)