Pacifism is opposition to war, militarism, or violence.

The word pacifism was coined by the

French peace campaigner mile Arnaud (18641921) and adopted by other peace activists at the
tenth Universal Peace Congress in Glasgow in 1901. A related term is ahimsa (to do no harm),
which is a core philosophy in Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism. While modern connotations are
recent, having been explicated since the 19th century, ancient references abound.
In Christianity, Jesus Christ's injunction to "love your enemies" and asking for forgiveness for his
crucifiers "for they know not what they do" have been interpreted as calling for pacifism. In modern
times, interest was revived by Leo Tolstoy in his late works, particularly in The Kingdom of God Is
Within You. Mohandas Gandhi (18691948) propounded the practice of steadfast nonviolent
opposition which he called "satyagraha", instrumental in its role in the Indian Independence
Movement. Its effectiveness served as inspiration to Martin Luther King Jr., James Lawson, James
Bevel, Thich Nhat Hanh and many others in the Civil Rights Movement. Pacifism was widely
associated with the much publicized image of Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989 with the "Tank
Man", where one protester stood in nonviolent opposition to a column of tanks.
Pacifism covers a spectrum of views, including the belief that international disputes can and should
be peacefully resolved, calls for the abolition of the institutions of the military and war, opposition
to any organization of society through governmental force (anarchist or libertarian pacifism),
rejection of the use of physical violence to obtain political, economic or social goals, the obliteration
of force, and opposition to violence under any circumstance, even defence of self and others.
Historians of pacifism Peter Brock and Thomas Paul Socknat define pacifism "in the sense generally
accepted in English-speaking areas" as "an unconditional rejection of all forms of
warfare". Philosopher Jenny Teichman defines the main form of pacifism as "anti-warism", the
rejection of all forms of warfare. Teichman's beliefs have been summarized by Brian Orend as "... A
pacifist rejects war and believes there are no moral grounds which can justify resorting to war. War,
for the pacifist, is always wrong." In a sense the philosophy is based on the idea that the ends do not
justify the means.
Moral considerations
Pacifism may be based on moral principles (a deontological view)
or pragmatism (a consequentialist view). Principled pacifism holds that at some point along the
spectrum from war to interpersonal physical violence, such violence becomes morally wrong.
Pragmatic pacifism holds that the costs of war and interpersonal violence are so substantial that
better ways of resolving disputes must be found. Pacifists generally reject theories of Just War.
Nonviolence
Some pacifists follow principles of nonviolence, believing that nonviolent action is morally
superior and/or most effective. Some however, support physical violence for emergency defence of
self or others. Others supportdestruction of property in such emergencies or for conducting symbolic
acts of resistance like pouring red paint to represent blood on the outside of military recruiting
offices or entering air force bases and hammering on military aircraft.

By no means is all nonviolent resistance (sometimes also called civil resistance) based on a
fundamental rejection of all violence in all circumstances. Many leaders and participants in such
movements, while recognizing the importance of using non-violent methods in particular
circumstances, have not been absolute pacifists. Sometimes, as with the civil rights movement's
march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, they have called for armed protection. The
interconnections between civil resistance and factors of force are numerous and complex.
Absolute pacifism
An absolute pacifist is generally described by the British Broadcasting Corporation as one who
believes that human life is so valuable, that a human should never be killed and war should never be
conducted, even in self-defense. The principle is described as difficult to abide by consistently, due
to violence not being available as a tool to aid a person who is being harmed or killed. It is further
claimed that such a pacifist could logically argue that violence leads to more undesirable results than
non-violence.
Although all pacifists are opposed to war between nation states, there have been occasions where
pacifists have supported military conflict in the case of civil war or revolution. For instance, during
the American Civil War, both the American Peace Society and some former members of the NonResistance Society supported the Union's military campaign, arguing they were carrying out a
"police action" against the Confederacy, whose act of Secession they regarded as
criminal. Following the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, French pacifist Ren Grin (18921957)
urged support for the Spanish Republic. Grin argued that the Spanish Nationalists were
"comparable to an individual enemy" and the Republic's war effort was equivalent to the action of a
domestic police force suppressing crime.
In the 1960s, some pacifists associated with the New Left supported wars of national
liberation and supported groups such as the Viet Cong and the Algerian FLN, arguing peaceful
attempts to liberate such nations were no longer viable, and war was thus the only option.

Early tradition of pacifism

China
During the Warring States period, the pacifist Mohist School opposed aggressive war between
the feudal states. They took this belief into action by using their famed defensive strategies to defend
smaller states from invasion from larger states, hoping to dissuade feudal lords from costly warfare.
The Seven Military Classics of ancient China view warfare negatively, and as a last resort. For
example, the Three Strategies of Huang Shigong says: "As for the military, it is not an auspicious
instrument; it is the way of heaven to despise it", and the Wei Liaozi writes: "As for the military, it is
an inauspicious instrument; as for conflict and contention, it runs counter to virtue".
The Taoist scripture "Classic of Great Peace (Taiping jing)" foretells "the coming Age of Great
Peace (taiping)." The Taiping Jing advocates "a world full of peace".
Greece

In Ancient Greece, pacifism seems not to have existed except as a broad moral guideline against
violence between individuals. No philosophical program of rejecting violence between states, or
rejecting all forms of violence, seems to have existed. Aristophanes, in his play Lysistrata, creates
the scenario of an Athenian woman's anti-war sex strike during the Peloponnesian War of 431404
BC, and the play has gained an international reputation for its anti-war message. Nevertheless, it is
both fictional and comical, and though it offers a pragmatic opposition to the destructiveness of war,
its message seems to stem from frustration with the existing conflict (then in its twentieth year)
rather than from a philosophical position against violence or war. Equally fictional is the nonviolent
protest of Hegetorides of Thasos. Euripides also expressed strong anti-war ideas in his work,
especially The Trojan Women.
Christianity
Throughout history many have understood Jesus of Nazareth to have been a pacifist,
drawing on his Sermon on the Mount. In the sermon Jesus stated that one should "not resist an
evildoer" and promoted his turn the other cheek philosophy. "If anyone strikes you on the right
cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as
well ... Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for
those who abuse you."[24][25][26] The New Testament story is of Jesus, besides preaching these words,
surrendering himself freely to an enemy intent on having him killed and proscribing his followers
from defending him.
[23]

There are those, however, who deny that Jesus was a pacifist and state that Jesus never said not
to fight, citing examples from the New Testament. One such instance portrays an angry Jesus driving
dishonest market traders from the temple. A frequently quoted passage is Luke 22:36: "He said to
them, 'But now, the one who has a purse must take it, and likewise a bag. And the one who has no
sword must sell his cloak and buy one.'" Pacifists have typically explained that verse as Jesus
fulfilling prophecy, since in the next verse, Jesus continues to say: "It is written: 'And he was
numbered with the transgressors'; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written
about me is reaching its fulfillment." Others have interpreted the non-pacifist statements in the New
Testament to be related to self-defense or to be metaphorical and state that on no occasion did Jesus
shed blood or urge others to shed blood.
Throughout the many 18th century wars in which Britain participated, the Quakers maintained a
principled commitment not to serve in the army and militia or even to pay the alternative 10 fine.
The English Quaker William Penn, who founded the Province of Pennsylvania, employed an antimilitarist public policy. Unlike residents of many of the colonies, Quakers chose to trade peacefully
with the Indians, including for land. The colonial province was, for the 75 years from 1681 to 1756,
essentially unarmed and experienced little or no warfare in that period.
From the 16th to the 18th centuries, a number of thinkers devised plans for an international
organisation that would promote peace, and reduce or even eliminate the occurrence of war. These
included the French politician Duc de Sully, the philosophersmeric Cruc and the Abbe de SaintPierre, and the English Quakers William Penn and John Bellers.

Pacifist ideals emerged from two strands of thought that coalesced at the end of the 18th
century. One, rooted in the secular Enlightenment, promoted peace as the rational antidote to the
world's ills, while the other was a part of the evangelical religious revival that had played an
important part in the campaign for the abolition of slavery. Representatives of the former,
included Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in Extrait du Projet de Paix Perpetuelle de Monsieur l'Abbe SaintPierre (1756),[33] Immanuel Kant, in his Thoughts on Perpetual Peace[34] and Jeremy Bentham who
proposed the formation of a peace association in 1789. Representative of the latter, was William
Wilberforce who thought that strict limits should be imposed on British involvement in theFrench
Revolutionary War based on Christian ideals of peace and brotherhood. Bohemian Bernard
Bolzano (17811848) taught about the social waste of militarism and the needlessness of war. He
urged a total reform of the educational, social, and economic systems that would direct the nation's
interests toward peace rather than toward armed conflict between nations.

Modern history
Peace movements
During the period of the Napoleonic Wars, although no formal peace movement was
established until the end of hostilities, a significant peace movement animated by universalist ideals
did emerge, due to the perception of Britain fighting in a reactionaryrole and the increasingly visible
impact of the war on the welfare of the nation in the form of higher taxation levels and high casualty
rates. Sixteen peace petitions to Parliament were signed by members of the public, anti-war and antiPitt demonstrations convened and peace literature was widely published and disseminated.
The first peace movements appeared in 181516. In the United States the first such movement was
the New York Peace Society, founded in 1815 by the theologian David Low Dodge, and
the Massachusetts Peace Society. It became an active organization, holding regular weekly
meetings, and producing literature which was spread as far as Gibraltar and Malta, describing the
horrors of war and advocating pacificism onChristian grounds.[36] The London Peace Society (also
known as the Society for the Promotion of Permanent and Universal Peace) was formed in 1816 to
promote permanent and universal peace by thephilanthropist William Allen. In the 1840s, British
women formed "Olive Leaf Circles", groups of around 15 to 20 women, to discuss and promote
pacifist ideas.
The peace movement began to grow in influence by the mid-nineteenth century. The London
Peace Society, under the initiative of American consul to Birmingham Elihu Burritt and the
reverend Henry Richard, convened the first International Peace Congress in London in 1843. The
congress decided on two aims: the ideal of peaceable arbitration in the affairs of nations and the
creation of an international institution to achieve that. Richard became the secretary of the Peace
Society in 1850 on a full-time basis, a position which he would keep for the next 40 years, earning
himself a reputation as the 'Apostle of Peace'. He helped secure one of the earliest victories for the
peace movement by securing a commitment from the Great Powers in the Treaty of Paris (1856) at
the end of the Crimean War, in favour of arbitration. On the European continent, wracked by social
upheaval, the first peace congress was held in Brussels in 1848 followed by Paris a year later.

After experiencing a recession in support due to the resurgence of militarism during the American
Civil War and Crimean War, the movement began to spread across Europe and began to infiltrate the
new working class socialist movements. In 1870, Randal Cremer formed the Workman's Peace
Association in London. Cremer, alongside the French economist Frdric Passy was also the
founding father of the first international organisation for the arbitration of conflicts in 1889,
the Inter-Parliamentary Union. The National Peace Council was founded in after the 17th Universal
Peace Congress in London (July August 1908).
An important thinker who contributed to pacifist ideology was Russian writer Leo Tolstoy. In one of
his latter works, The Kingdom of God is Within You, Tolstoy provides a detailed history, account
and defense of pacifism. Tolstoy's work inspired a movement named after him advocating pacifism
to arise in Russia and elsewhere. The book was a major early influence on Mohandas K.
Gandhi (18691948), and the two engaged in regular correspondence while Gandhi was active in
South Africa.
Bertha von Suttner, the first woman to be a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, became a leading figure in
the peace movement with the publication of her novel, Die Waffen nieder! ("Lay Down Your
Arms!") in 1889 and founded an Austrian pacifist organization in 1891.
Non-violent resistance
In New Zealand, during the latter half of the 19th century British colonists used many tactics
to confiscate land from the indigenous Mori, including warfare. In the 1870s and 1880s, Parihaka,
then reputed to be the largest Mori village in New Zealand, became the centre of a major campaign
of non-violent resistance to European occupation of confiscated land in the area. One Mori
leader, Te Whiti-o-Rongomai, inspired warriors to stand up for their rights without using weapons,
which had led to defeat in the past. In 1881 he convinced 2000 Maori to welcome battle-hardened
British soldiers into their village and even offered food and drink. He allowed himself and his
people to be arrested without resistance for opposing land confiscation. He is remembered as a great
leader because the "passive resistance" he practiced prevented British massacres and even protected
far more land than violent resistance.
Mohandas K. Gandhi was a major political and spiritual leader of India, instrumental in the Indian
independence movement. The Nobel prize winning great poet Rabindranath Tagore, who was also
an Indian, gave him the honorific "Mahatma", usually translated "Great Soul." He was the pioneer of
a brand of nonviolence (or ahimsa) which he called satyagrahatranslated literally as "truth force".
This was the resistance of tyranny through civil disobedience that was not only nonviolent but also
sought to change the heart of the opponent. He contrasted this with duragraha, "resistant force,"
which sought only to change behaviour with stubborn protest.
During his 30 years of work (19171947) for the independence of his country from the British Raj,
Gandhi led dozens of nonviolent campaigns, spent over seven years in prison, and fasted nearly to
the death on several occasions to obtain British compliance with a demand or to stop intercommunal violence. His efforts helped lead India to independence in 1947, and inspired movements
for civil rights and freedom worldwide.
World War I

Although the onset of the First World War was generally greeted with enthusiastic patriotism
across Europe, peace groups were still active in condemning the war. In Britain, the prominent peace
activist Stephen Henry Hobhouse went to prison for refusing military service, citing his convictions
as an "International Socialist and a Christian" Many socialist groups and movements
were antimilitarist, arguing that war by its nature was a type of governmental coercion of
the working class for the benefit of capitalist elites. The French socialist pacifist leader Jean
Jaurs was assassinated by a nationalist fanatic on July 31, 1914. The national parties in the Second
International increasingly supported their respective nations in war and the International was
dissolved in 1916.
In 1915 the League of Nations Society was formed by British liberal leaders to promote a strong
international organisation that could enforce the peaceful resolution of conflict. Later that year
the League to Enforce Peace was established in America to promote similar goals. Hamilton
Holt published an editorial in his New York City weekly magazine the Independent called "The Way
to Disarm: A Practical Proposal" on September 28, 1914. It called for an international organization
to agree upon the arbitration of disputes and to guarantee the territorial integrity of its members by
maintaining military forces sufficient to defeat those of any non-member. The ensuing debate among
prominent internationalists modified Holt's plan to align it more closely with proposals offered in
Great Britain by Viscount James Bryce, a former ambassador from the U.K. to the U.S. These and
other initiatives were pivotal in the change in attitudes that gave birth to the League of Nations after
the war.
Some of the many groups that protested against the war, as well as the traditional peace churches,
were the Woman's Peace Party (which was organized in 1915 and led by noted reformer Jane
Addams), the International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace (ICWPP) (also organized in
1915), the American Union Against Militarism, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the American
Friends Service Committee. Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress, was another
fierce advocate of pacifism, the only person to vote no to America's entrance into both World Wars.
Between the two World Wars
The immense loss of life during the war, for what became regarded as futile reasons, caused a
sea-change in public attitudes to militarism. Organisations formed in this period included the War
Resisters' International theWomen's International League for Peace and Freedom, the No More War
Movement and the Peace Pledge Union (PPU). The League of Nations also convened several
disarmament conferences in the inter-war period such as theGeneva Conference.
Pacifism and revulsion with war were very popular sentiments in 1920s Britain. A stream of novels
and poems on the theme of the futility of war and the slaughter of the youth by old fools were
published, including, Death of a Hero by Richard Aldington,Erich Remarque's translated All Quiet
on the Western Front and Beverley Nichols's expose Cry Havoc. A debate at the University of
Oxford in 1933 on the motion 'one must fight for King and country' captured the changed mood
when the motion was resoundingly defeated. Dick Sheppard established the Peace Pledge Union in
1934 totally renouncing war and aggression. The idea of collective security was also popular;
instead of outright pacifism the public generally exhibited a determination to stand up to aggression,
but preferably with the use of economic sanctions and multilateral negotiations.

The British Labour Party had a strong pacifist wing in the early 1930s and between 1931 and
1935 was led by George Lansbury, a Christian pacifist who later chaired the No More War
Movement and was president of the PPU. The 1933 annual conference resolved unanimously to
"pledge itself to take no part in war". "Labour's official position, however, although based on the
aspiration towards a world socialist commonwealth and the outlawing of war, did not imply a
renunciation of force under all circumstances, but rather support for the ill-defined concept of
'collective security' under the League of Nations. At the same time, on the party's left, Stafford
Cripps's small but vocal Socialist League opposed the official policy, on the non-pacifist ground that
the League of Nations was 'nothing but the tool of the satiated imperialist powers'." [49] Lansbury was
eventually persuaded to resign as Labour leader by the non-pacifist wing of the party and was
replaced by Clement Attlee.[50] As the threat fromNazi Germany increased in the 1930s, the Labour
Party abandoned its pacifist position and supported re-armament, largely due to the efforts of Ernest
Bevin and Hugh Dalton who by 1937 had also persuaded the party to oppose Neville Chamberlain's
policy of appeasement.
The League of Nations attempted to play its role of ensuring world peace in the 1920s and 30s,
although with the increasingly revisionist and aggressive behaviour of Nazi Germany, Fascist
Italy andImperial Japan, it ultimately failed to maintain such a world order. Economic
sanctions were used against states that committed aggression, such as Italy when it invaded
Abyssinia, but there was no will on the part of the principal League powers, Britain and France, to
subordinate their interests to a multilateral process or to disarm at all themselves.
The Spanish Civil War proved a major test for international pacifism, and the work of pacifist
organisations (such as War Resisters' International and the Fellowship of Reconciliation) and
individuals (such as Jos Brocca and Amparo Poch) in that arena has until recently been ignored or
forgotten by historians, overshadowed by the memory of the International Brigades and other
militaristic interventions. Shortly after the war ended, Simone Weil, despite having volunteered for
service on the republican side, went on to publish The Iliad or the Poem of Force, a work that has
been described as a pacifist manifesto. In response to the threat of fascism, some pacifist thinkers,
such as Richard B. Gregg, devised plans for a campaign of nonviolent resistance in the event of a
fascist invasion or takeover.
World War II
With the start of World War II, pacifist and anti-war sentiment declined in nations affected by
war. Even the communist-controlled American Peace Mobilization reversed its anti-war activism
once Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,
mainstream isolationist groups like the America First Committee, declined, but many smaller
religious and socialist groups continued their opposition to war. Bertrand Russell argued that the
necessity of defeating Adolf Hitler and the Nazis was a unique circumstance where war was not the
worst of the possible evils; he called his position relative pacifism. Shortly before the outbreak of
war, British writers such as E. M. Forster, Leonard Woolf, David Garnett and Storm Jameson all
rejected their earlier pacifism and endorsed military action against Nazism. Similarly Albert
Einstein wrote: "I loathe all armies and any kind of violence; yet I'm firmly convinced that at present
these hateful weapons offer the only effective protection." The British pacifists Reginald

Sorensen and C. J. Cadoux, while bitterly disappointed by the outbreak of war, nevertheless urged
their fellow pacifists "not to obstruct the war effort".
The French pacifists Andr and Magda Trocm helped conceal hundreds of Jews fleeing the
Nazis in the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. After the war, the Trocms were declared Righteous
Among the Nations.
Pacifists in the Third Reich were dealt with harshly; German pacifist Carl von
Ossietzky, and Olaf Kullmann, a Norwegian pacifist active during the Nazi occupation, were both
imprisoned in concentration camps and died as a result of their mistreatment there. Austrian
farmer Franz Jgersttter was executed in 1943 for refusing to serve in the Wehrmacht.
After the end of the war, it was discovered that " The Black Book" or Sonderfahndungsliste
G.B. list of Britons to be arrested in the event of a Nazi invasion of the UK included three active
pacifists; Vera Brittain, Sybil Thorndike and Aldous Huxley (who had left the country).
There were conscientious objectors and war tax resisters in both World War I and World War
II. The United States government allowed sincere objectors to serve in noncombatant military roles.
However, those draft resisters who refused any cooperation with the war effort often spent much of
each war in federal prisons. During World War II, pacifist leaders like Dorothy Day and Ammon
Hennacy of the Catholic Worker Movement urged young Americans not to enlist in military service.
On December 1, 1948, President Jos Figueres Ferrer of Costa Rica abolished the Costa Rican
military. In 1949, the abolition of the military was introduced in Article 12 of the Costa Rican
constitution. The budget previously dedicated to the military is now dedicated to providing health
care services and education.

Conclusion
Some commentators on the most nonviolent forms of pacifism, including Jan Narveson, argue that
such pacifism is a self-contradictory doctrine. Narveson claims that everyone has rights and
corresponding responsibilities not to violate others' rights. Since pacifists give up their ability to
protect themselves from violation of their right not to be harmed, then other people thus have no
corresponding responsibility, thus creating a paradox of rights. Narveson said that "the prevention of
infractions of that right is precisely what one has a right to when one has a right at all". Narveson
then discusses how rational persuasion is a good but often inadequate method of discouraging an
aggressor. He considers that everyone has the right to use any means necessary to prevent
deprivation of their civil liberties and force could be necessary.
Many pacifists would argue that not only are there other ways to protect oneself but that some of
those ways are far more effective than violence, and that physical harm is not the only variety that
can be done. Often pacifists would much rather take the physical harm inflicted by another rather
than cause themselves emotional or psychological harm, not to mention harming the other.

PLAN

1. Introduction
2. Early tradition of pacifism
3. Modern history
4. Conclusion

State University of Moldova

Faculty of International Relations Political and Administrative Sciences

Report
Pocifism

Conducted: Morari Anatolie

Examiner: Morari Cristina

Chisinau 2016