Andrew Fiala

Interest in pacifism—an idea with a long history in philosophical thought and in several religious traditions—is growing. The Routledge Handbook of Pacifism and Nonviolence is the first comprehensive reference designed to introduce newcomers and researchers to the many varieties of pacifism and nonviolence, to their history and philosophy, and to pacifism’s most serious critiques. The volume offers 32 brand new chapters from the world’s leading experts across a diverse range of fields, who together provide a broad discussion of pacifism and nonviolence in connection with virtue ethics, capital punishment, animal ethics, ecology, queer theory, and feminism, among other areas. This Handbook is divided into four sections: (1) Historical and Tradition-Specific Considerations, (2) Conceptual and Moral Considerations, (3) Social and Political Considerations, and (4) Applications. It concludes with an Afterword by James Lawson, one of the icons of the nonviolent American Civil Rights movement. The text will be invaluable to scholars and students, as well as to activists and general readers interested in peace, nonviolence, and critical perspectives on war and violence.

This paper examines the phenomenon of team spirit from a neurobiological point of view. It argues that ethical judgment should be involved in understanding and evaluating the idea. Adopting a liberal individualist point of view helps us understand the phenomenology of team spirit, while also helping us to articulate a critique of communitarian approaches that celebrate the sort of de-individuation that occurs in team spirit. The paper recognizes further complexity in terms of cross-cultural issues, as well as the tendency to toward reductionism. It concludes by imagining a thought experiment involving chemically enhanced team spirit, which shows how our larger ethical framework helps us evaluate possible responses.

The Bloomsbury Companion to Political Philosophy is the definitive guide to contemporary political philosophy. The book covers all the most pressing and important themes and categories in the field - areas that have continued to attract interest historically as well as topics that have emerged more recently as active areas of research. Fourteen specially commissioned essays from an international team of experts, including Eduardo Mendieta and Gillian Brock, reveal where important work continues to be done in the area and, most valuably, the exciting new directions the field is taking. The Companion explores a range of issues from the nature and history of political philosophy, sovereignty, distributive justice, democratic theory, feminist theory, to toleration, human rights, immigration, cosmopolitanism, peace, war, and the challenge of Eurocentrism in political philosophy. Featuring a series of indispensable research tools, including an A to Z of key terms and concepts, a chronology, a detailed list of resources, and a fully annotated bibliography, this is the essential reference tool for anyone researching or working in political philosophy.

According to the republican ideal of modern European ethical life, every person has a right to self-conscious freedom. Hegel's Philosophy of Right responds to this conception of modern ethical life by attempting to bring all of the various objective determinations of freedom to self-consciousness. These determinations become self-conscious by way of philosophical reflection on ethical life from within ethical life. This is what occurs in the Philosophy of Right and indeed the whole of Hegel's system. Hegel's system is best understood as attempting to respond to the demand of modern ethical life for its own self-consciousness. ;The Philosophy of Right carries out this task by showing how self-consciousness occurs in all of the determinations of ethical life: property, labor, punishment, morality, family, civil society, and state. By paying close attention to Hegel's use of the language of knowledge and consciousness, I show that all of these determinations are understood by Hegel as drives toward self-consciousness. I further show how these implicit forms of self-consciousness demand their full self-comprehension in the philosophical reconstruction of the whole of ethical life. Finally, I show how the completion of self-consciousness by way of the Philosophy of Right can result in the actualization of freedom. This interpretation is opposed to those, like Allen Wood, who attempt to discern what type of "ethical theory" Hegel was espousing in the Philosophy of Right. Rather, I show that Hegel's text attempts to be the theoretical comprehension of modern ethical life that completes the modern republican project of freedom. The normative content of this theory must be understood in terms of the claim that freedom is completed in the philosophical comprehension of ethical life

This paper explores civility as a virtue for individuals within the sphere of civil society. Civil society is conceived as consisting of voluntary associations regulated by persuasion, praise, and shame. The virtue of civility is a key value for members of the associations of civil society. The paper considers circumstances in which institutions of civil society breakdown and in which unscrupulous and un-civil operators take advantage of more civil members. While admitting that civility is a fragile virtue, the paper concludes that best solution to threats to civility is to avoid cynicism and to cultivate common-sense moral behavior that models civility.

Political philosophy is a paradoxical attempt to bring reason to bear upon a subject matter that is irrational. This problem has been side-stepped by many contemporary political thinkers. Political theorists like Iris Young, Michael Sandel, Jean Elshtain, Robert Bork, and Richard Peterson acknowledge that contemporary political life, with its lack of democratic participation and its undemocratic, bureaucratic institutions, is undergoing a legitimation crisis. These theorists offer philosophical analyses of this crisis in order to arrive at its rational resolution. This approach forgets, however, that there can be no rational resolutions within the political realm. Politicalphilosophy alone cannot resolve the legitimation crisis. This is especially so because the contemporary legitimation crisis arises, in part, from a lack of rationality on the part of both agents and institutions. Yet, we cannot fully give up on the enterprise of political philosophy. To do so would be to acquiesce to irrationality and the lack of legitimation found in contemporary political life. This paper argues that political philosophers, at their best, must adopt a deliberately ironic disposition: while demanding rational analyses of political life, they must acknowledge that rational analysis may itself be ineffectual in political life.

This paper examines the relation between ethics and religion in light of Ralph Ellis’ critique of religious fundamentalism. It argues against the recent revival of Divine Command ethics. It claims that love is in fact a central value and experience for the ethical life. But it maintains that Ralph Ellis’ humanistic approach to love is preferable to a religious approach. This argument is articulated with reference to theodicy and the problem of evil. The paper concludes that the condition of finitude such as described by Ellis provides us with sufficient reason to be a Good Samaritan: since we can relate directly to the suffering of our neighbors. The paper also argues that traditional versions of the Christian religion provide no reason to care about our neighbors other than divine command.

Historical consciousness leaves us with the problem of historical nihilism: individuals feeling sacrificed and abandoned by the flow of time. This paper considers this problem, while considering Hegel’s philosophy of history as a useful response. The attempt to construct meaning in history can provide a sense of reconciliation with the movement of history. This paper describes the problem of historical nihilism. It explains Hegel’s response to the problem as a middle path. And responds to criticisms that have been leveled against Hegel and his understanding of the way that historical consciousness can provide reconciliation to the sacrifice and abandonment that occurs in history.

Pacifists imagine a “great peace,” to borrow a phrase from Martin Buber. This great peace will uphold justice and respect for humanity. It will not efface difference or negate liberty and identity. The great peace will be a space in which genuine dialogue can flourish—in which we can encounter one another as persons, listen to one another, embrace our common humanity, and acknowledge our differences. The great peace is much more than the absence of war. It is holistic, organic, dialogical, and thick with human relation.The dream of the great peace runs aground on the reality of petty conflicts, dehumanizing institutions, selfishness, egoism, arrogance, murder, war, and psychopathology. While ordinary selfishness poses a mundane obstacle to the great peace, genocide appears to create a reductio ad absurdum argument against the dream of the great peace and against pacifism itself. Critics will argue that in extremis a pacifist would be either mad or immoral to remain committed to nonviolence. This idea has been explored by a number of critics who argue that pacifism is primarily for dreamers and idealists, who are not willing to do what is necessary to confront evil and atrocity in the real world.This paper argues that a moderate commitment to pacifism and nonviolence remains plausible despite the atrocity objection. Some may argue that the term “pacifism” is not applicable to a position that admits that there are exceptional cases in which violence can be justified. But as I have argued elsewhere, there are varieties of pacifism (Fiala, 2004; 2008; 2014a; 2014b). The type of pacifism described here is transformational or transformative pacifism. Transformational pacifism is not absolutist in its rejection of violence, even though it offers a comprehensive critique of violence that aims at creating the great peace by changing the way we think and talk about war, violence, and peace itself. Martin Buber is a good example of a transformational pacifist. He admitted that some form of violence could be justified (say, in response to the Holocaust). But his goal was not to justify violence—rather, he wanted to transform the world in order to prepare the way for the great peace. One important consideration here is that Buber is not primarily a political thinker or an applied ethicist: rather, he offers a metaphysical, religious, psychological, and cultural theory. Transformative pacifism is located at that higher level. It idealizes, speculates, and imagines. For this reason, critics might condemn it as utopian. But trans-formative pacifism remains inspiring and useful.

This article describes a generally trend in American thought that is skeptical of social and political institutions. This trend can be described as a sort of philosophical anarchism. It develops out of pragmatist and skeptical criticism of absolutism in both philosophical and political systems. This paper traces this theme from its early roots in American Christian anarchism, through transcendentalists such as Emerson and Thoreau, and on to the work of William James and Jane Addams. It also outlines explicit connections between these American philosophers and anarchist authors, such as Tolstoy and Kropotkin.

What has come to be known as ‘the Bush Doctrine’ is an idealistic approach to international relations that imagines a world transformed by the promise of democracy and that sees military force as an appropriate means to utilize in pursuit of this goal. The Bush Doctrine has been described in various ways. It has been called ‘democratic realism,’ ‘national security liberalism,’ ‘democratic globalism,’ and ‘messianic universalism’.1 Another common claim is that this view is ‘neoconservative’.2 In what follows I will employ the term ‘neoconservative’ as a convenient and commonly accepted name for the ideas that underlie the Bush Doctrine. The Bush Doctrine has been expressed in numerous speeches by President Bush and members of his administration.3 It is stated in the policy of the National Security Strategy of the United States.4 And it was employed in the invasion of Iraq. The hopeful aspiration of the Bush Doctrine is that democratization will result in peace.

This article discusses how ordinary citizens might apply principles of jus in bello. It reaches a sceptical conclusion about citizens’ capacity to apply these principles and connects this with a practical approach to pacifism or, what might also be called, just-war pacifism.This discussion is oriented around events in the war in Iraq including the use of cluster bombs and the commission of war crimes. It uses these events to discuss the question of jus in bello and to also address the question of responsibility. The article argues that in a democracy responsibility citizen vigilance is required to ensure adherence to principles of jus in bello.The article critically engages recent discussions of just-war theory by Weigel, Walzer, Rawls, Elshtain, and others.

This essay discusses one source of toleration: a modest recognition of the limits of our ability to imagine the situation of the other. It further connects this with both respect for the autonomy of the other and the moral need to engage the other in dialogue. The conclusion is that toleration is important in light of the ubiquity of failures of the moral imagination. It considers several examples of the failure of the moral imagination, including a discussion of the Hindu practice of sati or widow burning.