We see nonviolent resistance all over today’s world, from Egypt’s Tahrir Square to New York Occupy. Although we think of the last century as one marked by wars and violent conflict, in fact it was just as much a century of nonviolence as the achievements of Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. and peaceful protests like the one that removed Ferdinand Marcos from the Philippines clearly demonstrate. But what is nonviolence? What makes a campaign a nonviolent (...) one, and how does it work? What values does it incorporate? In this unique study, Todd May, a philosopher who has himself participated in campaigns of nonviolent resistance, offers the first extended philosophical reflection on the particular and compelling political phenomenon of nonviolence. Drawing on both historical and contemporary examples, he examines the concept and objectives of nonviolence, and considers the different dynamics of nonviolence, from moral jiu-jitsu to nonviolent coercion. May goes on to explore the values that infuse nonviolent activity, especially the respect for dignity and the presupposition of equality, before taking a close-up look at the role of nonviolence in today’s world. Students of politics, peace studies, and philosophy, political activists, and those interested in the shape of current politics will find this book an invaluable source for understanding one of the most prevalent, but least reflected upon, political approaches of our world. (shrink)

This paper analyzes nonviolent resistance and direct action, as seen by its practitioners and theoreticians, from the standpoint of trust and risk-taking. After an examination of the nature of trust, the author indicates how it can illuminate what selected figures such as Gandhi and King have claimed about nonviolence. He offers this analysis not as a defense but as a way of understanding nonviolence that can serve as a starting point for further discussion.

In _Civility, Nonviolent Resistance, and the New Struggle for Social Justice_, contributors expose the roots of injustice and violence, and propose civil, nonviolent ways of challenging them.

What do we mean by nonviolence? What can nonviolence achieve? Are there limits to nonviolence? These are the questions that Ramin Jahanbegloo tackles in his journey through the major political advocates of nonviolence during the 20th century. Focusing on examples of their way of thinking in different cultural, geographic and political contexts, from the Indian Independence Movement and US Civil rights and Anti-Apartheid movements to the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia and nonviolent protests in Tunisia, Iran, Serbia and Hong-Kong, Jahanbegloo (...) explores why nonviolence remains relevant as a form of resistance against injustice and oppression around the world. (shrink)

Do pacifists and proponents of justified violence share a starting point? Whether or not just war theory contains an embedded presumption against violence is an important and disputed question. Substantively it is important not only because it has implications for the possibility of dialogue among Christians of different persuasions but also because the belief that the tradition advances no moral reservations about the use of force may have the effect of lowering the moral barriers against the resort to war. Conceptually (...) it is important because it reflects a fundamental methodological disagreement concerning the meaning and resolution of conflicts among moral duties. (shrink)

Just war theory has been criticized since it so often is employed by governments and political leadership to justify uses of violent force for nationalistic, political self-serving or otherwise non-moral reasons. This paper acknowledges that reality but argues that just war thinking exemplifies a nonabsolutist mode of moral thinking that actually sets a high bar for morally justifying any use of force. The paper argues that just war thinking must be based on the presumption that force ordinarily ought not be (...) used to settle conflicts. To make the point the author examines Gandhi’s satyagraha, which Gandhi understood as a use of nonviolent force. The paper demonstrates how Gandhi implicitly appealed to the various criteria of just war in thinking about satyagraha. The author concludes that just war theory is not an enemy of peace. (shrink)

Living Nonviolently: Language for Resisting Violence proposes distinctions of language that effectively address issues of force, power, aggressiveness, violence and war. No other book provides such a consistent language for living nonviolently through examples drawn from nonhuman animals, human infancy, personal transactions, domestic politics, and international conflicts.

Proponents of nonviolent tactics often highlight the extent to which they rival arms as effective means of resistance. Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, for instance, compare civil resistance favorably to armed insurrection as means of bringing about progressive political change. In Ethics, Security, and the War-Machine, Ned Dobos cites their work in support of the claim that similar methods—organized according to Gene Sharp's idea of “civilian-based defense”—may be substituted for regular armed forces in the face of international (...) aggression. I deconstruct this line of pacifist thought by arguing that it builds on the wrong binary. Turning away from a violence-nonviolence dichotomy structured around harmfulness, I look to Richard B. Gregg and Hannah Arendt for an account of nonviolent power defined by non-coercion. Whereas nonviolent coercion in the wrong hands still has the potential to subvert democratic institutions—just as armed methods can—Gregg's and Arendt's conceptions of nonviolent power identify a necessary bulwark against both forms of subversion. The dangers of nonviolent coercion can be seen in the largely nonviolent attempts at civil subversion by supporters of Donald Trump during Trump's attempts to overturn the results of the U.S. presidential election in 2020, while the effectiveness of noncoercive, nonviolent power is illustrated by the resistance of U.S. democratic institutions to resist them. (shrink)

ABSTRACTArendt’s work on civil disobedience sets out an optimistic portrayal of the possibilities of such forms of action in re-energising the spirit of American politics in the late twentieth century. Civil disobedience should not simply be tolerated, she argued, but incorporated into the legal structure of the American political system. Her work is usually seen to promote an idea of civil disobedience that is thus bound to existing constitutional principles and essentially nonviolent. However, by looking at Arendt’s discussion and (...) critique of various practices of civil disobedience in 1960s and 1970s America, specifically in relation to the nonviolence movement influenced by Martin Luther King, and on the other side, the more militant Black Power movement, a different idea of civil disobedience emerges. This paper argues that whilst, for Arendt, civil disobedience within America certainly possesses the constitutionally restorative potential she assigns to it, in a broader sense – theoretically, globally, and even in terms of alternative ideologies within America – her conception of civil disobedience is in itself neither necessarily constitutional, nor nonviolent. It is, instead, a form of revolutionary action, whose limits are set only by politics itself, and specifically, Arendt’s criterion of publicity. (shrink)

It is widely believed that some wars are just, and that the paradigm case of a just war is a defensive war. A familiar strategy used to justify defensive war is to infer its permissibility from the case of self-defensive killing. I show, however, that the permission to defend oneself does not justify killing, but instead calls for nonviolent resistance. I conclude that on the account of self-defense I develop, the appropriate way to respond to a war of (...) aggression is not by prosecuting a defensive war, but by engaging in a form of nonviolence I call pacific resistance. (shrink)

Martin Luther King, Jr drew upon his early grounding in family and church to forge a praxis of egalitarian justice in the rigidly segregated American South of his youth. King?s ethical outlook was eclectic, reflecting the influence of such figures as Mays, Davis, Rauschenbusch, Niebuhr, Thurman and Gandhi, alongside such doctrines as personalism and liberalism, nationalism and realism. Yet King?s subsequent academic study more nearly enhanced than restructured his early, formative exposure to black church and community. King became committed to (...) nonviolence, not as passive resistance, but as an active, aggressive, individual and self?improving solution to problems of gross injustice in society. Nonviolence for King was not an end, but a means, to the achievement of what he called ?Beloved Community? (shrink)

¡Presente! develops a lived theology of nonviolence through an extended case study of the movement to close the School of the Americas (also known as the SOA or WHINSEC). Specifically,it analyzes how the presence of the dead—a presence proclaimed at the annual vigil of the School of the Americas Watch—shapes a distinctive, transnational, nonviolent movement. Kyle B.T. Lambelet argues that such a messianic affirmation need not devolve into violence or sectarianism and, in fact, generates practical reasoning. By developing a (...) messianic political theology in dialogue with the SOA Watch movement, Lambelet's work contributes to Christian ethics as he explores the political implications of the resurrection of the dead. This book contributes to studies of strategic nonviolence and civil resistance by demonstrating how religious and moral dynamics remain an essential part of such struggles. (shrink)

The Power of Nonviolence, written by Richard Bartlett Gregg in 1934 and revised in 1944 and 1959, is the most important and influential theory of principled or integral nonviolence published in the twentieth century. Drawing on Gandhi's ideas and practice, Gregg explains in detail how the organized power of nonviolence exercised against violent opponents can bring about small and large transformative social change and provide an effective substitute for war. This edition includes a major introduction by political theorist, James Tully, (...) situating the text in its contexts from 1934 to 1959, and showing its great relevance today. The text is the definitive 1959 edition with a foreword by Martin Luther King, Jr. It includes forewords from earlier editions, the chapter on class struggle and nonviolent resistance from 1934, a crucial excerpt from a 1929 preliminary study, a biography and bibliography of Gregg, and a bibliography of recent work on nonviolence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Scandal of White Complicity in US Hyper-Incarceration: A Nonviolent Spirituality of White Resistance by Alex Mikulich, Laurie Cassidy, and Margaret PfeilNancy M. RourkeThe Scandal of White Complicity in US Hyper-Incarceration: A Nonviolent Spirituality of White Resistance Alex Mikulich, Laurie Cassidy, and Margaret Pfeil new york: palgrave macmillan, 2013. 203 pp. $90.00As a white American Catholic ethicist, I often envy my Protestant counterparts’ legacy (...) of acknowledging and fighting racism. Catholic moral theology lacks Protestantism’s bodies of literature, activism, and bold ecclesial statements addressing racism in the United States. (For more on this, see Bryan Massingale’s Racial Justice and the Catholic Church.) The Scandal of White Complicity in US Hyper-Incarceration demonstrates how Catholicism might approach American racism using several elements of Catholic theology.The book opens with series editor Mary Jo Iozzo’s introduction to the Content and Context in Theological Ethics series, of which this is the fifth book. A personal and reflective foreword by Sr. Helen Prejean follows. Then the book’s argument begins with a description of the United States’ practice of mass incarceration and brief discussions of what is meant by “whiteness” and “complicity.” This book employs a phenomenological understanding of race and of whiteness, taking whiteness as habitus. The literature about this approach to race and to identity is enormous, but familiarity with that literature is not necessary to follow this book’s presentation, argument, or use of the idea.Each of the book’s three authors has written a two-chapter section. Alex Mikulich’s explanation of white habitus speaks on levels of social thought and of the individual’s experience. Laurie Cassidy’s section looks at the culture of hyperincarceration and the development of the “dangerous black man” myth, and Margaret Pfeil’s section on spirituality works from the beatitudes, John of the Cross, and a wide array of other sources to describe a political spirituality of resistance for white Christians.This book would be most useful to masters-level graduate students in theological ethics or anyone preparing to begin teaching in areas of ethics related to racism or criminal justice (particularly in Catholic institutional settings). Rather than drawing exclusively on Catholic social teaching to talk about white participation in racism, these authors more satisfyingly put many Catholic traditions into action. For example, the book demonstrates careful use of the concepts of complicity, responsibility, participation, and intention; it considers specific [End Page 195] actions while maintaining focus on systems’ structures; and it uses a wide range of Catholic thinkers, including Metz, Copeland, Soelle, Gutiérrez, Carmelite Sr. Constance FitzGerald, Lonergan, Day, and John of the Cross.This book assumes and asserts that racism still exists, that whiteness exists and aims to make itself invisible, and that racism is kept alive through social structures that flow from white habitus. However, the book does not assume the reader’s agreement with any of these. Instead, the book first makes the case that these things are true and then takes next steps toward responsive practices of resistance. Rhetorically tinged homiletic shortcuts are not used to bolster this argument. For example, in similar works, the question of moral culpability for racist social structures is sometimes managed only with a discussion of how such structures distribute benefits and harms unequally. In this book, that argument is not used alone but in tandem with a careful look at the intention of one’s participation in such structures.Minor problems exist. The book would have benefited from one more round of editing to eliminate minor punctuation and writing problems, and the Catholic moral concept of “scandal” receives little systematic attention despite its presence in the title. Otherwise, the book demonstrates well what Catholic moral theology could do if applied to American white racism. Here’s hoping that this is just the beginning of more such scholarship.Nancy M. RourkeCanisius CollegeCopyright © 2015 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

This essay supplies an historical review of black thought (from the Civil War forward) in the American South. Its emphasis is upon the biography of figures born in the region, whether resident or exile, concentrating on three foundational actors: Booker Washington, Frederick Douglass and Ida Wells. Significant strands of later thought are seen as largely derived from the latter two. The thematic anchor of this review is ‘resistance and nonviolence’, involving (1) a primary focus on equal rights, (2) a (...) derivative focus on emancipation and desegregation, (3) exploration of nonviolence as a mode of resistance to oppression, (4) exploration of liberative violence, and (5) a larger concern with the appropriate type and degree of integration/separation implicit in or consistent with an equal rights regime. Douglass and Wells are cast as attending to sub‐themes (1) and (2).This essay is designed to fit within the larger framework of the collection, in which the religious leaders Howard Thurman and Martin King are allocated to sub‐theme (3), the novelist Richard Wright to (4), and the lawyers Thurgood Marshall, Barbara Jordan and Fred Gray to (5). The future challenge to black thought is assumed to lie in deeper reflection on (5), with a view to locating an ever more perfect balance between ‘nation’ (the ethnic community of Afro‐America) and ‘state’ (the US federal government). (shrink)

In recent years, there has been an upsurge in the number of civilian resistance movements (CRMs) within states to counter government repression and coups d’états through which civilians are on the frontlines of state brutality and mass atrocities. This article considers the implications of CRMs for atrocity prevention and the associated responsibility to protect norm by asking, Should the international community support CRMs as part of its wider commitment to ending mass atrocities? In this article, we evaluate both military (...) and nonmilitary support to CRMs. We argue that in the context of coups and government repression, providing lethal military support to CRMs will often make things worse in terms of atrocity prevention. We however explain that the provision by the international community of nonlethal and nonmilitary support through political recognition, technical assistance, and accountability can yield positive results. We illustrate this argument with the case of Myanmar. (shrink)

This essay overcomes the division between “principled” and “strategic” approaches to nonviolence studies by demonstrating that ethical analysis is key to understanding movement strategy. I show how the moral phenomenologies of Martin Luther King Jr. and Emmanuel Lévinas, figures usually treated by scholars of principled nonviolence, possess genuine insight for nonviolent strategists. With reference to each thinker and supporting evidence from the #BlackLivesMatter movement, I argue that nonviolent resistance makes a moral appeal through the medium of the (...) body to the conscience of those bearing witness. Analysis of the way King combined moral reflection and strategic action recovers his legacy for the pragmatic tradition of social thought, while Lévinas's theory of the face offers additional considerations for nonviolent practitioners aiming for moral transformation at the local level. Studies that elucidate the complex moral dynamics by which nonviolent movements either succeed or fail will make the field a greater asset to practitioners. (shrink)

Three Quaker elders, all scholar activists, have just published two important works for anyone studying nonviolence, works that are framed very differently but which complement each other well. One is a new work by the estimable George Lakey, who has trained nonviolent resisters around the world in many countries for decades, and whose thinking has always been structural, strategic, and careful. The other work is by Alice and Staughton Lynd, two historians whose activism education stretches far back to teaching (...) in the Freedom Summer schools of Mississippi in 1964 and even earlier. The Lynds have just published the third edition of their Nonviolence in America: A Documentary History. (shrink)

Christian Non-Resistance (1846) is the major philosophical statement by the nineteenth-century theorist of nonviolence, Adin Ballou. Ballou argued that the Biblical injunction "resist not evil" should be understood as "resist not personal injury with personal injury." While prohibiting the injury of any person under any provocation whatsoever, Ballou taught that Christians have a duty to resist, oppose, or prevent evil by all uninjurious means, including the use of "uninjurious benevolent force." He believed that this would allow a community to (...) adopt non-resistant principles while still maintaining public safety and order. Once dismissed as a relic of the naive and sentimental optimism of pre-Civil War America, Christian Non-Resistance is now recognized as an important contribution to the theory of nonviolent resistance. Ballou's combination of the utmost moral resistance to evil with the uninjurious physical restraint of evildoers provides a conceptually simple, flexible approach to the problem of resisting evil without becoming evil oneself. This edition contains the essay "Christian Non-Resistance in Extreme Cases" (1860), in which Ballou takes up a type of challenge often put to pacifists: "Suppose a robber attacks you in some lonely place on the highway? Suppose you and your family are attacked by a gang who design to commit rape, robbery and murder? How can the downtrodden peoples of the earth ever gain their liberty without fighting to the death against their tyrants?"". (shrink)

This article considers understandings of nonviolence within the Catholic Worker movement and their embodiment. The aim is to make the Worker's position theologically understandable, demonstrating how this drives their methods for action. The article argues that a particular ethic of nonviolence can be found within the movement, grounded within the aims of its founders and the current practices of the movement today, drawing on the example of the Jubilee Ploughshares 2000 from which the London Catholic Worker was founded to illustrate (...) this. By exploring the movement's theological foundations for the practice of grassroots, active nonviolence, it will seek to present an important example of Catholic nonviolent practice questioning how this may challenge contemporary Catholic thinking on war and peace. (shrink)

Strategic nonviolent action has reasserted itself as a potent force in shaping public debate and forcing political change. Whether it is an explosive surge of protest calling for racial justice in the United States, a demand for democratic reform in Hong Kong or Mexico, a wave of uprisings against dictatorship in the Middle East, or a tent city on Wall Street that spreads throughout the country, when mass movements erupt onto our television screens, the media portrays them as being (...) as spontaneous and unpredictable. In This is an Uprising, political analysts Mark and Paul Engler uncover the organization and well-planned strategies behind such outbursts of protest, examining core principles that have been used to spark and guide moments of transformative unrest. This is an Uprising traces the evolution of civil resistance, providing new insights into the contributions of early experimenters such as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., groundbreaking theorists such as Gene Sharp and Frances Fox Piven, and contemporary practitioners who have toppled repressive regimes in countries such as South Africa, Serbia, and Egypt. Drawing from discussions with activists now working to defend human rights, challenge corporate corruption, and combat climate change, the Englers show how people with few resources and little influence in conventional politics can nevertheless engineer momentous upheavals. Although it continues to prove its importance in political life, the strategic use of nonviolent action is poorly understood. Nonviolence is usually studied as a philosophy or moral code, rather than as a method of political conflict, disruption, and escalation. This is an Uprising corrects this oversight. It argues that if we are always taken by surprise by dramatic outbreaks of revolt, and if we decline to incorporate them into our view of how societies progress, then we pass up the chance to fully grasp a critical phenomenon-and to harness its power to create lasting change. (shrink)

There is a need to develop libertarian responses to writings on race, gender, and sexual orientation. Offering such responses not only demonstrates to potential opponents of libertarian reform that libertarianism can seriously address these issues: libertarian responses can also help us confront forms of “private” oppression that are not per se un-libertarian, but which support state oppression. Drawing on thinkers such as Murray Rothbard, Roderick Long, Charles Johnson, Gene Sharp, Wendy McElroy, and bell hooks, this paper establishes historical links between (...) the intellectual traditions of feminism, nonviolent action, and libertarianism, and explores what a nonviolent, libertarian resistance to patriarchy might look like. By demonstrating the analogies between Sharp’s and Rothbard’s theories of political power and hooks’ theory of patriarchy, this paper shows that Sharp’s techniques for resistance to state tyranny can be adapted for use against patriarchal oppression. (shrink)

This essay explores the archive of a 1971 interview of Angela Davis by Swedish journalist Bo Holmström—recorded in Santa Clara County Jail where Davis awaited trial—to examine the relationship between Black radical thought and its social and intellectual mediation, especially when it comes to questions of violence versus nonviolence. Where Holmström invokes the “violence/nonviolence” binary in the interview, Davis pointedly resists its distortions, restoring the record of contemporary and historical conditions of racial terror that both necessitate and criminalize Black self-defense. (...) Decades later, the interview was filtered through the violence/nonviolence binary in editing for the acclaimed 2011 documentary, The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975, with Davis’s wider conversation with Holmström not only abridged but remixed into a shorter exchange on armed self-defense. Studying the interview from its conditions of possibility through its later remixing, and reading it together with her opening defense statement (1972) and later speeches and writings, the essay excavates and explicates Davis’s original theoretical interventions and indexes a cluster of forces that mediate Black radical thought, Black women’s radical thought more specifically, and prison texts. The final section historicizes Davis’s theorization of the spatial and relational contexts of Black self-defense in Dynamite Hill, Alabama, and in California, and contends that her incisive interventions into the violence/nonviolence binary in 1971 remain critical here and now. (shrink)

This article examines the particular moral obligations of solidarity focusing on the solidary commitment against injustice or oppression. I argue that political solidarity entails three relationships—to other participants in action, to a cause or goal, and to those outside the unity of political solidarity. These relationships inform certain obligations. Activism is one of those obligations and I argue that violent activism is incompatible with the other relations and duties of solidarity. Activists may find themselves confronted with a difficult choice between (...) respecting the relationships of political solidarity or employing physical violence in resistant self-defense against oppressive practices. -/- . (shrink)

Constitutional democracies unilaterally enact the laws that regulate immigration to their territories. When are would-be migrants to a constitutional democracy morally justified in breaching such laws? Receiving states also typically enact laws that require their existing citizens to participate in the implementation of immigration restrictions. When are the individual citizens of a constitutional democracy morally justified in breaching such laws? In this article, I take up these questions concerning the justifiability of noncompliance with immigration law, focusing on the case of (...) nonviolent—or mere—noncompliance. Dissenting from Javier Hidalgo’s view, I argue that the injustice of an immigration law is insufficient to make mere noncompliance justified. Instead, I contend that only if an immigration law lacks legitimate authority are individuals justified in breaching it, since the subjects of an institution with legitimate authority are under a content-independent moral duty to comply with its rules. I further argue that a constitutional democracy’s regimes of law regulating immigration and requiring its citizens’ participation in implementing these regulations have legitimate authority. Nevertheless, when a particular immigration law is egregiously unjust, its legitimacy is defeated. (shrink)

Shaking the Gates of Hell: Faith-Led Resistance to Corporate Globalization breaks new ground by describing the global economy and its effects from the perspective of an integrated theology of "the earth as primary revelation" and the institutional powers of this world. It reaches the conclusion that hope lies in nonviolent resistance and ecological and social responsibility based on God's action in Jesus and in the triumph of God over the powers. This book describes today's interrelated social, economic, (...) and ecological crises and makes the case that we face a living hell on earth if we do not address them. It provides an overview of the global economic system and offers a comprehensive theological analysis of the network of primary institutions that make up what Walter Wink calls the "Domination System." It points readers in the direction of hope based on following the way of Jesus, who lived in nonviolent resistance to the powers of his day. This new, revised edition continues the powerful story of the original, extending the analysis of the global economy from the 2008 collapse and recession to its alleged recovery. It addresses the Obama administration's policies on economics, trade, and the environment, and provides further reflections on American foreign and military policy in this so-called New American Century. (shrink)

This article presents the political theology of Martin Luther King. I analyze the notion of political theology, King's argumentation in favour of non-violence strategy in politics and reconstruct a standard model of non-violence action. Finally, I discuss some philosophical and political controversies arising around passive resistance.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Just Revolution: A Christian Ethic of Political Resistance and Social Transformation by Anna Floerke ScheidRamon LuzarragaJust Revolution: A Christian Ethic of Political Resistance and Social Transformation Anna Floerke Scheid lanham, md: lexington books, 2015. 208 pp. $84.00Anna Floerke Scheid argues that the Christian just war and just peacemaking ethical traditions lack a comprehensive ethic for revolutionary nonviolent activity and warfare. She proposes to fill this (...) lacuna through a theological exploration of what constitutes a just revolution. While Scheid maintains a consistent [End Page 212] preference for nonviolent resistance against tyranny, she remains open to the possibility of revolutionary warfare.The author articulates four stages of a just revolution. The first stage is jus ante, nonviolent resistance against a tyrannical government. Here the opposition develops a democratic and revolutionary vision of society that respects human rights, models that vision within its organizations, and resists through nonviolent acts. Second is jus ad, the stage where a tyrannical government eliminates all avenues for negotiation and represses peaceful resistance. This forces the revolutionary opposition to consider armed resistance as a last resort. Here Scheid grapples with two limitations of traditional just war theory. The first reserves the authority to start a war with governments. She argues that the legitimacy for a just revolution comes from a revolutionary organization's ability to envision and model a just society. Because a tyrannical government's authority is illegitimate, a revolutionary movement's just vision and practices gain for it a de facto legitimate authority. This legitimacy is reinforced by a revolutionary movement's ultimate intention to effect reconciliation with their oppressors postwar. The second limitation is the reasonable hope of success. Scheid analyzes the history of this criterion and demonstrates how it supports defensive wars despite the uncertainty of success. Oppressed persons, as the subjects of their own hope of liberation, ought to decide what constitutes the probability for success in fighting tyranny. Throughout this stage, revolutionary warfare must be practiced in tandem with continuing nonviolent resistance.The third stage is jus in, the justice practiced during armed revolutionary resistance. Fighting is deemed necessary to force a tyrannical government to negotiations. Meanwhile, revolutionary military units would work to minimize violence and loss of life. The last stage is jus post, the reconciliation needed to prevent revolutionary warfare from spiraling into revenge. Here the exercise of restorative justice—where responsibility for past injustices is assumed by all sides and a just resolution developed for social reconciliation and the development of a new, democratic society that respects human rights—is all important. Throughout the book, Scheid uses the African National Congress's revolutionary struggle against the South African apartheid government as a successful example of her theory in practice.Scheid's well-argued proposal deserves careful consideration by ethicists. Students will profit from her excellent summary of just war theory, where she brilliantly recovers some of its forgotten features. On the other hand, her concluding chapter considering the Arab Spring's potential for just revolution would have been stronger if she extended beyond a comparison to South Africa to incorporate similar features found in other successful revolutions. The 1986 Philippine People Power Revolution, the 1989 collapse of Eastern European Communist regimes, and the 1974 Carnation Revolution in Portugal come to mind. Moreover, important for South Africa's success was the durability of the [End Page 213] political institutions the British left behind. These institutions provided the framework that handled the transition of power from the pro-apartheid National Party to the post-apartheid African National Congress government. This feature could have been brought to light, as many recognize this structure as contributive to the peaceful transition of power in other countries that won independence through revolution, from the United States in the eighteenth century to India and the Caribbean in the twentieth.Ramon LuzarragaBenedictine University at MesaCopyright © 2018 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

_Positive Peace _is a scholarly and creative compilation of articles on peace education, nonviolence and social change. Arun Gandhi (grandson of Mahatma Gandhi) sets the scene in his introduction with the challenge that positive peace is both a resisting of the physical violence of war and the passive violence of the psychological structures that lead to conflict. Peace education rises to meet that challenge. In twelve chapters, philosophers and educators look at a variety of topics from Gandhian nonviolence, to pragmatic (...) conflict solving; hope and the ethics of belief, to the way we use violent language; mothering and peace activism, to multiculturalism and peace. Recurring themes are: pragmatic nonviolence, the ethics of care as an antidote to violence, and hope in a violent world. Chapters on the use of film in peace education, song and nonviolent activism, and teaching art history and peace, demonstrate pragmatic possibilities for would-be peace educators. Arun Gandhi in his introduction asks, “For generations human beings have strived to attain peace, but with little or no success. … Why is peace so illusive? Is it unattainable? Are humans incapable of living in peace?” This book suggests that peace education has a large part to play. It is an important attempt to begin to meet the challenge. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Consistently Pro-Life: The Ethics of Bloodshed in Ancient Christianity by Rob Arner, and: Christ at the Checkpoint: Theology in the Service of Justice and Peace ed. by Paul Alexander, and: Becoming Nonviolent Peacemakers: A Virtue Ethic for Catholic Social Teaching and US Policy by Eli Sarasan McCarthyBrian D. BerryReview of Consistently Pro-Life: The Ethics of Bloodshed in Ancient Christianity ROB ARNER Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2010. 136 pp. (...) $15.56Review of Christ at the Checkpoint: Theology in the Service of Justice and Peace EDITED BY PAUL ALEXANDER Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2012. 182 pp. $19.80Review of Becoming Nonviolent Peacemakers: A Virtue Ethic for Catholic Social Teaching and US Policy ELI SARASAN MCCARTHY Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2012. 259 pp. $27.00In Consistently Pro-Life, Rob Arner (who teaches at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia) makes the case that Christians should not kill other human beings—regardless of the circumstances. Taking as his point of departure the vigilante killing of abortion doctor George Tiller in Wichita, Kansas, in 2009, he argues not only that abortion is always morally impermissible but so also is [End Page 217] the murder of abortion doctors and the use of the death penalty to punish those who murder them. In addition, he turns to the early church fathers to contend that, prior to Constantine, “without exception, the church strongly condemned the taking of human life in any form whatsoever”—thus rejecting abortion and infanticide, the blood sport of the Roman games, suicide, and killing in war (120). This was because the New Testament witness to Jesus and his death on the cross required early Christians to view “the means as just as important, if not more important, than the ends” (xiii).Arner supplements this deontological argument for Christian pacifism, which he learned from John Howard Yoder, with a brief consideration of the virtue of patience cultivated in the early churches, reflecting the influence of Stanley Hauerwas on his thought. This “cardinal virtue” connoting “longsuffering, forbearance, patient endurance”—as found in Jesus’s teaching in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:38–48)—enabled early Christians to practice non-violent resistance “deferring personal revenge in favor of God’s vindicating justice” (98). If Christians were to adopt this same consistently pro-life ethic today, argues Arner, it would “lead to greater healing and peace in our blood-soaked world” (121). The book closes with three appendices—one of which is a chart of terminology that dehumanizes vulnerable victims, including unborn human beings. Unfortunately, the book does not have an index.Christ at the Checkpoint, edited by Paul Alexander (professor of Christian ethics and public policy at the Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University), includes thirteen plenary addresses delivered at a conference on the Arab-Israeli conflict organized by Palestinian Evangelical Christians at Bethlehem Bible College in March 2010. Almost all of the contributors to this volume—including biblical scholars, theologians, ethicists, pastors, activists, and others—criticize the ideology of Christian Zionism and its support of a theology of dispensationalism that, in their view, distorts the scriptures and fosters violence rather than reconciliation between the Israelis and the Palestinians. In his own presentation titled “What Can Pentecostals and Charismatics Do for Peace with Justice in Israel and Palestine?,” Alexander—who describes himself as a former “one-sided” Christian Zionist who later discovered the writings of Yoder and Hauerwas—appeals to Jesus’s teaching in the Sermon on the Mount and urges Pentecostals to create church communities “that cultivate persons of character and conviction, who through habits, practices, and action live out the core of our faith” (69). Along with being faithful to the “greater challenges” of love, mercy, compassion, and forgiveness, he argues that they should publicly declare that Jesus does not want Israel to continue the occupation of Palestine, and they should engage in the “easier tasks” of promoting human rights, lending support to United Nations Resolutions, and working toward a two-state solution (72). “The time has come in human history,” writes Alexander, “for Pentecostals to speak and act prophetically regarding this present injustice … [End Page 218] and to use every nonviolent weapon in our arsenal—stories, preaching... (shrink)

_Positive Peace _is a scholarly and creative compilation of articles on peace education, nonviolence and social change. Arun Gandhi sets the scene in his introduction with the challenge that positive peace is both a resisting of the physical violence of war and the passive violence of the psychological structures that lead to conflict. Peace education rises to meet that challenge. In twelve chapters, philosophers and educators look at a variety of topics from Gandhian nonviolence, to pragmatic conflict solving; hope and (...) the ethics of belief, to the way we use violent language; mothering and peace activism, to multiculturalism and peace. Recurring themes are: pragmatic nonviolence, the ethics of care as an antidote to violence, and hope in a violent world. Chapters on the use of film in peace education, song and nonviolent activism, and teaching art history and peace, demonstrate pragmatic possibilities for would-be peace educators. Arun Gandhi in his introduction asks, “For generations human beings have strived to attain peace, but with little or no success. … Why is peace so illusive? Is it unattainable? Are humans incapable of living in peace?” This book suggests that peace education has a large part to play. It is an important attempt to begin to meet the challenge. (shrink)

One of the greatest woman intellectuals of eighteenth‐century Germany is Elise Reimarus, whose contribution to Enlightenment political theory is rarely acknowledged today. Unlike other social contract theorists, Reimarus rejects a people's right to violent resistance or revolution in her philosophical dialogue Freedom. Exploring the arguments in Freedom, this paper observes a number of similarities in the political thought of Elise Reimarus and Immanuel Kant. Both, I suggest, reject violence as an illegitimate response to perceived political injustice in a way (...) that opposes Locke's strong voluntarism and the absolutism of Hobbes. First, they emphasize the need to maintain the legal state as a precondition for the possibility of external right. Second, they share an optimistic view of the inherently “just” nature of the tripartite republican state. And finally, Reimarus and Kant both outline an alternative, nonviolent response to political injustice that consists in the freedom of public expression and a discourse on the moral enlightenment of man. (shrink)

The first part of this article presents an overview of civil resistance theory and practice, including key concepts and the historical record of nonviolent movements ending authoritarian and occupying regimes. It will also present a practical checklist for assessing why people power movements succeed or fail. The second part of this article will demonstrate how civil resistance applies to the global scourge of financial corruption. It will first illustrate two recent successful people power campaigns against financial corruption, (...) then examine their dynamics in terms of new research and analysis of organized, collective nonviolent action targeting graft and abuse. Finally, it will adapt the general civil resistance checklist to the anti-corruption arena, concluding with the specific elements that are most critical to curbing financial corruption. (shrink)

Perhaps the biggest disconnect between philosophers and non-philosophers on the question of gun rights is over the relevance of arms to our dignitary interests. This essay attempts to address this gap by arguing that we have a strong prima facie moral right to resist with dignity and that violence is sometimes our most or only dignified method of resistance. Thus, we have a strong prima facie right to guns when they are necessary often enough for effective dignified resistance. (...) This approach is distinctively non-libertarian: it doesn’t justify gun rights on the basis of (mere) liberty or security. Nonetheless it is compatible with libertarian defenses of gun rights based on a liberty right to guns, and, if sound, in fact lowers the bar for gun rights in some ways, as it justifies access to guns even when nonviolent means would better achieve the liberty or security aims of potential victims. And although this defense of gun rights is most readily categorized as “conservative” or rightist, it relies upon principles and intuitions about dignity popular among progressives in other domains, such as in disability, women’s, or LGBT rights debates. (shrink)

Radical environmental groups engaged in ecotage—or economic sabotage of inanimate objects thought to be complicit in environmental destruction—have been identified as the leading domestic terrorist threat in the post-9/11 “war on terror.” This article examines the case for extending the conventional definition of terrorism to include attacks not only against noncombatants, but also against inanimate objects, and surveys proposed moral limits suggested by proponents of ecotage. Rejecting the mistaken association between genuine acts of terrorism and ecotage, it considers the proper (...) moral constraints upon ecotage through an examination of just war theory and nonviolent civil disobedience. (shrink)

Quelles sont nos responsabilités face à l’injustice ? Les philosophes considèrent généralement que les citoyens d’un État globalement juste doivent obéir à la loi, même lorsqu’elle est injuste, quitte à employer exceptionnellement la désobéissance civile pour protester. Les militants quant à eux, qu’ils luttent pour les droits civiques, contre les violences faites aux femmes ou pour le climat, jugent souvent que l’obligation première est résister à l’injustice.

This essay develops a theological naturalism using Gordon Kaufman's nonpersonal idea of God as serendipitous creativity in contrast to the personal metaphorical theology of Sallie McFague. It then develops a Christian theological naturalism by using Kaufman's idea of historical trajectories, specifically Jesus trajectory1 and Jesus trajectory2. The first is the trajectory in the early Christian church assuming a personal God in the framework of Greek philosophy that results in the Trinity. The second is the naturalistic-humanistic trajectory of creativity (God) that (...) evolves from nonpersonal interactions in the universe and life to creativity in persons and is manifested in Jesus as love. This is elaborated further with Dean Keith Simonton's Darwinian understanding of genius and Marcus Borg's analysis of Jesus as Jewish mystic, teacher of alternative wisdom, and nonviolent resister to the domination system of the Roman Empire. What makes Jesus a religious genius is his exemplifying unconditional, universal love—a new mode of creativity (God) that has evolved from nonhuman to a human form. (shrink)

Civil disobedience is a conscientious, unlawful, and broadly nonviolent form of protest, which most political philosophers and many non-philosophers are inclined to treat as potentially defensible in democratic societies. In recent years, philosophers have become more receptive to long-standing complaints from activists that civil disobedience is an unduly restrictive framework for considering the ethics of dissent. Candice Delmas and Jason Brennan have written important books that illustrate and strengthen this trend, both defending forms of “uncivil” resistance that go (...) beyond the narrow confines of civil disobedience. Their books offer contrasting but complementary philosophical defences of incivility as a tactic of resistance, but it is nonetheless a mistake to conclude that the rich tradition associated with civil disobedience no longer has any relevance for resistance in national, transnational, and global contexts. (shrink)

The words "violence" and "nonviolence" are increasingly misleading translations for the Sanskrit words hiṃsā and ahiṃsā -- which were used by Gandhi as the basis for his philosophy of satyāgraha. I argue for re-reading hiṃsā as “maleficence” and ahiṃsā as “beneficence.” These two more mind-referring English words – associated with religiously contextualized discourse of the past -- capture the primacy of intention implied by Gandhi’s core principles, better than “violence” and “nonviolence” do. Reflecting a political turn in moral accountability detectable (...) through linguistic data, both the scope and the usage of the word “violence” have expanded dramatically. The expanded scope of “violence” reflects greater consciousness of the various forms that serious harm can take, but also makes it harder to convincingly characterize people and actions as “nonviolent.” New translations could clarify the distinction between hiṃsā and ahiṃsā, and thereby prevent some misunderstandings of Gandhi. Training in beneficence would reflect Gandhi’s psychological path to reducing avoidable harm: detachment from the ego, learning to love universally, and seeking truth by experiment. (shrink)

In today's world the need for cultivating non-violence is becoming more pronounced. Gandhi extrapolated an ideal society based on truth and nonviolence. The Bombay Chronicle in its issue of 5th April, 1930, reported "...For the first time a nation is asked by its leader to win freedom by itself accepting all the suffering and sacrifice involved. Mahatma Gandhi's success does not, therefore, merely mean the freedom of India. It will also constitute the most important contribution that any country yet made (...) towards the elimination of force as an arbiter between one nation and another..." For him, two cardinal principles of life, non-violence and truth, were the essence of sociopolitical good. "Satyagraha" was Gandhi's gift to the world. The word was coined by him in South Africa. In the West it was known as passive resistance. Satyagraha signified pure soul-force. Truth or Love is the very substance of the soul. To quote Gandhi in this context: "Non-violence as supreme dharma is the proof of this power of Love. Nonviolence is a dormant state. In the working state, it is Love, ruled by Love, the world goes on.... we are alive solely because of Love....we are all ourselves the proof of this..." In a centrifugal world, Gandhi's views expressed on non-violence and love are guidance to the world today more than at any other time. (shrink)

In our feature presentation, “Mahatma Gandhi’s Philosophy of Nonviolence and Truth" Douglas Allen explicates central Gandhian values and concepts in a way that gives readers a kind of ‘one stop’ source for appreciating Gandhi’s nonviolence. In an author-meets-critics dialogue, Court Lewis, author of Repentance and the Right to Forgiveness, defends and clarifies his argument that wrongdoers have a right to forgiveness. Our reviews in this issue invite comparative analysis: Philip J. Rossi’s book on The Ethical Commonwealth in History; a collection (...) of essays on Tolstoy and Spirituality; the third volume of The Selected Papers of Jane Addams; George Monbiot's Out of the Wreckage; and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s book, As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance. (shrink)

This chapter interrogates the intersections between wealth, violence, and justice by considering two very different cases: refugees who have had their wealth taken from them, and political activists who are considering using Robin-Hood-style tactics to protest economic injustice. Ordinarily, the involuntary loss of wealth that refugees suffer, while it is viewed as an injustice, is not considered a violent injustice. However, when the involuntary redistribution of wealth is brought up in the context of resolving long-standing economic injustices, opponents cry out (...) that such redistribution would be, not only unjust, but an act of violence. This raises an interesting question: how should we view the involuntary loss, or redistribution, of wealth? Disregarding for the moment whether such involuntary losses of wealth are justified or unjustified—which might well depend on the circumstances and context—it is worth considering whether they are instances of violence. If they are, then refugees have suffered more violence than we normally recognize. If they are not, then Robin-Hood-style tactics (absent the bows and arrows) may be allowed for those who wish to engage in non-violent resistance against economic injustice in all its forms. (shrink)

Most nonviolent resistance is a species of collective political action and therefore a form of collective power. In many cases, the use of power in nonviolent action is best characterized as a kind of intelligently used coercion. How then should ethicists think about the norms that govern the use of coercion in nonviolent actions? This essay critically examines the answers provided by the early Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Ramsey. Both analyzed nonviolent resistance in similar (...) ways: they distinguished nonviolent action from pacifism, noticed its coercive element demands justification, and sought to develop ethical norms to understand these forms of political action. Taken together, this essay suggests that Niebuhr and Ramsey can be interpreted as members of a non-pacifist tradition of theorizing nonviolence that suggests an unlikely convergence between theorists of nonviolent action and theorists sympathetic to just war thought. (shrink)

This paper elucidates the rights violations caused by mass formal schooling systems and explores what students may do about them. Students have rights not to be harmed and rights to liberty (not to be oppressed), as well as attendant rights to (proportionately) defend their rights if necessary. For some time now, education has been dominated by mass formal schooling systems that harm and oppress many students. Such harm and oppression violate those students’ rights not to be harmed or oppressed, which (...) may justify student nonviolent defensive (or rights-protecting) action. (shrink)

In recent years, philosophers have developed a novel conception of blame as a kind of moral protest. This Protest View of Blame faces doubts about its intelligibility: can we make sense of inner ‘protest’ in cases of unexpressed blame? It also faces doubts about its descriptive adequacy: does ‘protest’ capture what is distinctive in reactions of blame? I argue that the Protest View can successfully answer the first kind of doubt, but not the second. Cases of contemptful blame and unexpressed (...) blame offer initial counterexamples to the view. The Protest View can accommodate these examples by appealing to a broader notion of protest, but, I argue, at the cost of retreating to a broader category that no longer captures what is distinctive about blame. Moreover, nonviolent resistance, in the tradition of Gandhi and Dr. King, characteristically protests without blame, presenting another powerful challenge to the Protest View. These challenges, I argue, undermine the view, while helping to illuminate and defend the appeal of nonviolent resistance. They also offer an alternative conception of the relation between protest and blame, characteristic of nonviolent resistance and obscured by the Protest View. On that alternative, the relation is not descriptive but practical; rather than understanding blame as a kind of protest, we should aim, in many cases, to replace blame with protest. (shrink)