1.1 Why Write About Pacifism?
It strikes us as undeniable that the notion of pacifismâthe ideas and attitudes that the notion encapsulatesâappeals to peopleâs moral intuitions. Although many of us enjoy the vicarious experience of (stylized) violence (when we watch a film or read a novel), most of us feel much less comfortable with the actual exercise or firsthand witnessing of real, in-the-flesh acts of violence. When we do end up committing an act of undeniable violence, many of us will feel guilty. When we are forced to commit an act of violence against our will, many of us will try to evade the command or follow up on it half-heartedly. As was documented in multiple wars of the nineteenth and twentieth century, soldiers, especially the conscripted ones, would often deliberately miss their targets. They would not fire at the enemy, but shoot their bullets in the air (Grossman 2009, pp. 12â13). Human beings are certainly capable of aggression, and there are situations where we might expect human beings to act and react violently, but most human beings do not seem to be fond of violence. It causes them distress to watch it live and they feel remorse when they have engaged in it. 1 Or more precisely: when they know themselves to have engaged in violence. It follows that at least the core idea of pacifismâthat violence ought to be shunnedâwill appeal to many a (modern) person.
Pacifism, one could say, chimes with a basic human instinct to shy away from violence. There is a good reason, then, to assume that many people would call themselves pacifists, but this turns out not to be the case, neither among laypeople nor among intellectual elites. Committed pacifism remains a minority position. âWithin international relations in recent decades,â notes a recent paper in the same vein, âpacifism has been a marginalised position, most often figuring as a foil to just war theory in debates over the ethics of warâ (Hutchings 2018, p. 176; Jackson 2018). This invites a number of questions. Why is it that pacifism fails to persuade a general audience (in spite of its intuitive appeal)? Why is it that just-war-thinking has managed to become the dominant framework to think about questions of war and peace, and that, as a consequence, so many of us are busy contemplating and elaborating justifications for violence (notwithstanding our seemingly inherent dislike of it)? How ought the pacifistsâ appeal be expressed for it not to be experiencedâas we think it often isâas a siren song, and thus not to be warned against for its dangerous allure?
We are posing these questions at a time when pacifism seems to be staging a comeback. Recent years have witnessed the publication of a number of texts that take up the âdefence of pacifismâ and do so articulately (e.g., Howes 2016; Hutchings 2018). This very volume could easily be read as a part of that movement of pacifistic resurgence. Many of our contributors write from a pacifist (or âpacificistâ) position and express an awareness that pacifism cries for an update. A shifting geopolitical and geocultural context certainly motivates them to rethink the pacifistic project and to reinvigorate the pacifistic tradition. But it is also (their reading of) that same shifting context that strengthens their conviction that pacifism ought to have wider resonance. They argue that the theory of just war had its chance, but all it did was to strengthen the military-industrial-entertainment complex. The concept of a just war sounds virtuousâit suggests âwisdomâ and âcourageââbut it serves to sustain a vicious international order. Such is many of our contributorâs appraisal of the current situation, which leads them again to make the plea for the appeal of pacifism. Whether this appeal will resonate, and to what extent it will do so, remains an open question. In the conclusion to this volume, in an attempt to respond to these questions, we ascertain the promise of pacifismâs renewed appeal.
1.2 What to Write About Pacifism?
But first we let our authors speak. As its subtitle suggests, this volume consists of three parts. The first part articulates a contemporary âethos of pacifismâ and develops a coherent proposition as to what pacifism couldâand maybe shouldâmean today. Cheyney Ryan defends the continuing viability of a pacifist stance in response to the continuing existence and operation of (what he dubs) the war system. Amanda Cawston radicalizes Ryanâs reflections: it is not just warfare that ought to concern us, but violence more generally, and much as with contemporary warfare, we have become alienated from todayâs violence. In order to reinvigorate pacifism, she suggests, we need to âre-appropriate violenceâ. The appeal of pacifism will be undeniable once we recognize our implication in modern societyâs manifold structures and processes of violence.
Ryanâs and Cawstonâs chapters are steeped in the history of pacifism. Their contemporary articulation of the pacifist position clearly draws sustenance from earlier forms of pacifism, as well as from debates in and about those earlier forms. Their historical resources are mainly Euro-American in origin. However, if pacifism wants to achieve wider appeal, if it truly wants to weigh in on international debates in our post-Western world, then it should âde-provincializeâ its repertoire of intellectual resources. Such is the intuition that animates the second part of the volume, which begins the reconstruction of a âglobal intellectual history of pacifismâ. To de-provincialize need not mean to ignore the province of Europe, especially not in our particular case, given that the very concept of âpacifismâ is undeniably of European stock. Martin Ceadel documents the Western European history of pacifism, paying specific attention to the internal debates within the British pacifist camp. Iain Atack then begins the move east. He describes the pacifism of Lev Tolstoy and emphasizes its radical nature by comparing it to the peace-thinking of Immanuel Kant. Meena Sharify Funk continues the move east and turns southward as well. She excavates pacifistic strands from within the (polysemous) traditions of Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. Mark Gelber closes of the second part with a similar exploration of the presence (and position) of pacifistic ideas in Jewish and Zionist thought. Pacifism is clearly not a prerogative solely of Western civilization: there have been pacifists in all great civilizations. Even if pacifism is definitive of none of the world traditions, it is nonetheless a presence within all of them.
It is very clear from Cheyney Ryanâs opening chapter that pacifism need not entail a withdrawal from the worldâalthough pacifist expectations are maybe bound to be disappointed and, as a result, the allure of a retreat from the world sometimes great. Pacifists oftentimes engage the world politically. They want to make peace (pacem facere). They are peacebuilders. Traditionally, this has often meant that pacifists have sketched out plans to redesign the institutional architecture of world politics. Todayâs pacifism will have to engage in that task as well, although it cannot simply copy old models. Some have proven inadequate, and, more generally, it can simply not be assumed that that which worked in the past will work in the present or the future too. Changed circumstances demand revisions to any plan for perpetual peace. In this light, the third part of this volume investigates the prospects of a âpacifistic global orderâ. It begins with a chapter by Heikki Patomäki, with a sketch of what he calls a âconcrete utopiaâ. In the spirit of Karl Deutsch (1968), he imagines the establishment of a global security community committed to processes of peaceful change. The utopia is a concrete one. Patomäki spells out its cultural and institutional prerequisites. A global security community, he insists, must build on democratic institutions with self-transformative capacity and these institutions must in turn be grounded in a commitment to dialogical hermeneutics. However, Bart Desseinâs chapter on Chinaâs world-political discourseâin which metaphors of peacefulness aboundâmakes it clear that the establishment of a global security community will not come easily. China is on the rise and it speaks the language of peace (even when it often acts otherwise). It is committed to an orderly international environment, but its conception of a peaceful international order is uncomfortable with Patomäkiâs conception of a pacifistic international order. Other than the rise of China (and other emerging powers), the resurgence of religion is also often portrayed as an obstacle to (oftentimes) secular plans for perpetual peace. Nathan Funk takes up this matter. He accepts that religion can be a source of conflict, but nonetheless defends the moral agency of religious communities in its capacity for cooperative governance, beyond state-centric thinking. He promotes just peacemaking as an organizing framework and interfaith dialogue as its cornerstone. Religions can promote peace, he argues, if they shake off their pretensions to unqualified truth and allow themselves to show âholy envyâ; if, that is, they accept the need for self-transformation.
In a concluding chapter, the editors of this volume will reflect âon the appeal of pacifism â. Precisely what is its appeal? How has its appeal ev...