1.1 Nonviolence and Pacifism of Holmes and Cady

While the traditions of nonviolence and pacifism can be traced back to antiquity, in modern times they are often associated Gandhi and King.² Within recent philosophy, two of the most careful treatments can be found in the work of Robert Holmes and Duane Cady. I want to note how Holmes distinguishes violentist and nonviolentist approaches and how this distinction differs from the violentology perspective in nonkilling philosophy. I also want to note how Cady lays out a continuum of pacifism that highlights types that allow for some lesser levels of violence and show how most of these types are consistent with nonkilling philosophy.

Holmes distinguishes violentists (ones who accept use of violence) and nonviolentists (advocates of nonviolence). For Holmes, the nonviolent perspective can be based on principled or pragmatic grounds, and he gives strong arguments in favor of the principled version over the pragmatic one. Moreover, given these definitions, he can distinguish nonviolentists from pacifists. He states:

Pacifism is opposition to war, nonviolence [is] opposition to violence. While one cannot be a nonviolentist without being a pacifist, one can be a pacifist without being a nonviolentist. One can, that is, oppose warfare without necessarily opposing other modes of violence.³

For my purposes, the point I want to stress is that the violentism that Holmes criticizes is distinct from the violentology perspective criticized within the nonkilling philosophy that I will be presenting. The difference may be subtle, but it is important because even pacifists and nonviolentists can unwittingly lapse into the cognitive dissonance of the violentology perspective.

Spanish peace researcher Francisco Muñoz coined the term “violentology perspective” (perspectiva violentológica) to refer to the problem that research focused on violence, even when undertaken by advocates of nonviolence, makes violence appear to be more pervasive than it is.⁴ Pacifists and feminists can fall victim to the cognitive dissonance that Muñoz describes. In their cases, while they desire peace and gender equality, they often give more attention to conceptualizing and criticizing the large-scale violence of war and the widespread occurrence of violence against women. While the violentology perspective is descriptive of how we take for granted the practicality of and the justification for violence—what some would call violentism—it also calls for greater emphasis on the diverse and extensive occurrences of nonviolence and for their expansion. Even advocates of nonviolence need to move to the next level. Prescriptively, while we need to expose the various types of physical violence and killing and the structural and cultural forms that support them, we also need to develop alternative discourses and practices that advance nonkilling and nonviolence. Like some other orientations toward peacemaking, the nonkilling perspective helps us move forward with a focus on ways in which so much in the lives of individuals and societies takes place apart from violence.

Beyond confusing the violentist and the violentology perspectives, many people also incorrectly equate pacifism and passivism. In his highly influential book Between Warism and Pacifism, originally published in 1989, Cady clarifies how pacifists are activists, not passivists, and also makes a distinction between deontological and consequentialist pacifists.⁵ As far as I can tell, his distinction relies on the same philosophical distinction that Holmes makes between principled and pragmatic nonviolentists. The difference is that Cady refers only to grounds for the moral opposition to war and includes versions that Holmes likely would say are violentist. In brief, Cady distinguishes three types of deontological pacifists and three types of consequentialist pacifists. In my interpretation, only the absolute type of deontological pacifist would qualify as a nonviolentist, since Cady presents all other pacifists as allowing for the moral use of some levels of violence—not only nonlethal violence, but also, in some cases, lethal violence. However, for Cady, all pacifists are united in a moral opposition to war. Cady’s distinctions are important for at least two reasons. First, they show that non-lethal force pacifism is very close to nonkilling philosophy. Second, they also show the more radical stance of the absolute pacifist and the less radical stance of the lethal force pacifist. So, without terming itself as pacifism, nonkilling philosophy is really only one step beneath the absolute pacifism of Cady’s continuum.

1.2 Care Ethics and the Feminism of Reardon and Warren

Like the traditions of nonviolence and pacifism, feminism also has a long history. Much of the history of the contribution of women is largely unknown to us, though within philosophy Karen Warren has helped recover some of these contributions.⁶ To compound recognition of the contribution of women is the fact that the term “feminism” came into use only fairly recently. The French word “feminisme,” coined by Charles Fourier, was taken over into English during the 1890s within the movement for equal rights for women, though I would be remiss if I failed to note the earlier contributions of Mary Wollestonecraft in the late 18th century who, while not having available the term feminism, made important arguments for the rights of women well before those of John Stuart Mill in the late 19th century.⁷ For purposes of this chapter, however, I will simply comment on care ethics and the work of Betty Reardon since both are important influences on nonkilling philosophy. Also, I will discuss briefly how Karen Warren links concerns about women and peace to ones about the environment, which is also a concern within nonkilling philosophy.

Carol Gilligan initiated care ethics in 1982 with her groundbreaking book In a Different Voice.⁸ She termed as “Justice Ethics” the abstract and retributive approach traditionally favored in philosophy. Alternatively, she termed as “Care Ethics” a relational approach to morality that avoids generalization in favor of particularity and connection. Gilligan describes and affirms how individuals are entangled in a web of dynamic relationships, not all of which are freely chosen. Among the feminist philosophers who have influenced nonkilling philosophy, Sara Ruddick made an important application of care ethics in her 1995 Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace.⁹ Nevertheless, Ruddick does not understand that pacifists can advocate non-lethal force and even lethal force and still oppose war and other large-scale military action. She says, “it is unnecessary and divisive to require of all peacemakers an absolute commitment not to kill.”¹⁰ However, as Cady has made clear, only absolute pacifism and nonlethal force pacifism reject categorically all intentional killing.¹¹ Elsewhere, I have discussed these and other contributions to care ethics; so, I will not elaborate further on them here.¹²

Nonkilling philosophy correctly credits Betty Reardon as the feminist who challenged gender studies to address the structural relation between sexism and the war system and who also argued for the centrality of issues of gender within peace studies. Among her most important works are Sexism and the War System (1985), Women and Peace (1993), Education for a Culture of Peace in Gender Perspective (2001), and the collection Betty A. Reardon: Key Texts in Gender and Peace (2015).¹³ Dale Snauwaert, in summarizing the importance of her work, says:

Reardon’s groundbreaking work argues that a feminist, holistic, and gendered perspective can serve as the conceptual core of a transformation of our present global system of patriarchy, and its culture of violence and war. Her comprehensive work in this area has uncovered the profound symbiotic relationship between patriarchy and the war system, and she calls for a global inquiry into alternatives to the patriarchal paradigm. She argues for a gender-equal and socially just society based on a cosmopolitan ethic of human rights. For Reardon, this vision of a positive human and planetary future is realized through achieving a transformational, fundamental shift in worldview towards a paradigm of peace informed by a gender perspective.¹⁴

Nonkilling philosophy stresses Reardon’s view that “above all a culture of peace would be a culture of caring.”¹⁵

Since nonkilling philosophy aspires to avoid the destruction not only of human beings but also of other species and the environment, I will end this brief survey by noting the relevance of the work of Karen Warren. In several of her books, Warren has introduced ecological feminism.¹⁶ Among other goals, ecological philosophy wants to stop destruction of the environment and feminist philosophy wants to stop violence against women. Militarism also is destructive to the environment and to human beings.¹⁷ So, not surprisingly, Warren applied her views to the war system in Bringing Peace Home: Feminism, Violence, and Nature, her 1996 book with Duane Cady.¹⁸ They contend that serious consideration of feminism should lead to philosophical discussions of peace that incorporate feminist insights on relations among women, nature, and war. They make detailed connections across six areas. One of the central connections is with language, which has been of ongoing concern to me.¹⁹ Concerning language, they criticize “sexist-naturist-warist” discourse as “language which inferiorizes women and nonhuman nature by naturalizing women and feminizing nature, and then gets used in discussions of war and nuclear issues.”²⁰ While their collection allows a variety of voices to speak on these issues, I find their contribution to be especially important for bringing together peace studies and gender studies, since, like nonkilling philosophy, it also includes concerns about the environment.

The problem of violence is a common denominator to pacifism, feminism, and environmentalism. I have long maintained that we need an alliance of these movements and have advocated nonviolence on personal through international levels.²¹ Now, in this chapter, I will turn to nonkilling philosophy and will present some of the strengths that it adds to such a coalition.

3.1 Initiation of Nonkilling Philosophy

Beginning in 2009, Spanish philosophers and peace researchers Irene Comins Mingol and Sonia París Albert initiated nonkilling philosophy in a manner that provides a philosophical treatment of the moral and ethical foundations of the nonkilling perspective and one that also has promise for uniting peace studies and gender studies or at least making available to them augmented and strengthened terminology and methodology.²⁵ Recently, I began introducing their work to U.S. philosophers.²⁶ So, in this chapter I will treat only lightly how they ground their support for nonkilling philosophy on works in discourse ethics and care ethics. A philosophical treatment of the moral and ethical foundations of the nonkilling perspective requires a prescriptive model of the need to speak nonviolently and act nonviolently. While I have elsewhere addressed prescriptively these issues in relation to discourse and behavior, here I will simply note the type of philosophical support that discourse ethics and care ethics provide within the nonkilling perspective.

Within discourse ethics, Comins Mingol and París Albert primarily utilize the work of Jürgen Habermas, especially his views that discourse presupposes truth as an ideal and, to a lesser extent, the work of John Austin. For Habermas, the ideal of truth that underlies discourse should be operative in (or can serve for the assessment of) our statements, our intentions, and our actions. Comins Mingol and París Albert reveal their reliance on Habermas when they state that discourse ethics “presupposes the liberty and equality of all speakers” and has “truth in what is being said” as central to the validity claims of speech.²⁷ Habermas developed his theory in the 1980s and 1990s.²⁸ For Habermas moral principles can be founded in the presuppositions of discourse and do not require grounding in a transcendental metaphysics. However, since social actors often fail to follow these presuppositions of discourse, Habermas and others who rely on discourse ethics should concede this point.²⁹ The position of discourse ethics and its value relies on its normative status. When, descriptively, discourse falls short of this ideal, discourse ethics, as a normative position, has a basis for criticism. Moreover, since regimes and languages can and do change over time, discourse ethics can help produce change that is oriented toward these norms. In this regard, Comins Mingol and París Albert supplement their reliance on Habermas with the Speech Act Theory of John Austin.³⁰ For them, proper application of this theory would require that “what is said ends up being what is done.”³¹ This position, as well, is normative. Comins Mingol and París Albert are thus left with a discourse ethics that seeks to identify the ideal conditions of discourse and to reach normative agreement by means of such discourse. Beyond a need to address the ways language can be abused and do hurt and harm, discourse ethics also needs to address issues of diversity and inclusion if it aspires to be even quasi-universal. Critics of discourse ethics, such as Seyla Benhabib, have noted that, as initially stated, the norms formulated by Habermas are ones for a specific discourse community.³² Based on feminist and other similar criticisms, Habermas later added that participants in discourse about norms also need a sense of solidarity.³³ This point is one that leads well into how Comins Mingol and París Albert also make use of care ethics as it developed out of feminism.

Within care ethics, Comins Mingol and París Albert mainly rely on Carol Gilligan, Sara Ruddick, and Betty Reardon and stress how care ethics facilitates an orientation toward peace and nonviolence. They begin by observing, “Women and the nonwestern countries have had their voices excluded from epistemological paradigms.”³⁴ Based on their use of Gilligan and Ruddick, Comins Mingol and París Albert contend the nonkilling paradigm fosters traits such as empathy, responsibility, and patience. They concur with the statement by Betty Reardon, “above all a culture of peace would be a culture of caring.”³⁵ To facilitate this aim, Comins Mingol has argued elsewhere that care ethics can serve as a means to inject gender issues into peace education and suggests that doing so could begin the needed effort to teach youth that caring is a peaceful value for all human beings and not just for women who assume traditional roles.³⁶ Basically, care ethics provides a philosophical basis for addressing respect, nonviolence, diversity, and inclusion. So, by combining discourse ethics and care ethics Comins Mingol and París Albert provide what they regard as a viable philosophical foundation for the normative components needed in the nonkilling perspective.

I turn now to a summary of the position Comins Mingol and París Albert develop on the basis of the philosophical support provided by discourse ethics and care ethics. In particular, Comins Mingol and París Albert stress that we generally have alternative nonviolent responses available during conflict and after conflict and that we should train for and make use of these alternatives. Traditional academic approaches to conflict resolution and conflict management are negative. These approaches are negative because they aim to either eliminate or administer conflict. Resolution or elimination of conflict is not feasible to the extent that conflict is built into how diverse individuals and cultures approach differences. Management or administration of conflict also has limits to the extent that it operates as an external authority in relation to conflict. Conflict transformation aims to operate within conflict, rather than being imposed upon conflict. Conflict transformation accepts conflict and places in the hands of those involved the responsibility for seeking to implement nonviolent practices. To facilitate conflict transformation, Comins Mingol and París Albert propose that we “disaccustom ourselves to violence” and instead cultivate the practice and then the habit of what they term “conflict transformation.”³⁷ In place of efforts to eliminate or administer conflict, conflict transformation prepares the persons involved in conflict to seek “peaceful alternatives that avoid the use of violence.”³⁸ “Peace as a habit” becomes possible when we “disaccustom ourselves to violence.”³⁹ Such practices promote the peaceful, nonviolent transformation of conflict.

Comins Mingol and París Albert conclude by asserting “a nonkilling philosophy is necessarily a philosophy committed to the recuperation of and the recognition of human potential for peace.”⁴⁰ In this regard, they stress that human beings have capacities for “harmonious coexistence, for reciprocal care and the peaceful transformation of conflicts.”⁴¹ In my terminology, they aim to move from the language of war and linguistic violence to the language of peace and linguistic nonviolence.⁴² In addressing the needed language and behaviors for such a transition, París Albert elsewhere responds to the problem of indignation that is experienced by so many oppressed peoples.⁴³ Though she draws from Hegel’s famous treatment of recognition in his master-slave dialectic, she also goes beyond the usual stress on how the struggle for recognition can lead to domination—to the risking of life and even the taking of life—and the misguided view that forcing recognition through violence works. To present a different possible outcome, she relies on work of Paulo Friere that addresses how to move from fear to hope.⁴⁴ She contends that the indignation that many people feel in the face of injustice and which can lead to violent responses can be transformed by nonviolent social movements, such as nonkilling philosophy, that incorporate “mutual recognition into the processes of empowerment of the oppressed to transform the oppressive situations they suffer.”⁴⁵ Such mutual recognition, coupled with nonviolent action, may displace fear with hope and through this practice of conflict transformation may elevate the quest for freedom to a higher plane in the quest to overcome oppression and achieve social justice.

3.2 Nonkilling Philosophy and the Neuroscience of Ethics

Pacifists and feminists and other advocates of nonviolence and social justice often hear one refrain or another to the effect of “You can’t change human nature.” Over the centuries various religions and philosophies have proclaimed an essentialist doctrine that makes an evil or violent nature part of our being. More recently, some scientific theories have purported to have empirical evidence that our membership in the kingdom of mammals or the structure of our genes makes a propensity to violence an ineradicable component of our heritage. Currently, some work within neuroscience goes even further. While, in general, neuroscience has been making important contributions to the natural sciences, within what is typically termed neurophilosophy or neuroethics some neuroscientists also aim to extend their influence into the social and human sciences. For these neuroscientists, the goal is to find the neural bases of ethics and thereby provide an empirical explanation for free will. Despite the recent attention that this goal has received, it is not new. Such aims can be found in the early advocacy of this approach by Harold S. Burr and more recently in the retrospective and prospective assessment of this approach by Damian Stanly and Ralph Adolphs.⁴⁶

In order to locate the challenges for advocates of nonviolence that are posed in some neurophilosophy or neuroethics, one needs to begin by understanding the distinction typically made between the ethics of neuroscience and the neuroscience of ethics. The difference between these two approaches is significant. The ethics of neuroscience is more commonly done within applied philosophy and examines ethical issues relating to the clinical practice of neuroscience or to experimental research in neuroscience. By contrast, the neuroscience of ethics focuses generally on human behavior but also sometimes focuses more narrowly on what is purported to be human nature. These efforts that go beyond the original narrow confines of neuroscience suggest to some the possible eclipse of philosophy. Patricia Churchland first challenged this overreach in her 1990 book Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind/Brain.⁴⁷ She situates this overreach of neuroscience within the overly reductionist tendencies in modern science that rely almost exclusively on mathematization and experimentation that thereby lapse into partial accounts that are often naively positivistic.

In their 2013 article “Epistemological and Anthropological Thoughts on Neurophilosophy,”⁴⁸ París Albert and Comins Mingol respond to claims in the neuroscience of ethics that tend to dismiss philosophical notions of freedom in human action and that seek instead explanations of human behavior in terms of neurons. Informing their response is their rejection of the orientation toward “objectivity” and “neutrality” associated with logical positivism. In contrast to such positivist views, they stress the relational and intersubjective character of science and other human enterprises and regard such activities as value laden in ways that are more realistic than ones found in supposedly objective and value neutral approaches.

In their response to these developments, especially within the neuroscience of ethics, París Albert and Comins Mingol occasionally rely on insightful humor and regularly employ careful logical analysis. At the outset, they quip “Similarly to how phrenologists were determined to reduce the analysis of human nature to the shape of the skull, neurologists seem determined to reduce it to the functioning of neurons.”⁴⁹ In contradistinction to such mono-causal models, they stress evidence of what they term “the irrepressible plasticity of our brains,” which they regard as the locus of our freedom and as facilitating responses to danger and conflict that are not reductively mono-directional and programmed with inclinations toward violence. Philosophically, they situate these frequently unrecognized assumptions of neuroscience within the violentology perspective that is so widely taken for granted (and which I discussed in the second section of this chapter). Such assumptions mask recognition that inclinations toward nonviolent responses are also present or can be cultivated.

París Albert and Comins Mingol do not claim that human beings are nonviolent by nature. To make that claim would be reductive in ways like the opposite position that human beings are violent by nature—as has been postulated often in religion, philosophy, and science. They readily affirm that human beings are “conflictive beings.” However, in relation to the conflicts that we regularly face, they assert our responses “may be either violent or peaceful, i.e., this capacity for ‘fighting with’ can come about violently or peacefully.”⁵⁰ They cite research that typically our “conflicts are linked to indecision,” noting “Conflicts are those moments when the fight is undecided; that is, those situations in which we do not really know what to do…and have different alternatives.”⁵¹ When such moments arise, nonviolent alternatives can be chosen. At this point, the response of París Albert and Comins Mingol moves from criticism of the neuroscience of ethics to support for nonviolent alternatives.

París Albert and Comins Mingol cite research that the alternatives open to individuals in conflicts include not only whatever may be in our genes but also and significantly the influences of our social environment. They say that these factors are ones that are stressed in much Peace and Conflict Research. They conclude, “People can be violent or peaceful, but our social make-up is probably what will influence directly on our being more violent or more peaceful.”⁵² Hence, efforts by pacifists and feminists and others concerned with nonviolence and social justice can advance their goals by stressing the development of individual and social behaviors that promote nonviolence. In this way, their argument supports the movement in Peace Studies away from conflict resolution and conflict management toward conflict transformation. In response to neuroscience, especially to aims in the neuroscience of ethics, they conclude, “if we can say there are universal neural bases that explain violence, we can also say there are universal neural bases that explain our ability to act in a peaceful way.”⁵³ Thus, efforts to “study and disseminate the methodologies for peaceful conflict transformation” can contribute to making nonviolent responses even more widely available, appealing, and practical.⁵⁴