Article(electronic)#12018
Pacific Resistance: A Moral Alternative to Defensive War
In: Social theory and practice: an international and interdisciplinary journal of social philosophy, Volume 44, Issue 1, p. 1-20
ISSN: 2154-123X
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.