|
|
Article: Notes on pacifism.
- Article from:
- The Antioch Review
- Article date:
- January 1, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Antioch Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
A colleague of mine likes to call me a fundamentalist pacifist, and he's not wrong. Or if he's wrong, it's only in implying that there's some other sort of pacifist. Pacifism is always a fundamentalist position; pacifists say, "We reject war in general." Everyone else says, "Depends on the war."
Holding an explicitly fundamentalist position may seem a strange thing for an intellectual to do, but it's not. Plenty of intellectuals, plenty of people generally, hold such positions. People who oppose slavery often oppose it categorically, can't imagine supporting it in any circumstances, regardless of noble goals or enlightened modes of slaveholding, would not be open ...