Pacifism arises initially as moral opposition to violence, especially mass violence. Although much of our contemporary world presumes the moral rightness of war as a central function of the nation-state, moral resistance to mass violence, along with moral preference for society being orderly from within by cooperation rather than ordered by force from without, can be traced back to antiquity. The effort here is not to describe past events wherein pacifism succeeded or failed to resolve conflict, struggle against oppression, or establish thriving peaceful societies by nonviolent means. That history is important, but here the focus is on the idea of pacifism, a moral history of humans aspiring to harmonious living and the absence of war.
It seems the earliest documented philosophy of nonviolence appears in India among Jaina believers as early as the ninth century BCE. In the early sixth century BCE the Jaina reformer Vardhmana Mahavira systematized existing Jaina beliefs including ethical principles based on nonviolence accepted by followers of Jainism to this day. Jaina ascetics were to aim at complete mental and physical detachment from worldly affairs. This required a vow of nonviolence, the highest virtue of Jainism, and is the first of the five great vows: nonviolence, truth, non-stealing, celibacy, and non-possession. The basic vow of nonviolence includes not only avoiding physical injury but avoiding mental and verbal injury as well, and it serves as the moral basis for life itself.
Lao Tzu, the “old master” of Chinese philosophy usually credited with writing the Tao Te Ching and founding Taoism, dates to the sixth century BCE, though many scholars have questioned his historicity and speculate that work attributed to him may actually be a collection of pieces from many contributors. In any event the Tao Te Ching is a compilation of aphorisms and wisdom stories often enigmatic or paradoxical in expression. Readers are called to be wary of human willfulness because it has allowed us to distort our true nature. We are called to “return” to the divine way to discover our true selves, to go with the flow in simplicity and humility, and to be skeptical of willful and activist leaders. The Taoist social and political perspective advocates nonviolence and we are told that “weapons are instruments of evil, not the instruments of a good ruler,” yet this is not absolute pacifism since “when he uses [weapons] unavoidably, he regards calm restraint as the best principle” and does not regard victory as praiseworthy, “for to praise victory is to delight in the slaughter of men” and “he who delights in the slaughter of men will not succeed in the empire”.
The great Hindu synthesis, The Bhagavad-Gita—Sanskrit for “Song of the Lord”—was written in the fourth or fifth century BCE. This 700-verse Hindu scripture is a dialogue between the warrior Prince Arjuna and his charioteer Krishna, the Hindu God Vishnu. Arjuna is reluctant to kill his own relatives in a civil war and Krishna counsels him to do his duty. The setting is a battlefield and the advice for the prince is bravery over cowardice. Literalists interpret the Gita as a divine reminder of caste obligation, but Thoreau, Gandhi, and many scholars read it as an allegory for the human struggle between good and evil within the self. Life is a battle of sorts, and when we let go of ego attachment—the sense of possession that makes us selfish, jealous, and violent—we travel the way of Truth, of detachment, of harmony, even with different religious traditions. We learn to live in truth without fear.
Pacifism and Nonviolence as a Form of Human Collective Life
