Pacifism

The term ‘pacifism’ is used to describe a range of positions and historical movements, broadly characterised by a general rejection of violence. Positions range from an absolute and principled rejection of violence (such that violence can never be justified), to contingent pacifisms that accept that violence may in principle be justified, but the necessary conditions for its justification cannot be met given existing practices. Furthermore, pacifism can be understood as a personal ethic (including conscientious objection), a critique of predominant political institutions (anti-warism), or as an alternative political theory (with connections to anarchism and feminism). While there is some recent work that attempts to characterise pacifism in terms of the Just War tradition (JWT), pacifism is generally considered an alternative tradition, broadly critical of JWT’s central premises.

The Stanford Encyclopedia entry Fiala 2008 is a good introduction to the topic, as is Peter Brock’s historical survey [Brock 1998 Varieties of Pacifism].