Pacifism

Pacifism is the opposition to war and to violence, and the set of doctrines and practices that seek to create the conditions under which the absence of war becomes a lasting feature of human relations, both between states and peoples and between individuals.

The word was coined by the French peace campaigner Émile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress in Glasgow in 1901. The idea itself is far older. In the Eastern traditions it appears in the concept of ahimsa, the refusal to do harm to any living being, a core principle in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. In ancient China, the Mohist school opposed aggressive wars between feudal states, while several classical military texts regarded warfare as a negative and last resort. In the Western tradition, early Christian groups refused to take up arms, drawing on the Sermon on the Mount and its call not to resist evil with force, and later communities such as the Quakers and the Mennonites carried this refusal forward.

In the modern period, Leo Tolstoy gave new force to the idea through his advocacy of active nonviolence, and Mahatma Gandhi turned it into a sustained political method, which he called satyagraha, that proved decisive in the Indian independence movement. His example later inspired Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders of the civil rights movement.

Pacifism covers a wide range of positions. Some are principled and hold that any violence is morally wrong, while others are pragmatic and argue that the costs of war and interpersonal violence are so great that better ways of settling disputes must be found. Among pacifists there are those who accept defence of oneself or others in emergencies, and those who reject violence in every circumstance. There is also institutional pacifism, which calls for the abolition of armies, and anarchist pacifism, which opposes the organisation of society through state force.

Current debate centres on its limits: whether it is legitimate to support intervention to protect threatened populations, whether civil disobedience may involve damage to property, and whether nonviolence is always more effective than armed resistance. These questions remain open and keep pacifism a living part of contemporary political and ethical thought.