Throughout the entirety of this class, I have had a problem with the absolutism with which violent civil disobedience had been cast out of the conversation of legitimacy, in regards to appropriate acts of CD. Though I am still experiencing immense difficulty in presenting a clear argument for violent CD, I think I have uncovered a piece of what had been troubling me; it deals more with the errors of pacifism rather than the successes of violence.
Pacifism, especially in Gandhi's usage, has shown tremendous success in diffusing a significantly stronger party's anger while simultaneously removing their preexisting power, and in turn it yields truly remarkable results for the weaker party. However, Gandhi's pacifism is one of extremist tendencies that, for me, went down a border line masochistic road. To advise people not to fight is one thing, to admonish them for dying with revenge on their minds is another, and to remove blame from upon the aggressor is again another. This extremist version of pacifism not only squelches natural humanistic emotion (which isn't necessarily a bad thing) it goes further by not placing blame upon the offending party. I understand physical pacifism in this instance and even the emotional pacifism, i.e. not grouping all members of a strong party together as "bad people" , but to remove blame is to remove reason for the advisee to act with pacifistic ideals in his/her heart, essentially asking people to willingly accept murder for no apparent reason. Extreme pacifism is too aggressive for my liking.
You go, guy! We want to see you make your case so that we all will have to accept it!
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure why you think that pacifism does not put blame on the offending party? It seems to me that you can blame someone, i.e., correctly attribute to them a moral fault without breaking pacifism. And even if you were to take the stance of "hate racism, not the racist", you would still not accept let alone condone murder. The racist would still need to be put in jail. I believe, however, that in the ideal society we would not put anyone in jail for punitive reasons. We would do so in order to be able to educate them and hopefully change their ways.
ReplyDeleteTo harm someone, physically or emotionally, is still wrong.
I do not believe pacifism as a practice necessarily removes blame from the offending party, rather some forms of pacifism specifically the extremist form practiced by Gandhi, ask followers to take the entire burden of the situation upon themselves; asks them to forgive the trespassers, almost instantaneously.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I said Gandhi's pacifism condones murder, I said or intended to say that the mindset constructed from the philosophy of such extreme pacifism, given that blame is removed, allows the killer to act without outrage, morally or legally, by the pacifistic practitioners.
I also agree that jailing in a majority of situations should be left purely to educate, though I am not sure where that fits in to this discussion. Again, I agree with you Nicole that harming people is wrong which is one of my reasons for being so cautious when approving of Gandhi's pacifism. The pacifism that is going on here, is almost unconcerned with the action taken by the subjugating party, and is seemingly solely fixated upon the cause of the suffering.