Is Pacifism a Democratic Virtue? Pragmatist Reflections on an Often Neglected Dimension of Contemporary Peace Ethics

Introduction

Is pacifism or the virtue of radical peacefulness a democratic virtue? At first glance, an answer seems apparently evident. Most people, especially in our contemporary ‘post-heroic’ (Herfried Münkler) European societies, would affirm an intrinsic relation between democracy and values concerning non-violence, even on political levels. However, surveys are not always the best way of finding out how reality is not only perceived, but already constructed. Nevertheless, it remains interesting to ask how this specific common mentality of Western European people, i.e. that pacifism does function as a basic condition for social stability of democratic societies, came into life. Thus, the argument I am trying to strengthen in this article has to deal with mental and moral maps which build a horizon within which such positions like the Western European ones can arise. So, once again, are pacifism and the idea of democratic political orders mutually interlinked?

I will not argue from a specific religious or secular background or ‘comprehensive doctrine’ (Rawls). Thereby, my argument still remains open for insights into both religious and secular traditions. This is why I hope my considerations will go beyond the often declared religious-secular divides. In times of deep cultural pluralism one can only opt for an ‘overlapping consensus’ (Rawls) by looking for family resemblances in different religious and secular ways of political and social reasoning. At least for sufficient concepts of pacifism, value-pluralism of living modern democracies need to be taken seriously. In addition economic and structural facts and reasons have to be taken into account.

The Concept of ‘Democratic Peace’ and its Problems

I start my considerations by arguing ex negativo. For this, I reverse the two key words in my question and ask the other way around whether democracy (always) leads to pacifism, namely, to anti-militarism as private and political attitudes of its citizens. Of course, this is not exactly the strict reversal of my initial question. But a first assumption of what is meant by the term ‘pacifism’ could be given. Whatever else can be said, pacifism basically seems to mean a kind of anti-war-ism. Together with an ordinary understanding of anti-militarism, we principally remain sceptical towards positions for which the use of military power sometimes is a justified instrument in order to solve political problems.

Now, this common view on pacifism is clearly a result of a hidden agenda in modern political thought, especially since the days of Enlightenment. This could be shown easily by referring to influential theorists such as John Rawls ¹ or Jürgen Habermas. ² Both philosophers argue for a concept of ‘democratic peace’ which is not only to some extent the short version of what is asked for in my initial question, but which has become a very prominent figure in political ethics, especially peace ethics. In theology, one needs to look really thoroughly to find a position that is not deeply influenced by such a social imaginary. Thereby, concepts of ‘democratic peace’ operate with a mixed set of basic convictions regarding political and social order and well-being taken from two major traditions in Western philosophy, namely liberalism (sometimes together with republicanism) on the one and utilitarianism on the other side. Despite all the differences between Habermas, Rawls and others, the basic argument always goes in a similar direction: The more (thanks to republicanism) the sovereignity of people has been built up and functions with a set of democratic institutions, and the more people take over their basic rights to decide how they want to live according to their own interests and convictions, the less they will be willing to participate in political wars. Not only, but also because wars are always cost-intensive, economically and also when it comes to personal losses in families and communities. One does not forget it is always the ordinary people as sovereign who have to pay the price. Of course, this seems to be an over-simplification of what, for example, the political economy of an Adam Smith wanted to show or of what Kant had in mind when he wrote his brilliant Outline of the Concept of a Perpetual Peace. ³ However, it isn’t very surprising that both thinkers still play an influential role in every major political theory and (peace) ethic up to today.

In most concepts of ‘democratic peace’ the arguments are quite grounded and also interwoven in a clear set of axiomatic premises. Thus, the problems arising within positions that subscribe to intrinsic correlations between democratic structures and anti-militaristic politics are located on another level, especially due to their lack of historical and empirical evidences. Generally speaking, it is simply not true that democratic regimes would lead to less aggressive and therefore more peaceful political behaviour than autocratic regimes. The United States, just as an example, are clearly a state with one of the oldest and thereby longest democratic traditions, but obviously that does not mean excluding military interventionism and partial imperialism as options of US-American foreign policy, not even in the nineteenth century. ⁴ On the other hand, modern China, already one of the new global political players in world politics, may obviously be described as an autocratic Communist regime with regional imperialistic tendencies, but nevertheless up to now China remains really critical towards any form of interventionism. The idea of an autocratic political order on the one side and the attitude of national self-restraint (in mostly all international not regional affairs) on the other hereby go hand in hand. Of course, it might be true as well, that in the nearer future this kind of political attitude will no longer be a successful political strategy for an upcoming global leader. But what history and contemporary politics illustrate is that any conceptual (and moreover any normative) linking between the idea of democracy and the vision of pacifism must clearly distinguish whether it deals with foreign or domestic issues. Though in case of the latter it seems correct to argue that functioning democratic orders with the guarantee of basic rights for all citizens usually help to diminish the causes and reasons for aggressive violence and civil wars, there still is only a latent empirical evidence, not without exceptions. Quite a lot of autocracies successfully helped to stabilise their countries by installing a repressive regime towards all kinds of dissidents and political opponents.

Of course, neither Kant nor other political philosophers after him could have foreseen the massive development and advancements in military technologies. But if so, they certainly would have given up their idea of an inevitable progress from traditional societies among whom military order and discipline stand for allegiance to industrial societies in which economical interdependencies prevent any larger conflict and war. Moreover, one of the deepest challenges we are currently facing, some decades ago was completely beyond the range of vision. The digital revolution and its subsequences in the field of military technology entail more and more unfitness between our traditional moral and juridical semantics of personal and political responsibilities (accountabilities) and their application in military conflicts. Who is responsible for what and whom, when all the decisions and executions are mediated by both political administration and complex technological instruments, without immediate consequences for the involved agents and actors? Though wars and military conflicts result in mostly negative outcomes, especially for public budgets, they still produce high economic profit for other parties (and participants). The fiction of democratic peace as a philosophical concept too often underestimates interdependencies between politics, technologies, market economies and a majority of citizens remaining in their role of media-driven observers.

Finally, most versions of the conception of democratic peace share theoretical difficulties because silent antinomies inhere in their argumentations. As Harald Müller in an inspiring article has shown, ⁵ almost all theories of democratic peace rely on the basic dichotomy of democratic and non-democratic regimes. The result is a sort of antagonism defining peace and therefore pacifism from an already given distinction between what can and cannot (normatively) be stated as ‘democracy’.

What follows from this in consequence is: First, pacifism is clearly not restricted to or dependent on democratic regimes or even democratic societies. Secondly, autocratic regimes may have no less interest in civil peace and therefore may even support pacifistic attitudes and habits in their citizens. Thirdly, the often implicitly affirmed presupposition that non-democratic regimes rather inherently tend toward aggressive forms of politics than other political regimes still isn’t valid. None of the presuppositions between democratic order and pacifistic attitudes and structures mentioned above can be generally held up, neither for empirical or historical reasons nor for systematic considerations.

Pacifism and the Sources of War

Before getting to more systematic reflections, let me continue with some further historical notes. In 1917, when the United States entered the First World War under the auspices of Woodrow Wilson, the general public was attracted by questions such as whether a nation that has a moral agenda like the US has the right to a self-determined isolationalism. Certainly the controversy during the period before 1917 wasn’t whether America should become a pacifist nation. Nevertheless strong militarists and pacifists shared the view of non-interventionalism in a rare and significant historical moment. What dominated the political discussions was the question of what consequences the right to intervene in inner-affairs of the Old Continent might have for America’s Independence and sovereignty. Except for radical pacifists and some other dissenters, neither nationalists, nor expansionists, imperialists, exceptionists, nor even moderate pacifists, discuss a potentially ignored conflict between democratic values and values of aggressive self-assertion that leads to warfare. Instead, they all share the anthropological assumption on the roots of violence and aggressive habits in the human condition itself. Similar to individuals, groups, communities and nations have the need and the right of self-assertion, especially in their relations to others such as foreigners, strangers or aggressors. The only thing that distinguishes autocratic from democratic regimes and nations therefore lies in the outcomes of an obviously stronger separation of powers by the latter. Following this theory, the result of social pluralism in democracies entails a higher degree of mutual cooperation and legitimation in the political arena. This is why implementing extreme forms of hegemony apparently becomes more difficult, at least on the surface of a common public. Conversely, democracies even may be far more often threatened by civil wars than functioning autocratic regimes, whereas on the other hand just wars in the service of self-assertion as one (democratic) nation seem to have a stabilising effect.

Against this intellectual and political background, thinkers such as the American pragmatists and democrats William James and Josiah Royce criticised the too-simplistic view of human condition resting upon the roots of human aggressive habits in the need of individual self-assertion. Thus, the underlying Hobbesian vision of bellum omnes contra omnium, perhaps the most successful social imaginary of the modern era, is misleading because it ignores the fact that human beings always live in cooperation and social relations. Therefore, it is not simply the quest of self-assertion but moreover certain conditions and modes of social cooperation that tend to extreme forms of violence, including warfare. Aggressive violence and warfare result out of highly energetic collective moods in the face of the communal quest of identity, the need for demarcation, or the stabilisation of social and political order. And this is true for democratic regimes as well as for non-democratic ones. Anthropologically argued, as much as democracy is a way of life based on ideas regarding social cooperation and mutual understanding, what we call human aggressiveness roots in the same conditions. Therefore, wars cannot only be legitimated and justified for good reasons; they even can be caused by otherwise very moral values and emotions, namely solidarity, idealistic aspirations of peace and justice or loyalty towards neighbours and fellowmen. Few have better described the dilemmas of human social life when it comes to democratic order and peace than Josiah Royce in his 1916 small and still unappreciated essay on ‘War and Insurance’:

Modern Wars are in many cases deliberately and thoughtfully planned by patriots who love their country’s honor, who are clearly conscious of well-formulated ideals which they think righteous, and who fight in the name of the freedom of the people, and in the service of what they suppose to be the highest culture. World-wide sympathies do not prevent warlike passions from seeming to many who cultivate them not only necessary, but morally indispensable; not only honorable, but holy; not only fascinating, but rational. Let us remember then … it is at present the democracy itself, or … the prevailing popular will, however it is expressed, which, in the more warlike modern nations actually prepares for war, which dreams of it in advance, which tries cheerfully to bear the burdens of its expenses, which glories in its risks and in its victories, and which frequently and consciously justifies it as the highest, as the completest, and so as the most ethical expression of national loyalty. Let us remember too that modern democracy, or whatever else expresses the will of people, does this not because it lacks a sympathetic interest in the concerns and in the sentiments of the men of other nations, but because our modern form of human solidarity is such that international hate travels as far, as fast, and as persuasively as love does … So neither cultivation, nor thoughtfulness, nor humane breadth of sympathies, nor the discovery of science, nor the aspirations of the democracy have been able to make wars cease on the earth. Modern wars may, as we now know, become more widespread, more democratic in spirit, more ideally self-righteous, than ever they were before. ⁶

In consequence, if pacifism can be a democratic virtue, then the first question is: What does it mean that pacifism is a virtue at all? And further: How can we relate this virtue with the ones in which democratic life is rooted and consists in? I will come back to these questions below.

Pacifism and Just-War Theories: A Fallacious Alliance

Royce was not alone with his point of view. Some decades later the American theologian and ethicist Stanley Hauerwas, a representative of virtue ethics in Protestantism and a convinced pacifist, developed a critique of many theories of pacifism that go in the same direction. For him, the key problem of just-war theories and conceptions of ‘just peace’ lies in their neglect of social conditions for both war and violence:

In summary, I have suggested that war is to provide for as well as sustain the particular goods of particular people in a divided world. War is not anarchy existing between states, but rather it is anarchy’s enemy insofar as it allows corporate entities, such as the nation-states, to perpetuate their own particular shared goods, to preserve their histories and moralities. Conflict in the international area may arise not only as societies protect their histories but as they attempt to share them as well. Indeed, it sometimes appears that nations with the most in common war the most frequently and bitterly, much as within families conflict is often bitterest. As the ties of cooperation are strong so is the possibility of conflict; for, as I have argued, the two are inextricably related. ⁷

Following Hauerwas, war therefore cannot be understood without its (possible) moral claims, its collectively shared promises and hopes for improvement of personal and social life. In other words, there is always a public concern connected with violent actions and aggressive politics, though it must not be supported by a full community or nation, but at least—and in the long run—by a majority of people. This insight goes hand in hand with the observation that most theories of pacifism and just-war develop their argumentation by focusing on the counter-arguments of their opponents. This seems something fairly new in ethical disputes because most theories have been conceptualised against the background of possible alternative options. Moreover, for historical reasons, pacifism, militarism, interventionism and bellicism, all represent political and partly ideological positions originated from intellectual discourses in Western societies in the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, for Hauerwas, argumentations whose plausibility and even more whose justification are too narrowly linked with what their counter-parts argue for, must inevitably fail. This is why he tries to develop his own view of Christian pacifism as far away as possible from the standard versions of both secular and religious voices of pacifism and just-war theory. Critics of Hauerwas, such as James M. Gustafson, see in this approach to moral theory and Christian ethics nothing other than mere sectarianism. ⁸ It is true that no hermeneutical mediation can be construed between non-Christian or non-religious views on pacifism on the one side and Christian versions in terms of Hauerwas on the other. Although Hauerwas’s approach therefore does not seem to be very promising for bridging different voices in contemporary debates, it can at least help to be aware of the implicit dimension underlying and connecting both pacifism and just-war theories. In other words, if pacifism therefore can be construed as a democratic virtue, the same can be true for an ethos of interventionism. ⁹ In consequence and in order to avoid every kind of one-sidedness, the question can no longer simply be whether pacifism is a democratic virtue. Instead we need to request the conditions under which pacifistic attitudes could improve democratic life. Any convincing answer to this question therefore requires something like, what Axel Honneth called, ‘normative reconstruction’, ¹⁰ i.e. to show how far and why values, ideas and habits of both pacifism and democracy mutually cohere.

Pacifism and Democracy as a Way of Life

Democracy does not simply mean a form of government but relies on a basic idea of social cooperation and mutual enhancement. This conviction I share with most of the classical and neo-pragmatists, especially with John Dewey. For the latter, democracy represents a fundamental way of life deeply rooted in human condition though culturally formed. This is why for him the idea of democracy refers to fundamentally more than just a form of people’s government and governance: ‘The key-note of democracy as a way of life may be expressed … as the necessity for the participation of every mature human being in formation of the values that regulate the living of men together.’ ¹¹ Therefore, self-realisation cannot succeed without participation whereby social cooperation can only be saved from stagnation when people not only share values and forms of life but create new ones in the light of new challenges. In Dewey’s idea of ‘Creative Democracy’, ¹² personal and public flourishment are mutually interlinked. At first glance, it seems that this account of democratic life inheres an ethos of non-violence but one should keep in mind that both mutual cooperation and self-realisation can also be used for aggressive practices towards others. Dewey himself was never a radical pacifist but, as we will immediately see, his theory of radical democracy tends towards an ethos of non-violence with far-reaching consequences. ¹³

Because democracy as a way of life is prior to democracy as a set of political institutions, the latter receive their normative orientation as their tool from values and virtues embodied in the former. Even so, without functioning democratic institutions, i.e. civil rights, in the long run democratic life-forms will atrophy. In consequence, if pacifism should become a basic element of democratic life, more is needed than mere foreign political obligations and moral convictions about non-violence as a general role of mutual cooperation. Pacifism must become a general moral code for social life. Therefore one basic condition is to envision peaceful forms of life in different communities.

Dewey’s understanding of democracy takes an interest in these concerns. ¹⁴ For him, democracy as a basic way of life must always be regenerated and reformed by younger generations which first of all must be socialised therein. ¹⁵ No metaphysical or any other, i.e. religious comprehensive doctrine, is needed in order to underlie the task of education in cultivating virtues as patterns of habit and character. It is characteristic for Dewey that even the moral dimension of our personal attitudes results primarily out of a basic interpretation (reflexivity) of what the consequences and subsequences of our actions are. In this connection his basic distinction between the public sphere and the sphere of privacy applies. At least two basic forms of transaction underlie our social life:

those which affect the persons directly engaged in a transaction, and those which affect others beyond those immediately concerned. In this distinction we find the germ of the distinction between the private and the public. When indirect consequences are recognized and there is effort to regulate them, something having the traits of a state comes into existing … The public consists … of all those who are affected by the indirect consequences of transactions to such an extent that it is deemed necessary to have those consequences systematically cared for. ¹⁶

The duties of political institutions, like the ones of a modern democratic state, result from the fact that human actions always have consequences that go beyond their direct contexts in affecting non-involved people as other possible actors. Though their inner norms have always been orientated by the values of broader egalitarian participation and deeper individual and social self-realisation, the structural components of our historical public institutions were built in spite of different challenges they had to face. This constellation is also the place where virtues find their meaning and function in Dewey’s thinking. They form the (moral) gestalt of culturally rooted and developed habits. The essence of habits as such are ‘acquired predispositions to ways or modes of response, not to particular acts except as, under special conditions, these express a way of behaving. Habits [therefore indicate] special sensitiveness or accessibility to certain classes of stimuli, standing predilections and aversions, rather than bare recurrence of specific acts. It means will.’ ¹⁷

If so, habits are the essence of ethics as they build the means by which men evaluate situations they are confronted and engaged with. Moreover, they qualify actions as purposive responses. For our own purpose, understanding the role of pacifism as a basic democratic virtue, this means it has to be perceived as a specific kind of attitude that flatly resists any form of violence which is of importance for successful cooperation and includes a critical attitude towards any justification of violent actions at the same time. In a word: Pacifism as both a personal and political virtue is core to an ethos of non-violent forms of resistance. Personally it leads to non-aggressive conduct in the everyday, whereas the political virtue of pacifism is needed for different ways in diplomacy and international affairs. This point of view is guided by a moral perception focusing on what is often underestimated or even overtrumped by so-called realists: Acts of aggressive violence and war cause massive collateral damages for non-involved parties. Public, i.e. political and moral responsibility nevertheless is only preserved by the awareness of these non-combatants on both sides. Democrats, in the term of Dewey, have to take these critiques very seriously. Pacifists play an important role for the improvement of democratic politics and life by reminding not only officials but all responsible citizen of their own inadequacies, moral failures and the fundamental problem of human finitude. This mustn’t, as it has often been argued concerning conflicts, undermine the hope for a better future but is supposed to challenge human self-assurance. Every democratic society therefore requires civil movements, intermediary institutions and committed citizens as subjects of a vivid culture of self-criticism. Pacifists can be looked upon as everyday prophets who steadily remind their co-fellows of their personal commitment and obligation to flourish one of the most basic conditions of human societies, i.e. the absence of violence, oppression and self-destructing power, to the greatest extent possible. In spite of two fundamentally different visions of democracy, ¹⁸ one with respect to only domestic peaceful arrangements and another with respect to what we call wider (transnational) arrangements of non-violent relationships, pacifists, no matter whether they use religious or secular rhetorics, are democracy’s most needed witnesses for the hidden oppressed. In other words, they represent role-models for every form of democratic life. Besides anti-warism, anti-violentism marks the second fundamental aspect of any meaning of pacifism. Or, as Dewey once said:

Democracy is the belief that even when needs and ends or consequences are different for each individual, the habit of amicable cooperation—which may include, as in sport, rivalry and competition—is itself a priceless addition of life. To take as far as possible every conflict which arises—and they are bound to arise—out of the atmosphere and the medium of force, of violence as a means of settlement into that of discussion and of intelligence is to treat those who disagree—even profoundly—with us as those whom we may learn, and in so far, as friends. A genuinely democratic faith in peace is faith in the possibility of conducting disputes, controversies and conflicts as cooperative undertakings in which both parties learn by giving the other a chance to express itself, instead of having one party conquer by forceful suppression of the other. ¹⁹

A Theological Reconstruction of Pacifism

Now, one can argue this vision of democratic faith in peace is nothing less than a dangerous illusion that in no way helps to provide moral orientation in political and military conflicts. A similar objection was given during the invasion of China by the Japanese, and the debate on how America should react against H. Richard Niebuhr, the brilliant theologian and ethicist from Yale who spoke of ‘The Grace of Doing Nothing’ ²⁰ in the light of this conflict. Whereas his elder and more prominent brother Reinhold has clearly declared an intervention of the US could not only be morally justified but also because of Christian traditions, the younger of the Niebuhr brothers however rejected this kind of Christian Realism—today we would speak of humanitarian interventionism. Instead he reminded the public, ‘[t]he way of doing nothing’ is the way ‘the old Christians call repentance’. Thereby, it is ‘not the inactivity of those who call evil good: it is rather the inaction of those who do not judge their neighbors because they cannot fool themselves into a sense of superior righteousness’. ²¹

H. Richard’s position is not far from the principal considerations of Dewey when he was speaking of democratic peace, except that for the former his pacifistic attitude and conduct rely on specific Christian traditions not only of Jesus’ commandment of non-violence but of an ethos of self-criticism and its political implications rooted in the awareness of human sinfulness and the dangers of hubris and conceit.

This little episode about both Niebuhrs is more than a mere illustration of how different options for political and military action can be. Even more, it is a demonstration of the fundamental disagreement between H. Richard and Reinhold in both their theologies of history and their views on Christian ethics and politics. Moreover, the famous controversy between the theologians became something like a symbolic scene which since then was again and again recalled, for example when former President Obama was asked about his options in the recent Syria war by a leading correspondent in a blog: ‘Mr. President, which Niebuhr?’ ²²

Apparently, both radical pacifism and political realism can be justified by Christian tradition and modern theological ethics. To avoid any fruitless discussion one therefore should again focus on the contrast in the presuppositions of theories both Niebuhrs stand for. To begin with Reinhold, his position can be best characterised by one of his famous book titles: ‘Moral Man and Immoral Society’. ²³ Therein, Niebuhr the elder argues that it is always a matter of justice for states to intervene, in cases of brute violence and aggression, to protect and once again stabilise the fragile order of (inter-)national relations and communal living-together. In contrast, H. Richard’s position clearly denies views that try to distinguish morally justified from distinctly unjust uses of violence not only by individuals but also by collective actors like nations. Because there is no individual—neither a person nor a nation—who doesn’t live within a complex web of mutual cooperations and influences, even the idea of a moral (individual) man in contrast to communities and societies that are the real source of immorality and aggression, is misleading. Therefore, the younger Niebuhr denies the possibility of pacifism as a mere private option due to his conviction that both peace and war are rooted in man’s social nature and at the same time in communities’ own pursuit of happiness and search for goods. Public self-criticism to which religious communities in Niebuhr’s view should invite becomes moreover a decisive way of warning against any habit of indifference which can only mean ignoring the always given inner ambivalences of social and political life. This still hamartiological approach towards pacifism’s fruits as a democratic virtue can also be reconstructed in more secular ways. In any case common quests for social or universal goods remain ambivalent as long as the universal commonwealth of being—a secular model for what Christians name the Kingdom of God—is still in the coming. ²⁴

Nevertheless, even such theological views on pacifism need to be balanced with insights of social sciences when it comes to the causes of and reasons for eruptive violence and other collective forms of aggression. Again some typical stereotypes have to be put into question though that might challenge our mental maps of political and moral rationalism. Neither does violence simply root in any kind of discrimination nor does it result from experiences of failed cooperation and personal frustration (or misfortune). In contrast, in history wars and other forms of collective violence often constituted promising options for the renewal of communities and the reinforcement of personal and social identities. In other words, all forms of violence and war may often also function as quests for ultimate meaning. As William James once said: ‘The horrors [of violence and war] make the fascination. War is strong life; it is life in extremis.’ ²⁵ For James, to ignore this fact would mean giving up spiritual and moral equivalents of war and may even before one has started. Therefore, ‘pacifists ought to enter more deeply into the aesthetical and ethical point of view of their opponent’. ²⁶ Many just-war theories often neglect the auratic dimension of war and so do most pacifists. But one cannot strengthen pacifism as democratic virtue without dealing with (martial) virtues like absolute fidelity, cohesiveness, strenuous honour and disinterestedness, even with heroism and patriotism, and the importance all of them play in social life. Because men only exist as social beings with pride and shame, vices and virtues, what is needed beyond and far above pacifistic norms and values in politics are habits that represent effective substitution for heroism in non-violent manners. The fascination of and for violence has to be sublimed and transformed in non-aggressive social imageries that do not suppress competition and conflict in general and all the more do not lose the spiritual energy of the former. Antagonism remains a cultural factor for human progress as well as for regression. The kind of self-transcendence that heroism still holds by opening people up to new and other experiences of meaning and value could never be replaced by merely global economic interrelationships, moral rationalism or political proceduralism. As long as one does not subscribe to simplistic versions of evolutionary progressivism as, for example, Steven Pinker, ²⁷ one has to consider other ways of dealing with the antagonism and fascination of human aggressiveness constructively. In these premises, the Old Testament’s prophets may be helpful because they didn’t substitute a ban of images for war-scenarios or even the extermination of enemies. Instead they sometimes even used them as a martial image of warfare in order to create peaceful counter-visions of what should be ‘In the Name of God’. Eschatological imaginations have always had a political dimension and they still do function by their political rhetoric. ²⁸ This is why eschatology remains both dangerous and promising. The task of political readings of eschatology, in both a critical and at the same time constructive manner, therefore should follow the maxim how symbols, images and visions of human aggressiveness could be inversed, especially in respect of fascination for violence. Along this line, theological ethics of pacifism may offer their own spiritual and moral equivalents to war and may bring it in further public and medial discussions. On the down side, I fear Hauerwas ends up being right when he wrote:

Too often pacifists try to win easy victories against those who support war by stressing war’s irrationality and horror. The problem with such strategy is that, in spite of war’s obvious irrationalities and horrors, it somehow is beside the point. It is so, I think, because it ignores the powerful moral presupposition that sustains war’s viability in spite of its brutality. The significance of the pacifist’s refusal to cooperate with war can be appreciated only by understanding why war has such a hold on our moral imagination. ²⁹

Towards an Understanding of Pacifism as ‘Democratic Virtue’

In the end, one can ask, ‘Did I really answer my initial question?’ I have to confess, my claim was modest and the limits of my considerations are obvious: of course, peace ethics dealing with pacifism cannot restrict itself to questions of virtues (and vices). But as people have to cultivate an inner attitude and a personal habit in case of forming social conducts that can be called pacifistic, pacifism usually means something more. It remains a question which kind of values pacifism consists in. ³⁰ Nobody, especially in our ages of terrorism and economic privatisation even of military conflicts, can ignore how fundamental this question is for mankind. Thus, peace further has to be reconstructed in terms of both freedom and security. Especially the latter is highly controversial. But nevertheless, theological and philosophical ethics have too long ignored how security is a basic value for a lot of, if not all people, not only in domestic respect, but also in economic, social and global contexts. In what way these aspects of ethical understanding are related among each other would be another question. Another dimension I have completely ignored concerns economic dimensions of warfare or furthermore the effects a global market economy with no democratic sovereign as its ruling regime has on so-called ‘New Wars’. There are other contributions in this volume dealing with these exact issues.

Because I am not an ethical monist, but rather an ethical coherentist, I don’t have a problem with approaches that start at different points of moral reflection and in the end only result in family resemblances. Therefore I remain sceptical about voices in moral theory that can only see a consistent approach in peace ethics emerge owing to a fusion of considerations on institutional and juridical aspects of democracy and pacifism on the one hand with aspects of social habits and conducts, concerning ordinary people in their critical citizenship on the other hand. Not only do responsibilities vary between these two levels, already moral perceptions of their intrinsic challenges are shaped differently. Of course, both perspectives are interwoven. Thereby it would be interesting to look at the reasons why many democratic constitutional orders like, for example, the German constitution, the Basic Law (Grundgesetz), specify the substance of Liberty of Conscience at least at one point. That is the case of conscientious objection (Art. 4 [3] GG). Nevertheless both perspectives are not identical. The political sphere and the sphere of civil society remain parted. Even more regarding the fact that both approaches frequently take the same values into account but often understand them differently. Even concerning the same values, the reconstruction and evaluation of scenarios of crisis or other situations do not automatically or should not even normatively lead to the same meaning of them. In other words: What pacifism really means for an official, i.e. a political responsible, more than once shows significant differences to what so-called ‘everyday pacifism’ as social virtue in our neighbourhoods leads to. Because my claim remains modest, one can even consistently argue for pacifistic attitudes in personal and public life without denying once and for all situations in which uses of (even military) force can be justified. Not because they are morally right but less evil than others. On this line, I see important contributions to peace ethics, for example, by the UN with its strategy of a ‘Responsibility to Protect’ for an ethics of limitation of violence within a comprehensive concept of just-peace. In this approach a limited option of military force sustaining our (international and human rights-based) Rule of Law is not totally denied.

In sum: virtues are deeply rooted in patterns of interpretation and not only in habits achievable by social training and internalising plans of actions. ³¹ These patterns of interpretation rely on specific social imageries that have to reconstruct themselves once and again with the help of a certain, but not only one, moral and spiritual tradition. This is why democracy needs living traditions. In no other way can we improve and ameliorate our life-conditions but by being mindful of anyone who is concerned. That is why pacifists do not ignore or deny conflicts and their opportunities in order to renew even our own understanding of what democracy is all about. The transformation of habits basically consists of the reconstruction of our education systems, namely towards a new form of democratic humanism, our institutional settings and our personal view of the world we are living in.

However, pacifism still means more than the mere pacification of our social structures. With democracy it shares the ‘faith that the process of experience is more important than any special result attained, so that special results achieved are of ultimate value only as they are used to enrich and order the ongoing process’. ³² Therefore, a culture of persisting absence of violence together with the decline of military order and the importance of its institutions for solving social and political problems can only put ahead elementary preconditions for an ongoing process of mutual flourishment of all, friends and former enemies, even through tragedies. This process of mutual learning and improvement, however, can create and renew pacifistic virtues as long as it is nourished and driven not by mere idols of collective self-assertion but by the Spirit of whom an old prophet from a very old period of time once has witnessed: ‘And I will make peace your administrators and righteousness your overseers’ (Isa. 60:17).