rambling thoughts on pacifism

[Amy Z]

Naama wrote on the main list:

> In parenthesis I'd like to add that I've always found it hard to 
take 
> pacifist positions seriously. Would you really not kill an enemy 
that 
> threatens your life and the life of your family or friends? I would. 
> I don't even see the moral dilemma of it. I might feel terrible 
> afterwards, I might not recover from having killed a human being, 
but 
> a moral dilemma? No. 
> When I do take pacifist position seriously, they seem to me like an 
> evasion of the responsibility of actually dealing with reality as 
> part of that reality. To a-priory refuse to kill anybody, including 
> those who wish to kill you, you avoid the really difficult part of 
> living as a moral being - actully looking reality in the face, and 
> deciding, in each particular case, what the right moral choice is. 
> But that's just another kind of fear - the fear of making mistakes. 

Hmmm...I have to go into the "would-be pacifist" category.  I have a 
profound respect for pacifism, I do a lot of volunteer work for a 
pacifist organization (American Friends Service Committee), and in 
many ways I aspire to it--yet I'm not 100% convinced.  All that being 
said--

To me the essence of pacifism's merits comes from its view of the 
inseparability of means and ends.  To kill someone in pursuit of a 
higher purpose (e.g. protection of another innocent person) is to say 
that you can accomplish good ends via evil means.  Maybe you can--but 
the fruit of evil means will always be partly evil, in my view.  This 
is not a conclusive argument in favor of pacifism; it may well be that 
we just all have to live with the mixed consequences of our actions.  
We all have dirty hands, and there's no avoiding it.

But I'm just giving weak paraphrases of what others have written with 
much brilliance and commitment.  I'd recommend reading Gandhi for a 
primer (also "Dirty Hands," a play by Sartre).  I just want to 
note that most of the pacifists I've known, whether in person or 
through their writings, far from operating from a fear of mistakes, do 
look reality in the face and are making extremely brave and difficult 
choices. 

In real life, of course, there's always a context.  The question 
doesn't face us as a pure philosophical one, would you ever kill 
someone, but "would you kill someone in order to support the US 
government's current policy in Southeast Asia?" or "would you kill 
someone who appeared to be coming at you with a knife, although it's 
all happening in a rush and you're not entirely sure what's going on?" 
or "would you inject the poison into this person who has been 
convicted of murder by a particular court in a particular time and 
place?"  It all depends.  Depends on the government's policy in SE 
Asia, depends on my reflexes and instincts, depends on whether I trust 
that justice system.

Which is why I'm enjoying this discussion re:  HP so much.  We have 
the context; we'll see what Harry and the others (and Jo) do with 
their difficult choices, and we can look at the whole story and wonder 
what is the right thing to do.  And we'll know and love the characters 
so that we can understand even when they do something that in the 
abstract might not seem "the right thing" (c.f. the last couple days' 
discussion of Sirius the "sirius jerk").

Amy Z