Abstract
This introductory essay differentiates between divergent forms of pacifism, concerning their background assumptions, status, scope, justification and political implications. Then, it presents two versions of criticising pacifism, one external, one internal way. Finally, it will be discussed whether there is a specific coalition between religious faith and pacifism and what form that relation might take.
‘The license to kill is also the license not to kill.’
The Many Faces of Pacifism
Pacifism has never been a mainstream position, neither within broader social movements nor in the Christian tradition on both sides of the Atlantic. In fact, the issues met by pacifist considerations are usually dealt with by the long-lasting just—or better: justified—war-tradition. In addition to its marginal or marginalised position, pacifism as an explicit idea and term in the mode of a self-description originates from modern peace movements around 1900 not reacting to a concrete war, but rather responding to the nation-based fascination for armament as an integral part of the cultural and economic optimism in central Europe. It is important to note that the pacifistes, as they called themselves, had been a heterogeneous group combining diverse moral, national, cultural and religious influences. 1 Accordingly, it does not come as a surprise that pacifism is a covering term; and it might be helpful to distinguish the different presuppositions, facets and versions of the idea comprised in one handy, but controversial notion.
Anthropological Assumptions
Thomas Hobbes’s anthropological pessimism—or is it rather a form of realism?—is well known and summed up in homo homini lupus est. Less known, however, is Ernst Tugendhat’s commentary on this saying that the Hobbesian dictum is an insult against wolves, since they do not kill each other, but men do. 2 Now, what counts as ‘realism’ or ‘pessimism’ concerning the prospects of pacifism is dependent on anthropological assumptions. The classical, but fairly plain question reads: ‘Are men good or bad by nature?’ The highly divergent answers to this dual alternative permeate modern philosophy since the days of Rousseau and his counterpart Hobbes.
It is obvious that the tradition following Rousseau maintains far stronger affinities to anthropological optimism and, hence, the possibility of a sustainable pacifist agenda than those influenced by Hobbes and others. These two basic options do not only concern the ‘nature’ of human beings, but also the educational aspect of human development, namely the potential to influence people and to find distance to prevalent violence at all levels of our lives. Here again one has to expect the Hobbesian reservation against that moral or even existential possibility.
Three aspects are already implied in this almost laconic sketch: first, that pacifism as programmatic idea belongs to a broader context, not only in the sense of being part of peace ethics, but in the less trivial sense of being informed by far-reaching anthropological assumptions about human nature and potential; second, that what one might call anthropological optimism sustains stronger connections to or is even explicitly presupposed by pacifist approaches; 3 and third, that all labels just applied—‘optimism’ and ‘pacifism’, ‘pessimism’ and ‘realism’—are far from being merely descriptive; rather they all entail normative weight and strengthen each other mutually: an optimistic anthropology supports a pacifist agenda, and the other way around, whereas a Hobbes-like picture of humankind will give very likely the preference to a ‘realist’ peace ethics without ‘pacifist illusions’. 4
The Scope of Pacifism
One of the classical statements in peace—or rather war—ethics is the one by Carl von Clausewitz that war is the ‘continuation of politics with other means’. 5 Hence, war is considered to be a genuinely political act, and one accepts explicitly the dilemma of using exactly what one wants to overcome: violence and mass destruction.
A pacifist is not someone who is just against war; since his ‘realist’ counterpart—who does not seem to be too ‘realistic’ for pacifists—is also against and might equally be critical of war. What distinguishes both, however, is their relation to the Clausewitz doctrine (or its derivatives). Depending on the version of pacifism to which one adheres (see below) one either denies wholeheartedly that doctrine or has, at least, deep concerns to see in war more than the ultissima ratio. Even if one tends towards this second pole, it is not clear whether war is regarded as a ‘genuinely political act’ or, rather, something that lies beyond the political and that has to be banned and ostracised. Hence, the pacifist would be someone who refuses to give war a politically justified moral label by not only being against war, but by repudiating the entire institution. And that, the ‘realist’ might respond, is the problem with pacifism and turns it to be illusionary.
However, confining pacifism to a moral stance in peace ethics and a critique of war as political institution is a rather restricted way of structuring the debate; and it is also an understandably narrow notion of pacifism which might invite considerations to widen the scope of ‘pacifism’. Here are possible steps to do this: first, if pacifism is not only against (the institution of) war, one should add that it is a serious critique and repudiation of violence in general. By claiming that one broadens the notion of peace, as the Judeo-Christian tradition actually does (see below), one widens the concept of pacifism at the same time. Hence and second, pacifism turns out to be a determination of our acting; it does not only qualify a moral stance, but generally our agency by refuting all kinds of violence as a mode of dealing with our surroundings. Third, since violence should not be restricted to physical harm, but is also an element of language and expression, even discerning, pacifism might turn to be a qualification of our understanding a situation and relating to it. In this case, pacifism is not a moral and ethical position anymore, but rather a hermeneutical term that not only informs our standpoint towards a particular problem, but the kind of reference to everything we are surrounded by. Accordingly, pacifism might be what the title of this introductory essay suggests: an all-encompassing way of living.
Pacifism’s Status
This transition and spectrum from an ethical doctrine to a practical way of living hints at another, but relative question, namely the open status of pacifism. Traditionally, it is understood as doctrine meeting the problems—or the impossibility—of justifying violence and military action. However, there are other versions of locating pacifism beyond being an ethical theory.
One alternative consists in regarding pacifism as—with Kant—regulative idea, as ruling image orienting our political and moral actions. This means either that regulative pacifism functions as realisable future to which we, possibly by pacifist means, come potentially nearer and nearer in time; it could also stand for an ‘as-if’ stance, implying that a pacifist future remains an utopian horizon that nevertheless could influence what we are doing in present times. 6
Another alternative considers pacifism as a moral certainty, something that is beyond dispute and for which all alternatives represent moral impossibilities. Then, pacifism is not right or wrong, but an element of the background by which something is evaluated as right or wrong. 7 What ‘impossible’ exactly means in this context leads to further options: either we deal here with a kind of ignorance or fundamentalism that is blind to counter-arguments; or we have to do with a judgement or stance based on a person’s conscience that does not allow for (defending) any usage of violence.
A further possibility to specify the status of pacifism in the mode of peace-making or peace-building is to regard it as a virtue. Obviously, this opens up a range of subsequent questions depending on the applied notion of virtue. If one follows the Aristotelian tradition and its mesotes doctrine, virtuous pacifism constituted the trainable and habitual middle stance between two vices as immoral extremes. If one instead follows what is called recursive virtue theory, the pacifist virtue (as intrinsic good) leads to a basic and equally intrinsically good value, in the present case the value of peace realisable by the virtue of peace-building. 8
The debate about pacifism will defer according to the status of pacifism. Questions of moral correctness and adequacy look quite different as soon as one leaves behind the traditional approach of regarding pacifism as theory. The relation to violence and military force takes on another colour when pacifism is understood within the framework of virtue ethics instead of pacifism as remaining an utopian scenario. Furthermore, the divergent characterisations of pacifism are, partly, combinable and do not necessarily rule each other out. And paying heed to these different statuses of pacifism might open up the philosophical awareness of the fact that pacifism in its various versions is combined to or embedded in a ramified network of other habits, values, virtues and attitudes informing each other mutually.
How to Justify Pacifism?
The question of how to justify pacifism is, one could argue, at the centre of the debate about pacifism and the meaning of ‘pacifism’ in general. Reducing the status of pacifism to an ethical theory (contrary to the previous section) allows again for different versions depending on the systematic framework. Obviously, it marks a difference whether one approaches pacifism in a deontological or consequentialist manner or within virtue, value or discourse ethics. However, in terms of its justification we are confronted with a classical alternative between an absolute and a conditional interpretation based theoretically on deontological and consequentialist considerations, respectively.
Absolute or radical pacifism is the form that is usually presupposed by anti-pacifists in the name of political ‘realities’. This unconditioned version excludes morally all forms of war (or even violence) not allowing for any exceptions or specifiable conditions. There is only one distinction within absolute pacifism that reopens the door for using violence: a radical pacifist could claim that he is not able to be engaged in violent or even military acts, but his individual non-resistance does not have to imply that violence is for him forbidden beyond his individual sphere. The aforementioned Max Scheler called this kind of pacifism the ‘heroic-individualized’ one, and regarded Leo Tolstoi as one of its prominent examples. 9
There are again different ways on which this radical pacifism, whether individual or general, is grounded. The refutation of war and violence could be based on one’s own conscience, as in the case of ‘conscientious objectors’. Often enough this objection derives from religious assumptions leading to the theological debate as to whether particular biblical texts or the Koran entail a pacifist commandment or whether it is God’s will to live pacifistically. There is also a secular counterpart saying that the pacifist duty is justified deontologically: a soldier loses his autonomy in war, the philosopher Soran Reader holds; this loss or suspension is against one of the most fundamental ethical principles since it turns a human being into a non-moral means. This conflicts deeply with the idea of human dignity; hence, war is not allowed because of contradicting (the Kantian notion of) human self-legislation. 10
Consequentialist versions of pacifism, however, seem to be more sensitive to the counter-arguments on behalf of what is presented as politically necessary. This version justifies pacifism by referring to the potentially horrendous results of violence and war, results affecting non-combatants, but implying also unforeseeable impacts on political developments, infrastructure, the architecture of social movements, and so on. All this applies also to distancing oneself from war, i.e. this kind of non-resistance also possesses unforeseeable scenarios. Nevertheless, pacifism in its consequentialist version holds that the results of military intervention are very likely to be more disastrous than irenic alternatives.
What is exactly implied by ‘consequences’ is, obviously, dependent on our military and technological potential—the higher it is, the more dangerous and far-reaching the results. Now, the nuclear age has introduced a new form of war and mass destruction, and accordingly, has given rise to the updating of a consequentialist form of pacifism.
11
Authors such as Hans Jonas underline the lethal threat under which we are now living in an era of a potentially global suicide. A new form of responsibility is called for given the powers and potentials we have created in modernity. Hence, Jonas following Kant has formulated an imperative responding to this situation: Act in such a way, that the effects of your deeds are compatible with the permanence of human life on earth.
12
There is, however, also another tradition in peace ethics belonging to consequentialist thinking without turning into conditional pacifism. The just war theory tries to determine particular conditions (see the following section) under which a war is allowed and performed legally. Now, a conditional pacifist could also present certain conditions that allow for going to war, while qualifying them in such an ambitious manner that it would be very difficult and almost impossible to fulfil them. Then, he does not have to refute war and violence in general, but could refer to the relevant conditions not being met in any of the particular cases (which still allows, of course, for exceptions). In that sense, he represents a de facto pacifism.
But there is another aspect to the relation between pacifism and just war theory. Thinking of particular conditions on both sides might lead to the notion that, in the end, a conditional pacifism and the conditions articulated by just war thinking are tantamount to the same results. Accordingly, both approaches would eventually coincide—or formulated stronger: conditional pacifism and just war thinking come to one and the same thing. 13
And there is a third, far less traditional version of pacifism and its justification that is not reducible to deontological or consequentialist considerations. One could call this option (‘option’ not in the sense of an open choice) performative pacifism. 14 The basic idea lies in the observation that pacifism does not only remain an abstract idea or theory; rather its application—perhaps even its formulation—does not leave the relevant debate untouched; instead, it might influence the scenario to which it responds or that it describes. The core element of pacifism’s performance might resemble a self-fulfilling effect, meaning that a pacifist value expressed in thoughtful deeds, modest and non-violent reactions, peaceful suggestions and solutions could create and realise responses that are based on the same value. At least the hope or even expectation of the likelihood of constituting a peaceful scenario facing violent acts is much higher than that of implementing hardline politics. In that sense, a performative pacifism tries to invoke a reply by and resonance from its counterpart that resembles what the pacifist invests. If it succeeds, it has a self-realising effect.
Pacifist Politics: How to Do it?
Can pacifism survive the reality check? Critics say, it doesn’t. This is not the place to confound those critics. However, it is necessary to overview the intellectual landscape in which pacifism is embedded and in which it is located. It is less about giving conclusive answers, but rather about deepening relevant questions to see which solutions are open to a pacifist agenda and to which social and political questions pacifism is connected.
First of all, one has to distinguish between pacifism as means and as goal, i.e. as a covering term for a range of instruments to implement peace and as description of a state characterised by peace. This second version does not imply the first one: peace as goal does not entail that all means to get there have to be peaceful. Obviously, a non-pacifist—or even a bellicist?—defends peace as well, but denies that the road to peace is already peace, potentially on the contrary. Therefore, a pacifist cannot only hold peace to be the ultimate goal, but has also to claim that the means to realise peace have to resemble peace too. In the end, the controversial debate about pacifism is only a discussion about the mode to establish peace, hence pacifist as means. 15
As we have already seen, the pacifist’s ambition is much wider than being merely restricted to establishing the absence of war and violence. It was already Kant who invested in a richer and more ambitious notion of ‘eternal peace’ in not only thinking about a sustainable war-free era, but by highlighting the conditions that have to be fulfilled to make an all-encompassing peace possible. 16 Therefore, the debate about peace becomes a debate about the ‘transcendental’ conditions of peace by meeting the following issues:
(i) What are the basic and most crucial reasons for war? In which way do these reasons touch upon problems such as poverty, unemployment, a lack of education, political instability, injustice, an insufficient constitution or administration, a growing homelessness through effects of globalisation, economical upheavals or existential uncertainty?
(ii) What is the essential condition for peace, if there is any? Is there peace without justice—and the other way around, justice without a peaceful environment?
(iii) When peace is more than the Hobbesian picture suggests—the mere absence of war—, what is then entailed in peace: well-being, health, equality, access to education, etc.? And peace with whom and what: with oneself, humankind, animals, nature? Or to put it differently: is there peace when not affecting literally everything, is there something like a particularist pacifism or does it have to go global? 17
(iv) With which other and relative political activities is pacifism linked: trans-national associations such as the United Nations, establishing a world society or world government, democracy-building, strengthening liberalism, cosmopolitism, diplomacy, sanctions, etc.? Or are some of these ingredients and the assumption they would help rather part of the problem than contributing to solving it—like western ideologies of political export?
(v) Who or which institution is the subject of pacifism? In other words, who is the bearer and provider of pacifism: individual subjects, non-governmental institutions and groups or possibly states and their administrations?—Or the churches?
(vi) What kind of pre-violent actions are still allowed or at least compatible with a non-violent agenda: ‘humanitarian intervention’, deterrence, possession of weapons, etc.?
(vii) What does it mean that we are living today in an age of ‘new wars’ without a real beginning and end, no classical battle, invisible enemies beyond states intending not to conquer anything, but to destabilise structures? 18 Does this effect the philosophical debate on pacifism?
By widening the semantics of pacifism from a standpoint of non-violence to a description of the condition for an individually as well as globally peaceful life, the doctrine becomes an overall topic. In a sense, ethics as subject and mode of thinking turns into peace ethics since all particular aspects of normative and applied ethics are now on the table. But not only questions of ethics are effected here, as in point (vi), but also wider political, educational and economic considerations as in point (i) or (v) and military or diplomatic challenges as in the last point (vii). However, such an enriched notion of pacifism might also turn out to be vague and self-dissolving by losing the concrete grip that ‘pacifism’ potentially has; and it might also be unnecessarily burdened by integrating equally problematic issues such as international affairs into the pacifist business. In any case, a politically realist pacifist has to pay heed to all these facets of the topic if the question is: pacifism—how to do it?
Critique of Pacifism
How to do it? The best known and common objection to pacifism, almost of any sort, is that there is no possible way of doing it. The more sensitive critique might hold that pacifism is a nice idea, but not likely to be of any success under the current circumstances. More offensive voices take pacifism to be a politically cowardly movement that is blind to ‘how things really stand’. Some would even say that pacifism is a merely rhetorical ideology and morally confused since it forbids self-defence, while unwittingly colluding with others who are fighting terror, warlords or totalitarian regimes. What is legally considered to be a crime, namely the omission of support for a person in danger, is, the objection goes, in pacifism promoted to a generalised doctrine. In short, pacifism is politically irresponsible and morally a failure. The counter-argument against this critique will refer to concrete case studies to show to what kind of destruction a military engagement amounted, although one held it to be without alternative: was it true that no alternative was left, did one exhaust all non-military means before beginning a war, did one know enough about the social, political and religious backgrounds of the conflict, were the motives for war politically pure without interference of, say, economic interests—and so on? 19
This part of the debate is circling around external criticisms against pacifism—‘external’ in the sense of not accepting the pacifist assumptions. An internal critique, however, subscribes to the premises of the attacked standpoint and tries to undermine it from the inside. Here are two very different critiques of pacifism of that internal kind. The first one goes back to the Canadian ethicist Jan Narveson whose attempt is to show that pacifism is self-refuting. By doing that, he describes the pacifist stance as follows: He [the pacifist] must indeed say that no one ought ever to be defended against attack. The right of self-defense can be denied coherently only if the right of defense, in general, is denied. This in itself is an important conclusion.
Narveson adds: The pacifist is generally thought of as the man who is so much opposed to violence that he will not even use it to defend himself or anyone else. And it is precisely this characterization which I wish to show is far from being plausible, morally in-consistent.
20
There are different layers in Narveson’s argument. First, there is the right of potentially violent self-defence, whereas pacifists hold non-violence to be a legal and moral duty. Between the right of renouncing violence as long as one is only individually concerned and the notion that violence is generally forbidden is, however, a non sequitur. Second, peace is a right for everyone; rights have to be defended if attacked. Excluding that defence as a duty in the name of another alleged duty leads us to ponder which duty is more basic. It cannot be, third, the pacifist one, because its notion of peace includes justice (see the previous section); its implications, however, lead practically and politically not only to unjust results, but entail also immoral behaviour. 21
This leads to the second internal critique put forward by the Swiss reformed theologian Emil Brunner. He published a short paper in 1958, i.e. some years after the Second World War, but already under the impression of the dangerous duality between East and West with the telling title ‘Pacifism as Cause of War’.
22
Brunner’s reservation has a theological side and a political counterpart. The theological aspect consists in claiming that the peacelessness of the world is based on its godlessness—without faith, no real peace. Hence, Brunner askes: So, do we have to wait, until all human beings are Christians? Yes, surely: There can be no true peace before. … If mankind proceeds on the way without God, it runs into the abyss of a war of annihilation.
23
Brunner’s hope is, thus, the inversion of selfishness which can only be based on faith in God. With this highly theological approach goes hand in hand an argument that is of a very different kind and expressed in the title of Brunner’s text: it says that pacifism leads itself to violence and, eventually, war, because it deprives itself of all means of deterrence. Since pacifism implies being open about pacifism towards potential offenders, they know that they can attack without danger. Brunner tries to exemplify his case by referring to the relation between Germany and England in the second half of the World War. Hitler, Brunner holds, knew about strong pacifist movements in England that may have invited the German attack. Moreover, had Hitler known how determined Churchill really was to fight the aggressor, Germany would not have risked that attack. 24 Hence, pacifism is not only a dubious, but dangerous idea.
To sum up: either pacifism is refuted externally for being politically irresponsible or cowardly and morally untenable or it has to meet the internal objection of being morally self-refuting or politically counter-productive in supporting exactly what it intends to overcome: injustice, war and violence.
Faith and Pacifism
Pacifism, as noted previously, has remained a marginal position in ethics; this is not different when it comes to theological ethics and the question of a Christian pacifism. It is true that there are significant differences between the American denominational church landscape and the highly diverse situation in Europe. Generally speaking, however, Christian theology and the Protestant as well as Catholic confessions on both sides of the Atlantic hesitated to subscribe to a pacifist agenda. 25 Traditionally and with prominent support from Augustine, Thomas and Luther, Christian peace ethics moves within the framework of just war thinking—explicitly critical of any version of pacifism and in the name of political realities past, present and ahead. It is the Oxford theologian Nigel Biggar who gave most recently a neo-Augustinian voice to that tradition by trying to reinforce the iustum bellum theory. His pertinent book on the topic has already a military heading: ‘In Defence of War’. 26
Hence, defending Christian and/or theological pacifism means playing and adopting an underdog role. Here, the general question of what the genuinely theological in a theological ethics really is repeats itself in a field of applied ethics: what is the specifically theological element in theological pacifism? A certain content, a particular justification, another framework or a singular ambition that is connected to pacifism as theological enterprise? One can find for all these versions fitting examples:
Content: Theological pacifism has always paid crucial attention to the relation to faith, contrary to all secular pacifist siblings. This relationship between pacifism and faith in God could, again, mean different things. It could characterise pacifism as an entailment of faith, which means also that faith and violence turn out to be incompatible (conceptual relation); it could also mean that pacifism belongs to the ‘fruits of belief’ or as a faith accompanying virtue or attitude (practical relation). 27 In the first case, ‘pacifism’ is an integral part of faith’s semantics; in the second case pacifism belongs to the normative repertoire of faith in God.
Justification: The genuinely theological element could also be established by a certain kind of justifying pacifism—and once more, in two different ways: one could argue that peace understood in a broader sense is God’s demand; hence, peace is not a mere ideal or invitation, but a divine duty, which to contradict is to act against God. Connected to this, there is another line of thinking grounding pacifism on biblical resources. Here, we enter the ramified and highly debated problem of whether and to what extent both testaments entail a pacifist standpoint. Is the Sermon on the Mount such a pacifist text? 28 If so, is it applicable to real politics? And how, then, to deal with passages that are clearly at odds with an allegedly pacifist preaching of Jesus, like the Book of Joshua for instance, or Romans 13. 29
Framework: Usually, pacifism is a moral stance and, theoretically, an ethical theory and approach. A theological pacifism, however, does not have to be part of ethics or ethics alone and primarily. It is already a highly debated question to which part of dogmatics pacifism could possibly belong. Ethics is obviously one option. The accent is shifting as soon as pacifism is considered to be part of eschatology (the pacifist realm as one of the ‘last things’), of soteriology (peace as God’s salvific gift), or of the doctrine of God (a peaceful reality as God’s own presence). Hence, it is not only about how to integrate pacifism dogmatically, but generally, about the fact that all these options constitute a framework that lies beyond secular forms of pacifism.
Ambition: Here we are coming back to what has been said about a wider notion of peace. Accordingly, it would be an impoverishment to reduce peace just to the absence of war and violence. Pacifist and non-pacifist theologians underline the fact that the biblical notion of peace, essentially derived from the Old Testament term shalom, has a much richer meaning. It is an expression of an all-encompassing dynamics affecting human beings individually and also as part of an ultimately global community living in justice and peace—and peace in all its dimensions: with oneself, with others, with nature as creation, and with God. 30 In the notion of shalom lies also a performative element, since it is, as Eberhard Jüngel holds, a greeting that actualises what it expresses; someone saying ‘shalom’ to someone else is already living in that very peace as much as the greeted person is. In this sense, the peaceful greeting is a (self)-involving speech-act in realising what it says to someone other or alien. 31
Content, justification, framework and ambition—these elements may create separately or in combination the difference between theological and secular approaches in and to pacifism. There is, however, a fifth item that could establish that difference by other means and that actually plays a major role in recent debates on pacifism, especially in America. While the four criteria above presuppose explicitly or latently that there is one common sphere, the political, to which a theological pacifism might contribute, the additional aspect of different scopes of relevance for secular and theological pacifisms introduces a crucially transformed picture. Now, the question of pacifism is combined with the other problem in which sphere or realm pacifism—usually in its unconditioned form—has its place. Authors such as John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas answer this problem by not necessarily supporting the politics of the world, but by establishing the counter-politics of the church. 32 What is presupposed here is a certain kind of duality between ‘world’ and ‘church’: while an absolute pacifism has no home in worldly politics, it could acquire that home within the ecclesia realising unconditioned pacifism by greeting ‘shalom’ to everyone.
Pacifism is here connected to ecclesiology that is based on what Yoder repeatedly calls anti-Constantinianism. 33 Accordingly, it appears to be a deep failure to have given up, under Constantine, the opposition of church and state. The advantage of this highly debatable claim is that it rids the traditional objections against the practicability of pacifism (see above). The open question remains how the pacifist church—and about which concrete ‘church’ are we talking about here?—could influence the non-church, the world ‘outside’, without peace and possibly even without hope for it.
Coda: Opening the Debate
It is an intriguing, but fairly open question: what could it possibly mean to be a Christian pacifist today. This openness goes back, arguably, to three unsolved sub-questions:
_ whether a form of pacifism that deserves its name presents a real option for current politics;
_ whether there is really such a thing as a Christian pacifism as contributor to politics or as vivid alternative to it in the mode of ‘counter-politics’;
_ what we lose when finding alternatives to the pacifist alternative?
If pacifism should circumvent a performative self-contradiction it must not present itself as being without alternative. If it did, it could start to turn into an ideological stance being blind to the voices of others. 34 And if pacifism really entails a wide notion of peace it entails also the peaceful dealing with others that do contradict. That is why, pacifism might be a commandment, perhaps an ideal, and yet, for others, it might represent an impossibility. In any case, pacifism is surely an act that invites a practice that it already anticipates.
Footnotes
1.
See Barbara Bleisch and Jean-Daniel Strub, ‘Einleitung’, in idem (eds), Pazifismus. Ideengeschichte, Theorie und Praxis (Bern: Haupt, 2006), pp. 9-42 (11).
2.
Cf. Ernst Tugendhat, ‘Das Friedensproblem heute’ (1991), in idem, Ethik und Politik. Vorträge und Stellungnahmen aus den Jahren 1978–1991 (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1992), pp. 116–32 (116).
3.
See Olaf L. Müller, ‘Pazifismus mit offenen Augen’, in Jean-Daniel Strub and Stefan Grotefeld (eds), Der gerechte Friede zwischen Pazifismus und gerechtem Krieg. Paradigmen der Friedensethik im Diskurs (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2007), pp. 23–59 (40).
4.
See Jan Narveson, ‘Is Pacifism Self-Refuting?’, in Barbara Bleisch and Jean-Daniel Strub (eds), Pazifismus. Ideengeschichte, Theorie und Praxis (Bern: Haupt, 2006), pp. 127–44 (138).
5.
On Clausewitz and his claim see esp. Dieter Senghaas, Abschreckung und Frieden. Studien zur Kritik organisierter Friedlosigkeit, Frankfurt a.M.: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1969, 31-36.
6.
See Immanuel Kant, Zum ewigen Frieden. Ein philosophischer Entwurf [1795/96], Werke in sechs Bänden, VI, ed. Wilhelm Weischedel, 7th edn (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2011), pp. 191–251, esp. 201; see also Jean-Daniel Strub, Der gerechte Friede. Spannungsfelder eines friedensethischen Leitbegriffs (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2010), pp. 76 and 90.
7.
This way of putting the matter is an allusion to Wittgenstein’s notion of certainty; see Ludwig Wittgenstein, Über Gewißheit, Werkausgabe, 8, 6th edn (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1994), pp. 113–257, §§ 94 and 403.
8.
Cf. Thomas Hurka, Virtue, Vice, and Value (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), ch. 6; Christoph Halbig, Der Begriff der Tugend und die Grenzen der Tugendethik (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2013), esp. pp. 18, 49, 192.
9.
See Max Scheler, ‘Zur Idee des ewigen Friedens und der Pazifismus (1926–1928)’, in Manfred S. Frings (ed.), Schriften aus dem Nachlass. Band IV: Philosophie und Geschichte (Bonn: Bouvier-Verlag, 1990), pp. 77–121 (98).
10.
Cf. Soran Reader, ‘Making Pacifism Plausible’, Journal of Applied Philosophy 17.1 (2000), pp. 169–80.
11.
Cf. Hans-Richard Reuter, ‘Zum ethischen Problem nuklearer Abschreckung heute. Aktuelle Re-Lektüre der “Heidelberger Thesen” von 1959’, Zeitschrift für Evangelische Ethik 44.1 (2000), pp. 113–22.
12.
Hans Jonas, Das Prinzip Verantwortung. Versuch einer Ethik für die technologische Zivilisation (1979), 5th edn (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2015), p. 36.
13.
See James P. Sterba, ‘The Most Morally Defensible Pacifism’, in Barbara Bleisch and Jean-Daniel Strub (eds), Pazifismus. Ideengeschichte, Theorie und Praxis (Bern: Haupt, 2006), pp. 193–203; also Wolfgang Huber, ‘Rückkehr zur Lehre vom gerechten Krieg? Aktuelle Entwicklungen in der evangelischen Friedensethik’, Zeitschrift für Evangelische Ethik 49.1 (2005), pp. 113–30.
14.
See also Olaf L. Müller’s article in this issue.
15.
Accordingly, the elements of the classical just war theory—the ius ad bellum, in bello and post bellum—are already out of the pacifist scope.
16.
Cf. Immanuel Kant, Zum ewigen Frieden. Ein philosophischer Entwurf, esp. the second part, the so-called ‘Definitivartikel’.
17.
Kant called this global aspect the ‘unity of peace’ that involves ultimately everyone and everything; see Zum ewigen Frieden. Ein philosophischer Entwurf, p. 119.
18.
See Herfried Münkler, Die Neuen Kriege, 5th edn (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2014), esp. chs. 1 and 5; Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era, 3rd edn (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012), esp. ch. 5.
19.
Cf. the case study on the war in Bosnia by Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars, ch. 3; for a critique of the traditional objection against the lack of realism in pacifism (by referring to the war in Kosovo), see Olaf L. Müller, ‘Pazifismus mit offenen Augen’, in Jean-Daniel Strub and Stefan Grotefeld (eds), Der gerechte Friede zwischen Pazifismus und gerechtem Krieg. Paradigmen der Friedensethik im Diskurs (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2007), pp. 23–59.
20.
Jan Narveson, ‘Pacifism: A Philosophical Analysis’, Ethics 75.4 (1965), pp. 259–71 (265).
21.
See also Narveson, ‘Is Pacifism Self-Refuting?’, p. 144.
22.
Emil Brunner, ‘Pazifismus als Kriegsursache’ (1958), in idem, Ein offenes Wort. Vorträge und Aufsätze 1917–1962, Vol. 2, ed. Emil Brunner-Stiftung and Rudolf Wehrli (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1981), pp. 373–76.
23.
Brunner, ‘Friede auf Erden’ (1947), in Ein offenes Wort. Vorträge und Aufsätze 1917–1962, pp. 199–200 (199); in the original partly in italics.
24.
See Brunner, ‘Pazifismus als Kriegsursache’, p. 375.
25.
See, for the American debate, James F. Childress, ‘Reinhold Niebuhr’s Critique of Pacifism’, Review of Politics 36.4 (1974), pp. 467–91; J. Howard Kauffman, ‘Dilemmas of Christian Pacifism within a Historic Peace Church’, Sociological Analysis 49.4 (1989), pp. 368–85; a German perspective gives Trutz Rendtorff, ‘Müssen Christen Pazifisten sein?’, Zeitschrift für Evangelische Ethik 27.2 (1983), pp. 137–55; Ulrich H. J. Körtner, ‘“Gerechter Friede”—“gerechter Krieg”. Christliche Friedensethik vor neuen Herausforderungen’, Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 100.3 (2003), pp. 348–77.
26.
27.
On the ethical notion of ‘fruits of belief’ see Dewi Z. Phillips, ‘On Really Believing’, in idem, Wittgenstein and Religion (Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1993), pp. 33–55.
28.
Cf. John Howard Yoder, ‘The Political Axioms of the Sermon on the Mount’, in idem, The Original Revolution: Essays on Christian Pacifism (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1971), pp. 34–51; Glen H. Stassen, ‘Turning Toward the Sermon on the Mount’, in idem, Just Peacemaking: Transforming Initiatives for Justice and Peace (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1992), pp. 33–52.
29.
See Christian Early’s paper in this issue.
30.
This is also an expression in an official statement of the EKD, which is the council of the Protestant Church in Germany; see Aus Frieden leben—für gerechten Frieden sorgen. Eine Denkschrift des Rates der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland, 2nd edn (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2007), pp. 51–52; cf. also Wolfgang Huber and Hans-Richard Reuter, Friedensethik (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1990), p. 35.
31.
See Eberhard Jüngel, ‘Zum Wesen des Friedens. Frieden als Kategorie theologischer Anthropologie’, in idem, Ganz Werden. Theologische Erörterungen V (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), pp. 1–39 (26 and 30).
32.
See esp. John Howard Yoder, ‘If Christ is Truly Lord’, in idem, The Original Revolution: Essays on Christian Pacifism, pp. 52–84; idem, A Pacifist Way of Knowing: John Howard Yoder’s Nonviolent Epistemology, ed. Christian E. Early and Ted G. Grimsrud (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2010); Stanley Hauerwas, War and the American Difference: Theological Reflections on Violence and National Identity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011), esp. Part III: ‘The Ecclesial Difference’.
33.
See John Howard Yoder, ‘Christ the Hope of the World’, in idem, The Original Revolution: Essays on Christian Pacifism, pp. 140–76, esp. 142–47.
34.
See Rebekka Klein’s paper on the relation between pacifism and ideology.