Pacifists think that violence is never the answer. That’s a pretty extreme view. However, in our world, many more people, including the most powerful, seem to believe the much more extreme and much worse view that violence is often the answer. The disposition to seek violence as a show of strength and power is prevalent and dispiriting. The horrors of war have recently been made vivid in Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran. These conflicts were authorized by ludicrous political leaders who turn to violence as the first resort. It’s amazing how many people, including distinguished philosophers, are sucked into believing the propaganda that there is no other way to prevent violence than to use so much more of it without much evidence. We shouldn’t conclude from the fact that we can’t immediately see a peaceful solution that violence is the only way.
Our violent world makes pacifism tempting. That temptation is reinforced by the impressive achievements of famous pacifists such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, who used the message of peace to challenge serious racial and colonial injustice and oppression in the face of violent opponents. Peace, they showed, can be the answer when violence is at its most tempting. If there were more pacifists in the U.S., Russia, Israel, Iran, Lebanon, and Palestine, things would be so much better.
Yet, amongst philosophers of war and peace, pacifism has a bad name. Most of the excellent recent work done in the philosophy of war, such as Jeff McMahan’s Killing in War, Helen Frowe’s Defensive Killing, and Patrick Tomlin’s Violence in Proportion explore when violence is permitted; very few amongst those who have thought most deeply and carefully about war think that the answer is never. Standard forms of pacifism—pure forms that claim that violence is always wrong in principle, or contingent forms that rely on empirical claims that it is universally wrong in the real world—are hard to defend. The basic problem is this: Sometimes violence is needed to prevent a much greater amount of violence. We might say to the pacifist, “If you care about peace so much, why are you unwilling to kill for it?” For this reason, Jan Narveson famously found pacifism incoherent—pacifists were committed to peace, but they denied themselves the necessary means to achieve it.
There are different kinds of pacifism. Principled pacifists believe that violence is wrong in principle, and not just because of contingent features of our world. Jesus may well have been a principled pacifist. Gandhi was unclear, but, at least on one reading of his work, he believed that it is always wrong in principle to use violence, not just in this world but in all possible worlds, at least for people who are capable of mastering themselves. But principled pacifism is clearly false. If I could save millions of people by harming a person who will otherwise kill them, I am at least permitted, if not required, to do so. Some people might argue that those with pacifist convictions are permitted or required never to use violence. They must live by their conscience. But it is hard to see how a person’s convictions give them any more moral license than they would have without them. Our convictions must be shaped by our moral duties, not the other way around. If we are sometimes required to fight to protect the rights of others, a person’s convictions won’t relieve them of their duty.
An alternative view is contingent pacifism—the view that it is always wrong to commit acts of violence in the real world, given contingent features of our world. Contingent pacifists believe that although violence is in principle justifiable in hypothetical cases, cases that are relevantly similar will never arise. King was a contingent pacifist. In his essay “Pilgrimage to Non-Violence” he wrote: “I am no doctrinaire pacifist. I have tried to embrace a realistic pacifism. Moreover, I see the pacifist position not as sinless but as the lesser evil in the circumstances.’” To hold a genuine form of pacifism, contingent pacifists must show that nonviolence is required in a very wide range of circumstances. I believe that violence is not the answer for any of the problems I face right now. But that doesn’t make me a pacifist. To be genuine pacifists, contingent pacifists must believe in peace, not just right here and right now, but for the foreseeable future.
Because of that, contingent pacifism rests on judgments about the effects of violence across circumstances that are extremely varied and difficult to assess. And for that reason, it is also hard to believe. Can we really be confident, for example, that the use of violence will never be permitted or required in the actual world to prevent a terrorist organization from acquiring a nuclear weapon or to resist violent invasion with the potential for serious escalation?
Some might think that many people can be contingent pacifists because they can be confident that violence will not be required of them. Even this idea is open to serious doubt, though. We are seeing the rise of populist authoritarianism, and who knows where it will go? Few of us can be confident that we won’t need to use violence to protect people against human rights abuses by extremely violent authoritarian governments that might be just around the corner.
Given that pacifism is so obviously false, though, we might ask why pacifism seems so attractive and why pacifists such as Gandhi and King seem so admirable. Return to the idea that pacifism is an ethos—pacifists commit themselves to peace. But pacifists also challenge injustice. They commit to peace while recognizing that injustice needs tackling and that violence is a tempting response. Furthermore, famous pacifists such as Gandhi and King not only lived by their pacifist convictions. They inspired others to do the same. Finally, because pacifists are concerned with addressing serious injustice but eschew violence, they engage in imaginative explorations of alternative ways of securing justice. Because of their disposition to secure justice through peace, where violence seems to many necessary, pacifists find other solutions. These solutions require conviction, bravery, and discipline. Pacifism, as practiced by Gandhi and King, is not a path for the weak, as they were both keen to emphasize.
While pacifism is clearly false as a set of doctrines or philosophical beliefs, then, there is also something admirable about the way in which pacifists conduct themselves in practice. Furthermore, the practice of pacifists mirrors the practice of those with a more admirable view—those we might call necessitists. They have the true belief that there is a necessity condition on the use of violence. Violence must not be used where there is some alternative way of securing the same end. Exactly how to understand the necessity condition is the subject of a great deal of philosophical debate (perhaps the most influential discussion is Lazar’s “Necessity in Self-Defense and War”). But we can steer clear of that here. Some version of the necessity principle is true.
A necessitist, like a pacifist, not only sees necessity as a philosophical principle. It is something they commit themselves to. Like pacifists, necessitists are disposed to seek peaceful solutions to the challenge of injustice and to exercise their imagination in doing so. And like pacifism, necessitism is borne out of convictions about the need to challenge injustice. It also requires conviction, bravery, and discipline. Unlike pacifists, necessitists do not rule out the use of violence; extreme circumstances call for extreme measures. But they are strongly disposed to critically investigate whether violence really is the only way and disinclined to believe the messages of those who see violence as a first resort.
The problem, though, is that it is hard to inspire people to be necessitists. Gandhi and King would likely have been less successful in challenging injustice through peace if their message had been less extreme: “Violence is rarely the answer” is not such a good slogan as “Violence is never the answer”! In circumstances where many people were inclined to too much violence rather than too little, espousing pacifism may well have been the best way. It’s hard to get people to the sweet spot of necessitism, so the choice might have been: Either inspire people to pacifism or leave people with their violent dispositions. Of those choices, espousing pacifism was clearly best.
Victor Tadros
Victor Tadros, FBA is Professor of Criminal Law and Legal Theory at the Warwick University. He works on a wide range of topics in moral, political, and legal philosophy. His books include The Ends of Harm (2011), Wrongs and Crimes (2016), To Do, To Die, To Reason Why (2025), and Consent and the Sexual Revolution (forthcoming).
