Pacifism

The biblical commandment "thou shall not kill" does not specifically refer to organized war and can thus be taken as a prohibition of individual murder, perhaps not the "legitimate" killing by soldiers in war—an ethical sleight of hand that has been convenient to states and rulers and allows the concept of just war, elaborated by the Christian Church when it became institutionalized in the West in the fifth century and continuing for a millennium. The injunction to turn the other cheek in the face of violent provocation has been seen not as a theory of nonviolence but as one of passivity, suffering, and stoicism. Pacifist idealism and ethics have evolved toward a more formal position of war refusal or war resistance. More generally, pacifism worldwide has evolved from an ethic of suffering and detachment to active engagement through nonviolence as an alternative to war. The invention of Gandhian nonviolence thus represented a critical moment in the evolution of pacifist ethics—though Gandhi was not an absolute pacifist in the strictest sense.