Volume 24, Issue 2, Fall 2024
Andrew Fiala
Pages 109-134
https://doi.org/10.5840/acorn202531834
Whose Pacifism? Which Nonviolence? Key Questions that Guide the Inquiry of Philosophical Pacifism
Philosophical pacifism is an inquiry and research agenda that begins from the presumption that war is wrong and which seeks to imagine a more peaceful and less violent future. This article proposes five key questions that serve to elucidate the complexity of philosophical pacifism, helping to distinguish it from a simplistic and dogmatic opposition to war. The key questions are: Who has an obligation to be peaceful or nonviolent? To whom is pacifism addressed? When (or in what circumstances) is nonviolence required? What kinds of nonviolence should be employed? And in what manner and to what degree is the commitment to nonviolence supposed to be manifest? These kinds of questions are implicit in the philosophical literature on pacifism; they can be summarized in the question: ¡°Whose pacifism, which nonviolence?¡± Guided by such questions, and enriched by analogies with feminist theory, philosophical pacifism offers a more useful critical social and political theory than the just war tradition, especially in our endeavor to achieve what Kant called ¡°a perpetual peace.¡±