Jenny Teichman: Pacifism and Just War: A Study in Applied Philosophy. London: Basil Blackwell, Ltd., 1987.
Originally published in the New York City Tribune, November 25, 1987.
Contemporary British philosophers often believe ethics and politics sub-philosophic. Although philosophy began as an attempt to give a rational account of the whole of nature, these philosophers finally can only throw up their hands at human choices, private or public. Choices, they claim, are ‘subjective,’ a matter of irrational feelings or historically-given conventions. Ultimately, logic is irrelevant to choice. As A. J. Ayer claims in his well-known book Language, Truth, and Logic, we may use reason to clarify secondary issues, so we don’t choose contradictory means to an end. But we cannot reasonably choose the end itself. ‘The Good’ remains beyond (some would say beneath) rational thought. Philosophers can offer no serious help when we ask ‘should’ questions.
Unfortunately for this view, some people, not all of them philosophically incompetent, in fact persist in trying to think rationally about what is good for them. And if one asks, ‘What’s good for me?’ it’s hard to avoid the question, ‘Who am I?’ From there, the questions ‘What is a human being?’ and ‘What is good for human beings as such?’ are not far behind.
Jenny Teichman is a British philosophy professor trained in the familiar techniques of analytical logic. Unlike her immediate predecessors, she takes ‘should’ questions seriously. Pacifism and the Just War represents an heir of Ayers’ intelligent effort to come to terms philosophically with the good—and with moral and political life, which aims at the good. She does so without availing herself of the absolutist language of rights—as distinguished from right. She pointedly remarks, “If one tries to reduce all moral questions to matters of rights one ends up in various impasses that were not there when one began.”
Teichman begins by defining pacifism not merely as opposition to violence (a pacifist might spank his children) but as “anti-war-ism,” “a principled objection to the violence of war.” She fails to define ‘war,’ thereby injuring her argument. To define war, she would need to discuss war’s purpose, instead of merely asserting that it is “victory.” She would need to think politically, to move beyond “applied” philosophy to political philosophy. She would need to think about what pacifism—literally, ‘peace-ism’—is for, not only what it is against. As things stand, “anti-war-ism” is merely the negation of a shadow, and this becomes obvious when she writes, “War without death is logically impossible.” Not so: although war without death has been well-nigh impossible so far, logically it’s easy to conceive of a war in which enemy troops, rulers, populations are incapacitated, political objections gained without any deaths at all.
Teichman attempts to ground her study in practical reality. She does this by presenting brief, competent histories of pacifist doctrine (“it comes to us from Christianity”) and of conscription. But she doesn’t fully integrate her historical knowledge with her philosophic thought; again, only a political understanding would enable her to do that.
For example, she rightly says that some advocates of the ‘just war’ theory confuse war with civil punishment. Sovereign states consist in part of a civil authority that sets laws and punishments, but in war, she observes, no overarching authority exists.
This is right as far as it goes, but it omits two points that Augustine, author of the Christian version of the just war doctrine, would insist upon. First, wars are ordered by civil authorities. Just wars are governed by such authorities, and this distinguishes them from piracy and terrorism. Political life consists neither of world government nor of anarchy. Second, Augustine considers God the overarching ruler, albeit not now here on earth, or at least not simply so. Given the close association of politics and religion throughout most of human history, a philosopher who overlooks the one may well overlook the other.
Not only Augustine but his decidedly non-Christian predecessor Cicero would take strong exception to Teichman’s contention that “the questions as to who or what is an authority logically capable of initiating and waging a just war rest ultimately on facts about inherited customs and institutions… and on facts about Realpolitik (such as the actions of Palmerston, of Robespierre, and of Lenin); for it is these things that determine the identities of rulers and the boundaries of political units.” A true civil authority, just-war theorists agree, consists not only of conventions and power, but of right. Political justice does not reduce to a set of facts originating in accident and human conventions.
This mistake accounts for Teichman’s otherwise surprising agreement with Thomas Hobbes, a somewhat less gentle soul, in arguing that one may rightfully resist any attack on one’s life, “whatever the rights and wrongs of the original quarrel.” If so, then Stalin has the right to resist an assassination attempt. But why does he?
War, “is, of course, evil intrinsically and essentially” because it is “a test of might and is therefore inherently incapable of settling questions of right.” True: But war is capable of defending natural right or justice, as secured (if imperfectly) in existing practices, even if it cannot tell us what justice is. Teichman sees this, more or less, when she disagrees with pacifists, reminding them that although war is evil it is not therefore the worst evil. She sees this with less clarity when she restricts just war to defense against genocide or some equally “dreadful catastrophe.” Prudent statesmen might well reply that small offenses can lead to large ones, and a small war (say, over control of the Rhineland in 1936) might be preferably to a large one (say, the Second World War). that we are left with necessarily imprecise judgments, often made by incompetent men, may be a melancholy fact. It is also an inescapable one, at least so far.
Teichman wishes to escape it. “We might well say that the point is not to justify war but to abolish it.” The political question remains: On what terms? Philosophically, it also remains to be seen whether and to what extent analytical logic (as distinguished from other kinds of reasoned thought) suffices to illuminate politics. Given Professor Teichman’s intellectual integrity and distaste for cant, she may have some exceptionally interesting things to say on that subject. She will need to think more about politics, and political philosophy, before saying them.
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