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Grotius and Contingent Pacifism
May, Larry
May, Larry
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Grotius's great work, De Jure Belli ac Pacis, an 864-page work published in 1625, is still considered to be the single most important work in international legal theory. [3] Grotius is the great modern defender of the Just War tradition, but he is also a kind of pacifist. This is an uneasy alliance within the same thinker. But such is the history of the Just War tradition, where its adherents maintained the same dual ideas: that war was evil, but that it could be, indeed must be, justifiable in certain cases. In this paper I will attempt to explain how Grotius reconciled the various elements of his political philosophy, and by building on his ideas I hope to provide the beginning of an account of a doctrine I will call "contingent pacifism."[4] Contingent pacifism is opposed to war not on absolute grounds, but on contingent grounds, namely that war as we have known it has not been, and seemingly cannot be, waged in a way that is morally acceptable. As we will see, contingent pacifism makes jus ad bellum dependent on jus in bello. The early Church Fathers, especially Tertullian,[5] were pacifists, taking quite literally the pronouncements of Jesus that even if you have been directly attacked, you must turn the other cheek rather than fight back. This is the Western origin of the prohibition against engaging in war. The early Just War theorists already framed its ideas in serious debate with such pacifist ideas. Augustine argued strongly against such pacifist religious views,[6] as did the seminal proponents of modern international law. Indeed, Grotius devoted 34 pages to showing that some wars could theoretically be justified despite the difficulty of reconciling war with what Jesus and the early Church Fathers had said.[7] Contemporary Just War theorists seem to have lost sight of the fact that Just War theory was initially devised as a response to, though not a complete rejection of, pacifism. It is interesting to speculate why contemporary Just War theorists do not see their views as being as close to pacifism as did the early Just War theorists. One possible explanation is that contemporary Just War theorists largely define themselves in opposition to realists who deny that morality has any connection to war, not in opposition to pacifists who are few in number in the modern era. When Just War theory is understood as it was in its early years, contingent pacifism could be merely a variation of this doctrine, as we will see.
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2006
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With permission of the license/copyright holder