Realism & Pacifism
Two ends of the Just War Theory Spectrum
Readings for this Week
 Realism Part One- The Moral Reality of War
 Chapter 1- Against “Realism”
 Pages- 3-20
 William James
 The Moral Equivalent of War
The JWT Spectrum
 Think of the various positions as a spectrum and not
binary.
Pacifists
Realists
Idealists
The Realist Position
 “Inter arma silent leges” (3)
 In times of war the law is silent
 The position is essentially that war is such a morally different
activity than anything else that there is no possible way that
we can have anything morally to say about it.
 “men and women do what they must to save themselves and
their communities, morality and law have no place” (3).
 “we can neither praise nor blame, there is nothing to say” (3).
 If war is so fundamentally unique, how is it that it has
happened throughout human history? Is war a fundamental
part of our nature?
The Realist Argument
 The awful things we do in war is not “inhumanity”
but rather “humanity under pressure” (4).
 We cannot and we ought not try to limit the
behaviors of soldiers in war.
 Historical Example
 The Melian Dialogue
 History of the Peloponnesian War
 “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer
what they must”
The Idealist Position
 War is not a fundamentally unique activity and we
can pass judgment upon the actions of those
involved.
 “nevertheless we believe that, for fortune, we shall
be nothing inferior, as having the gods on our side,
because we stand innocent against the unjust” (6).
 We should not give in to our base desires as the
realist believes, we are capable of restraining
ourselves in even the times of great calamity
Strategy and Morality
 “Strategy, like morality, is a language of justification”
(13).
 “we can make moral judgments: moral concepts and
strategic concepts reflect the real world in the same way”
(14).
 “The moral theorist is in the same position (as the
strategist). He too must come to grips with the fact that
his rules are often violated or ignored—and with the
deeper realization that, to men at war, the rules often
doesn’t seem relevant to the extremity of their situation”
(14).
Strategy and Morality
 “Reiterated over time, our arguments and judgments
shape what I want to call the moral reality of war—that is,
all those experiences of which moral language is
descriptive or within which it is necessarily employed”
(15).
 “It is important to stress that the moral reality of war is
not fixed by the actual activities of soldiers but by the
opinions of mankind” (15).
 “Once again, the case is the same with moral decisions:
soldiers and statesmen ought to know the dangers of
cruelty and injustice and worry about them and take
steps to avoid them” (15-16).
Historical Relativism
 There is a claim that moral and strategic knowledge
changes over time and with different communities (16).
 “Even when world views and high ideals have been
abandoned– as the glorification of aristocratic chivalry
was abandoned in early modern times– notions about
right conduct are remarkably persistent: the military
code survives the death of warrior idealism” (16).
 “The clearest evidence for the stability of our values over
time is the unchanging character of the lies soldiers and
statesmen tell” (19).
The Pacifist Position
 Much like positions in JWT are scalar, pacifism is
also scalar.
 Some might claim that every instance of violence is
immoral and are likely the most extreme. A
moderate version claims that only justified violence
is morally acceptable.
The Moral Equivalent of
War- William James
 William James did not reject all violence (just most
of it).
 “In modern eyes, precious though wars may be they
must not be waged solely for the sake of the ideal
harvest. Only when forced upon one, is a war now
thought permissible” (1).
 Martial virtues arise from warfare
 Pugnacity often favored
 “… but modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity
and all the love of glory of his ancestors” (1).
The Moral Equivalent of
War- William James
 “War is the strong life; it is life in extremis; war taxes
are the only ones men never hesitate to pay, as the
budgets of all nations show us” (1).
 Think back to Aristotle- vices in the extreme (excess)
 How does this conflict with Aristotle’s “Golden
Mean?”
 Ancient wars (according to James), “were purely
piratical” (2).
 Wars of Aggression.
The Moral Equivalent of
War- William James
 This innate pugnacity and aggression is not all our fault
though, “We inherit the warlike type; and for most of the
capacities of heroism that the human race is full of we
have to thank this cruel history” (3).
 “Our ancestors have bred pugnacity into our bone and
marrow, and thousands of years of peace won’t breed it
out of us” (3).
 If pugnacity and meanness are a fundamental part of our
nature how can we ever eliminate it? Should we give up
and not work against it?
 “The military instincts and ideals are as strong as ever, but
they are confronted by reflective criticisms which sorely
curb their ancient freedom” (3).
The Moral Equivalent of
War- William James
 What should the pacifist (the peace party) aim for?
 “I see how desperately hard it is to bring the peaceparty and the war-party together, and I believe that
the difficulty is due to certain deficiencies in the
program of pacifism which set the military
imagination strongly, and to a certain extent
justifiably, against it” (3)
The Moral Equivalent of
War- William James
 What is the main problem? Society views, “Militarism is
the great preserver of our ideals of hardihood, and
human life with no use for hardihood would be
contemptible” (4).
 “War is, in short, a permanent human obligation” (4).
 The fear of the war party, is that if we lose war we lose:
 The aesthetic value- it’s elements of “charm” and
“splendidness”
 The moral value- as a forum to prove hardiness, honor, and
other martial values
The Moral Equivalent of
War- William James
 A successful peace activist must provide an analagous option
to the moral values of war
 A Moral Equivalent of War
 It must provide a hardness and strenuousness where men can
prove themselves worthy.
 “Martial virtues must be the enduring cement; intrepidity,
contempt of softness, surrender of private interest, obedience
to command, must still remain the rock upon which states are
built– unless, indeed, we which for dangerous reactions
against commonwealths, fit only for contempt, and liable to
invite attack whenever a centre of crystallization for military
minded enterprise gets forms anywhere in their
neighborhood” (7-8).
The Moral Equivalent of
War- William James”
 If now– and this is my idea– there were, instead of
military conscription, a conscription of the whole
youthful population to form for a certain number of
years a part of the army enlisted against Nature, the
injustice would tend to be evened out, and numerous
other goods to the commonwealth would remain blind to
the luxurious classes now are blind, to the man’s relation
to the globe he lives on, and to the permanently sour
and hard foundations of his higher life” (8)
 This was a direct influence on the creation, in the Great
Depression, of organizations like the Civilian
Conservation Corps, the Peace Corps, the Tennessee
Valley Authority, etc.