Week 3

Points to note:

• King held that nonviolent civil disobedience is sometimes right
• Sometimes it is right to break the law
  
• But there are very compelling reasons to always uphold the law
• So what is King’s moral argument for nonviolent civil disobedience?

Three parts:

1. In general terms, which type of pacifism/nonviolence are we talking about?
2. Why is fidelity to law so important? What’s the problem with break the law?
3. What is MLK’s moral argument for nonviolent civil disobedience?

What kind of pacifism is King’s “Letter”?

• Letter written while King was jailed for “parading without a permit”
• Major text of U.S. Civil Rights Movement (1955-68) which ultimately brought to an end racial segregation
• This is the most famous moral argument given during the modern era for nonviolent civil disobedience

Three general categories of pacifism:

• Spiritual pacifism (e.g. Christ, Gandhi)
• Political pacifism (Gandhi, Walzer #1)
• Institutional pacifism (Kant, Walzer #2)
  
• King is influenced by Christian pacifism
• This is primarily a political pacifism, influenced by Gandhi’s Satyagraha
• King’s purpose is to define the underlying philosophy of the Civil Rights Movement

Gandhi’s Satyagraha:

• “A type of political activism excluding the use of violence in any shape or form”

Difference #1

Two sides of Satyagraha:

• Nonviolence as a political strategy
• Nonviolence as a moral argument

As a political strategy:

• Sets a powerful example
• Confirms the correctness of a moral position
• Confirms the depth of commitment to a worthy cause
  
• Justice of the cause will “grow” within your opponent

As a moral argument:

• King believed that nonviolent civil disobedience is sometimes right
  
• Why did he believe this?
• What are the major challenges?
• Is the moral argument a convincing one?

Difference #2:

• U.S. society includes the “rule of law”
• The movement needs to rely on the U.S. Constitution

King is writing to two audiences:

1. Radical elements of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement

• Black Power Movement; Racial separation, Black nationalism, and the necessity of violence
• Malcolm X: “Freedom by any means necessary”
  
• If the cause is just, why shouldn’t we resort to violence?

2. Moderate Southern religious leaders who held that reform should take place in the courts, not “on the street”.

• Lawbreaking was “unwise and untimely”
• Fidelity to law is essential to justice
  
• How can it be right to break the law?

The problem with lawbreaking:

• Fidelity to law is a fundamental value and an essential part of justice
  
• Queuing behaviour
• Traffic regulations
• Contracting with your business partner

• Legal rules sustain our society
• We benefit from the rule of law

• We comply with the legal order
• We consent to the legal order

• “The ethics of making exceptions for yourself”
  
• Self-serving exceptions?
• Exceptions for unjust laws?

King’s moral argument

• “An unjust law is no law at all” (St. Augustine)
• How do we decide?

Argument #1

• Lawbreaking for Civil rights activists is different: their cause is right
  
• Supreme Court decision of 1954 (Brown v. Board of Education) prohibited segregation in public schools
• Still, this involves conscious lawbreaking

Argument #2

• “An unjust law is no law at all” (St. Augustine)
  
• “A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God”
  
• “An unjust law is a code out of harmony with the moral law”
  
• An unjust law human law not rooted in the eternal law and natural law (St. Thomas Aquinas)

The eternal law:

• Any law that uplifts the human personality is just
  
• Any law that degrades the human personality is unjust
  
• Segregation reveals radical inequality within the law
  “Difference made legal”

Argument #3:

• Segregation is law of an “undemocratic character”
  
• A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that had no part in enacting it
  
• Segregation reveals radical inequality in the law...
  “Difference made legal”

Critical summary questions:

1. Is the moral argument compelling?
   
2. Is King’s account of nonviolent civil disobedience radical enough?
   

King’s constraints on nonviolent civil disobedience

Non-violent political campaigns have four stages:

1. Gathering of facts about injustices
   
2. Attempts to eliminate injustices via negotiation
   
3. Personal cleansing meant to resist hatred and aggression
   
4. Non-violent civil disobedience

MLK’s constraints:

• “One who breaks the law must do so openly, lovingly and with a willingness to accept the penalty”
  
• Openness
• Love
• Self-sacrifice

Rawls’s renowned constraints:

• Principled conditions

Civil disobedience is right only if it is:

• Public
• Non-violent
• Conscientious yet political
• Contrary to the law
• Aimed to create reform in government policies
  
  
• This is how the law advances
• This is how a just society fixes a spotlight on its gross injustices

Proposition taken for granted by King and Rawls:

• Collective disobedience over individual disobedience
  
• What about “private injustices”?

King concludes by saying:

• “I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him/her is unjust, and who willing accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law”
  
• ...In reality expressing the highest respect for law
  
  ---

Last points about King’s nonviolent civil disobedience:

• If your cause is just, why is it wrong to break the law?
• If your cause is just, why shouldn’t you resort to violence?

MLK’s constraints:

• Openness
• Love
• Self-sacrifice

• One who breaks the law must do so openly, lovingly and with a willingness to accept the penalty
  
• I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him/her is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law

Aboriginal Peoples – at a turning point

• Fidelity to law is a fundamental value and an essential part of justice
• Respect for law seems a bit cynical
• Willingness to accept penalties seems too much to ask
  
• Why shouldn’t our movement turn over into violence?

Kant’s perpetual peace thesis:

• “The way to bring about perpetual peace is to establish a federation of separate republican nation-states”
  
• An early precursor of the “democratic peace hypothesis”

What does Kant mean by “republican”?

• For Kant, “republican constitution”
  = non-despotic society
  = democratic society

Three principles:

• Citizens are all free
• Citizens are subject to the same domestic government
• Citizens are legally equal under the law

• “It is the only constitution [type of government] which can be derived from the idea of the original contract, upon which all rightful legislation of a people must be founded”

“The way to bring about perpetual peace is to establish a federation of separate republican nation-states”

Three types of pacifism:

• Spiritual pacifism
• Political pacifism
• Institutional pacifism

Two underlying propositions:

1. The republican form of government offers the prospect of perpetual peace
   
2. A state of peace must be formally instituted

Republican government offers the promise of peace

• Republican citizens are unlikely to embark on war
• Despotic government is inclined toward war
  

Republican government is special because citizens are unlikely to embark on war

• Consent of citizenry is required before declaring war
• Citizens understand the supreme cost of war:
• They do the fighting; they pay for the war
• Citizens sooner or later suffer war’s antagonisms
  
• Hence, citizens have a “natural hesitation” to non-essential or unjust wars

Despotic government is inclined toward war

• Dictators aren’t “fellows citizens”, but rather like owners of the state
• “It is the simplest thing in the world to go to war”. “War will not force him to make the slightest sacrifice”
• The dictator can “decide on war without any significant reason, as a kind of amusement”
  
• For these reasons, dictatorships resort to war with no hesitation

Problems with Kant’s argument:

• The perpetual peace thesis is a factual proposition
• What does the evidence tell us?
  
• Are republican countries less inclined to go to war?
• In our own times:
• Republican citizens acquire militaristic tendencies (e.g. the United States, France, Israel)
• Despotic regimes show reluctance to go to war (e.g. North Korea, China, Cuba, Myanmar)

Critical summary question:

1. How close is the relationship between the democratic peace hypothesis, Kant’s perpetual peace idea, and the state of enduring peace they supposedly bring about?

Shouldn’t this suggest a “worldwide republic”?

• Separate nation-states are a “natural” form of political community
  
• Laws progressively lose their impact as the government increases its range
• A world republic would become: i) a “soulless despotism”, or ii) “a thousand petty fortresses”
• Either: i) a constant state of war, or ii) permanent anarchy

The PPT is also rooted in the “spirit of commerce”

• Citizens of a republic will engage in commerce
• Commerce pacifies competition among nation-states

Cobden’s great project:

• In 19th Britain, Richard Cobden argued that trade is the roadmap to peace
• “In the present day [1800s], commerce is the grand panacea, which, like a beneficent medical discovery, will serve to inoculate with the healthy and saving taste for civilization all the nations of the world.”

Problems with commerce as panacea:

• Trade may actually foster greater competition
• Perhaps this creates new antagonisms
  
• Trade, as Kant says, is the “actual mechanism of human inclinations” that produces perpetual peace
• Trade --> economic self-interest --> peace
• A major reversal; pacifists typically link peace to the “better angels” of human nature

A state of peace must be formally instituted

• A suspension of hostilities is not in itself a guarantee of peace

1. State of war
2. Modus Vivendi
3. Wide consensus
4. Unity in a single community

• Cheyney Ryan’s interpretation of pacifism:
  
• Pacifism is “the intent to acknowledge another person’s status as a fellow creature”
• Our labels and categories create the distance necessary to ignore feelings of human community
  
• Gandhi’s tragic choice:
  
• Should we submit to animal instincts?
• Should we turn away from the worst of human nature?
  
• Should we become brutish animals?
• Should we follow the “better angels of our nature”?

Conclusion:

• Kant’s “perpetual peace thesis”:
• The way to bring about perpetual peace is to establish a federation of separate republican nations

Walzer’s “Theory of Aggression”

• The nature of international society
• The underlying philosophy of the laws of war
  
• Sovereign states possess rights in the international community similar to how individuals possess rights in domestic society
  
• We can comprehend the rights of states in much the same way as we comprehend the rights of individuals
  
• This is the ‘domestic analogy’

Two presumptions follow:

1. Presumption in favour of armed resistance once aggression has begun
   
2. Presumption that resistance can be undertaken by i) the victim, and ii) members of the community
   

The Theory of Aggression:

1. There exists an international society of independent states
2. This international society has a law that establishes the rights of its members—above all, the rights of territorial integrity and political sovereignty
3. Any use of force or imminent threat of force by one state against the territorial integrity or political sovereignty of another constitutes aggression and is a criminal act
4. Aggression justifies two kinds of violent response: a war of self-defence by the victim and a war or law enforcement by the victim and any other member of the international community
5. Nothing but aggression can justify war
6. Once the aggressor has been militarily repulsed, it can also be punished

Philosophical questions within Walzer’s Theory of Aggression?

1. What is the moral argument?

• Is it based on the value of stability?
• Is it based on universal human rights?
• Is it based on the rights of nation-states?

2. How useful is the domestic analogy?

3. Is the theory “radical enough”? Does it give enough flexibility to work toward a just world?

15-minute essay:

1. Select one of the following three categories of pacifism: spiritual, political or institutional.
2. Summarize the basic thrust of this category, and state it’s this in one or two clear sentences
3. Give one or two clear sentences explaining why you think this pro-pacifism argument should be taken seriously