War, Peace, and Pacifism
A Panel Discussion
Wednesday, November 8
7:00 pm
VPH 215
Brief presentations by the panelists followed by open discussion
Panelists
Mike Andres
Mitch Kinsinger
Don Wacome
Dan Young
Mike Yoder
Everyone Welcome
Click Highlighted Names for Abstract of Presentations
Wednesday, November 8
7:00 pm
VPH 215
Brief presentations by the panelists followed by open discussion
Panelists
Mike Andres
Mitch Kinsinger
Don Wacome
Dan Young
Mike Yoder
Everyone Welcome
Click Highlighted Names for Abstract of Presentations
posted by Rev. Dr. Karen Wacome at 7:10 AM
7 Comments:
Here's a question I asked at the panel discussion that Mike Yoder didn't get a chance to answer. Why think that war is necessarily a matter of retribution (or revenge)? It seems to me that the use of violence for retributive reasons by governments in war is no more morally justifiable than their use of violence as retribution against their own citizens. (Granted that in practice, the difference between deterrence and retribution might be hard to draw, e.g., the Israeli's killing of the Black September terrorists portrayed in the film Munich.) But if someone is beating on your kid and you hit him over the head to make him stop, that's deterrence, not retribution, isn't it? I take it that there's a crucial difference between a principle of reciprocity that permits us to respond with violence against those who initiate violence, and one that allows for retribution, i.e., the use of violence against a person just because she's done something wrong. So, while it was morally permissible to try to kill Sadaam Hussein when he ran Iraq, it is not permissible to hang him now that we have rendered him harmless.
Question for Dan Young: You write (in point 3) that in light of the morally proper function of the state pacifism is precluded, unless the use of deadly force is a greater evil than the harming of the innocent. This invites a consequentialist interpretation, one on which you’d be supposing that the only way the pacifist could justify her pacifism is by claiming that the consequences of the use of force are worse than the consequences of not using it. But why think so? The pacifist might invoke an absolute moral constraint on the state’s attempts to do what it is morally required to do. Suppose the only way the state can protect a large number of innocent persons is by torturing someone. Some would argue that it is morally impermissible to torture anyone even though the good consequences of doing it far outweigh the bad consequences of doing it. The pacifist might regard war as in the same moral boat as torture, i.e., as morally wrong no matter how good its consequences, no matter how bad the consequences of not going to war.
Mitch expressed incredulity at my assertion that Christian practice does not amount to a “higher morality.” So I shall expiate. First, an important assumption: I take it that there are two different things people can have in mind by “morality” (or “ethics”). On what we might call the narrow view, morality has centrally to do with a particular kind of reason for action, viz., those pertaining to how persons treat persons. On a broader view, moral reasons are whatever reasons are decisive; moral concerns are by definition those that trump all other considerations, irrespective of what they are about. These are not mutually exclusive; one could believe that moral considerations have essentially to do with the treatment of other persons and that because these concerns make up the content of morality, they are by definition decisive in decisions about what to do. But one might—as I do—think that moral considerations have essentially to do with the treatment of other persons but that moral considerations, while very important, are not necessarily decisive. A person can reasonably think he has best reasons to act in a way morality proscribes. (My reason for thinking this lies mainly in my understanding of the nature of moral truth: our moral judgments are a product of natural selection for social life. They don't track “deeply” objective features of the world but instead “project” moral properties upon the world. And this evolved capacity for moral judgment is shaped ultimately by reproductive success in the ancestral population, not by what's best for human beings, i.e., not by what God most cares about.) If this is right, then moral considerations have relatively little to do with such questions as, “What sort of person should I try to be?” or “What sort of life is worth living?” Instead, ethical concerns typically function as constraints on my practical reasoning; they don’t contribute much to its content. And, while these constraints have a strong prima facie presumption in their favor, it is not impossible for one reasonably to decide that, all things considered, a particular moral demand should be overridden in a particular circumstance. (This is how I conceive the claims of Christian pacifists: they advocate doing morally wrong things, like letting evil dictators torture and kill the innocent, on the ground that they best cohere with the Gospel.) With these suppositions in view, I want to say that the facts about the God who was in Christ reconciling the world to himself give us reasons to do some things and to avoid doing others. Indeed, anyone who subscribes to the Christian faith, ipso facto sees in it decisive reasons for action. Often, these reasons coincide with what morality gives us reason to do. This is no surprise: God passionately cares about human individuals and morality is a set of evolved constraints that by and large motivate us to treat other persons with minimal decency. What God wants us to do and our moral duty very often overlap. (I regard morality as akin to religion: a “human thing” to which for our sake God condescends, but ultimately always under divine judgment because it can get in the way of what God wants.) Some actions are not morally obligatory, but supererogatory, i.e., “beyond the call of duty.” Some of the things the Gospel gives us good reason to do are supererogatory and this, I assume, is what might lead someone to say that there is a “higher morality” for Christians. But I find this misleading, given that Christian faith also sometimes calls us to do things that are morally offensive, i.e., not contrary to moral duty but still morally bad, e.g., various instances of “turning the other cheek.” And it might call us to do what’s simply morally wrong, though the claim that the Gospel calls us to do what’s morally wrong needs strong arguments to back it up; the default view should be that God wants us to do what’s morally right. But much of what it makes sense to do in light of the Gospel are simply matters of moral indifference. However, Christians who have the broad conception of morality seem to me to be pulled toward a moralistic understanding of Christian practice: "What God wants us to do is decisive. Morality is decisive. Therefore, what God wants us to do and what morality calls for are the same thing." But because much of what it makes sense to do as a Christian is plainly not morally obligatory, they're forced to try to conceive of Christianity as involving a "higher" morality.) Yet the Gospel as such doesn’t call us uncritically to any sort of morality, “higher” or “lower,” but of course it decisively shapes our practical rationality.
A pair of questions for Dan and Mike Y.: I agree with Mike that it is morally wrong to pursue war for the sake of retribution. I wonder if Dan rejects this assumption. When you speak of just war as "vindicating the innocent," is it retribution you have in mind? Mike: do you also hold that it is morally wrong for the state to exact retribution from its own citizens and thus that it is wrong for it to punish someone, no matter how wicked his acts, unless some deterrent or rehabilitative good comes from doing so?
Historical questions:
Isn’t it a bit disingenuous to point to Gandhi and Martin Luther King as evidence that non-violent resistance succeeds, given that they confronted powers which had a level of moral decency, the British Empire and the United States, respectively? These tactics almost certainly lead to a different outcome if used against Nazis, Leninists, or Islamic Fascists.
Mike Y appeals to the Epistle to the Romans as containing a “biblical mandate” only for the nation state to exercise police powers and from this concludes that the United States has no business policing other countries. Yet when Paul wrote much of the world he knew was subjugated to Rome’s transnational exercise of police power. In fact he was, presumably, aiming precisely at those who might be tempted to reject the political authority of Rome. If there’s a mandate there, it seems to me it’s one for the imperial, not the national, form of police power! However, I doubt that there’s such a thing as a biblical mandate for any of these conclusions, but as a moral matter, I find it hard to believe that while it is morally permissible for someone in the United States to use force to protect the innocent here, it becomes morally wrong somewhere else. It seems to me that such a view accords the boundaries of nation states a moral reality they do not really have. Haitians are at least as morally deserving of protection against the wicked as people living a few hundred miles away in Florida.
Mike A. writes, “practically speaking, military force has proved very bad at spreading political ideologies and cultivating benevolent societies.” I invoke as witnesses to the contrary all the American blacks who would still be slaves had the War Between the States not been fought, all the Japanese and other persons in SE Asia who would still be under the sway of fascism had the U.S. not defeated the Japanese warlords, almost everyone in Europe and the U.K.–you would have had to write your dissertation in German! –who would now be living under the descendants of the German Nazis had the U.S. not defeated them militarily (except for seven or eight million Jews, who would not now exist), and the populations of the former Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact nations, who are no longer under communism in part because Ronald Reagan ignored strident pacifist demands that he not trump the Soviet nuclear blackmail of Europe with “Star Wars” or interfere with the Soviet conquest of Afghanistan. One might contend that the military activities that brought about these morally good results were nonetheless morally wrong and/or inconsistent with the Christian Gospel, but I don’t see how they can seriously be denied.
Re: Don's comment #2. I concede your point; my language could be contrued as consequentialist. But in an imprecise sense, even for a deontological pacifist there is still a ranking of evils: it is a bad thing for the innocent to be killed, but it is morally worse (so much so that it is forbidden) for a person to kill, even in defense of the innocent. So the killing of the innocent, while evil, may be permitted.
A tricky thing with pacifism is what is ruled out: is it only lethal force? Are brutal but non-lethal methods ruled out? Is even mild force ruled out?
Acceptance of the premise (state must protect innocent) would still possibly allow some forms of pacifism that permitted non-lethal force against attackers. But techologically, non-lethal warfare is in its infancy.
Who Decides?
(posted by Don for Mike Yoder)
At our panel discussion on War and Peace last week I asked I asked Dan Young(who had spoken for the "just war" position) "who decides" when a givenwar is (morally) "justified", when a defensive response to an attack is"proportionate" or disproportionate, etc. He had responded that "government officials" make those decisions. I had responded somewhat tongue-in-cheek that I might possibly give the "just war" argument more serious consideration if and when panels of clergy, ethicists, etc. areconvened to make such decisions, rather than political leaders and generals, since they almost invariably give themselves the benefit of the doubt and are highly swayed by nationalistic concerns (which I had identified in my presentation as "polluting"). So I ask, was Israel's recent response in Lebanon to Hezbollah's capturing of several Israeli soldiers a "proportionate" response? I think this one situation captures the dilemma quite well. In the same vein, however, we could ask if the Allied firebombing of Dresden, Germany or nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (all of which resulted in numerous civilian deaths) met just war criteria of proportionality and protecting civilian lives.
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