Pacifism - The Religious Concept Of Pacifism, Pacifism And Resistance To War, Conscientious Objection Based On Pacifist Principles
term absolute political pure
The issues summoned up by the term pacifism are complex and varied because different concepts, traditions, and definitions exist throughout the world, often creating misunderstanding and confusion—sometimes intentionally so. For example, the term may be used pejoratively in political debates by individuals seeking to portray opponents who refuse to support a specific military action, or by those who prefer nonviolent approaches to a problem or conflict while not being principled pacifists. The term underwent a bifurcation, redefinition, and narrower specification with the watershed years of the so-called Great War of 1914. The distinction between absolute pacifism and "pacific-ism"—the latter a term coined by the modern historian A. J. P. Taylor and used by his successors—or other less ethically rigid "pacifist" positions emerged then. Before 1915 the term pacifist was employed as a more general term to describe one who opposed war as an institution, rejecting violence in favor of turning "swords into plowshares." But the earlier definition of pacifist did not necessarily exclude violence—still less all force—as a means to an end, for example, in opposing slavery.
This more general understanding of pacifism did not necessarily imply a refusal to support, or indeed fight in, a war once it broke out. The more rigid position became defined as "absolute" or "pure" pacifism, identifying those whose stance in 1914 or from 1915 to 1916 was based on consistent principles. The terms pure or absolute have been dropped from the political debate since then, and the term pacifist now tends to mean rejection of all and any war—especially since the 1960s, when some "pacifists" remained equivocal on violence in Indochina.
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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 beca…
Similar ethical divisions over war in general and specific (just) wars have continued. War resistance (often to specific wars) and pacifism are not the same; some have refused to participate in specific "unjust" wars or opposed an arms race or particular (for example, nuclear) weapons without being pacifists in regard to all war. For example, the peace movement was often partisan reg…
The term pacifism is usually used of an ideological position that is more than purely personal—the U.S. anarchist Paul Goodman (1911–1972) called himself a "fist-fighting pacifist." For others personal nonviolence in life, or a meditative path, is more important than whether one dons a uniform or picks up a weapon or takes a position against a war or revolution. It is e…
In the twentieth century new forms of pacifism emerged that were linked to political traditions: anarchist or socialist pacifism, nationalist pacifism (for example, in Wales), nuclear pacifism or the refusal to support or tolerate the stockpiling manufacture, use, or threatened deployment of weapons of mass destruction. Many pure pacifists were ambivalent about such a movement against only one for…
Bondurant, Joan V. The Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958. Still the classic academic work of political theory on the ideas and practice of nonviolence by political scientist. Brock, Peter. Pacifism in the United States: From the Colonial Era to the First World War. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968. The foremost histori…
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