Category Archives: Pacifism

Pacifism

October 29, 2020 – 9:18 am

Note added May 19, 2026. I return to this post now, because the question arises with a friend of whether the US should be at war with Iran. This post does not actually answer that or any such question. It would, implicitly, if it said that war was never the answer, or war never solved any problem. This would absolve us from needing to think about any particular case, such as whether the American colonists should have taken up arms against the British Crown, or John Brown should have done the same against slavery. This post is mainly a response, by a mathematician and a product of a great-books program, to contentious or sententious things said by fellow academics. Concerning international relations as such, see the post referred to below, “External Politics.”

Pacifism is properly pacificism, the making of peace: not a belief or an attitude, but a practice. Mathematics then is pacifist, because learning it means learning that you cannot fight your way to the truth. Might does not make right. If others are going to agree with you, they will have to do it freely. Moreover, you cannot rest until they do agree with you, if you’ve got a piece of mathematics that you think is right; for you could be wrong, if others don’t agree.

The book *Dorothy Healey Remembers,* with photo of subject on cover

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Collingwood, dialectic, Freedom, Harper’s, Mathematics, New Leviathan, Philosophy, Philosophy of Mathematics | Tagged , , | Comments (5)

Articles on Collingwood

October 17, 2020 – 5:53 pm

This article gathers, and in some cases quotes and examines, popular articles about R. G. Collingwood (1889–1943).

  • By articles, I mean not blog posts like mine and others’, but essays by professionals in publications that have editors.

  • By popular, I mean written not for other professionals, but for the laity.

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Collingwood, dialectic, Freedom, New Leviathan, Thoreau | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

NL XLIII: The Second Barbarism: The ‘Albigensian Heresy’

October 13, 2018 – 7:01 am

Index to this series

Summary. Suppose your society has certain rites and customs, perceived as essential to its functioning. When some persons among you reject those rites and customs, what are you going to do? Persecution would be the normal response of a society that aimed to preserve itself. In the example to be considered here, the society is medieval Christendom, where

  • buildings called churches were customarily the abode of friendly spirits, and
  • the rite of swearing an oath was a sign of special commitment.

Oaths and churches were rejected by persons called Paulicians, or Bogomils, or Albigensians. Their beliefs were Manichaean. These persons were persecuted so successfully that we do not understand them very well. Therefore we must leave open the question of whether they were barbarists.

Here I am going to review, among other things,

  • what it means to fight barbarism;
  • the response to German bombardment described in Goodbye, Mr. Chips;
  • what Jesus Christ says about swearing;
  • how the United States accommodates various beliefs (as by allowing affirming instead of swearing, or allowing Muslims to swear on a Quran);
  • the threat of a lying President;
  • the threat of ignoring climate change;
  • the etymology of heresy;
  • the discussion of mythos and logos in Pirsig.

Fire temple, Yazd, Iran, September 2012. See “Duty to Nature”

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Collingwood, dialectic, Language, New Leviathan, Philosophy, Pirsig, Plato | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (6)

NL XL: Peace and Plenty

September 25, 2018 – 8:46 am

Index to this series

With “Peace and Plenty,” we reach the end of the account of civilization in Collingwood’s New Leviathan. What remains is the account of barbarism. Strictly speaking, we little need it. Civilization quâ ideal of civility is the positive end of civilization quâ process, and as was pointed out on Chapter XXXII, “Society and Nature in the Classical Politics,” the positive end is the primary thing to know in conducting a process (32. 35–6).

“May Day, 1929,” V. V. Kuptsov

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Collingwood, dialectic, New Leviathan, Philosophy, Plato | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (2)

NL XXXVII: Civilization As Education

September 20, 2018 – 7:47 am

Index to this series

Knowing, from the previous chapter, what civilization is, we ask: How do we bring it about? Collingwood’s answer is to homeschool our children.

This is the New Leviathan’s first detailed piece of positive advice, and it may sound crazy. Rather than list reasons why, I want to see what sense can be made of the ideas.

Civility is respect (37. 15). To respect another person is to recognize their freedom (37. 14). To do this, one needs self-respect (37. 13).

Instead of respect, we may approach another person with servility, namely “the demeanour of a man lacking self-respect towards one whom he fears” (37. 17). The will to barbarism is just the will to servility (37. 19).


Mary Cassatt (American, 1844-1926)
The Boating Party, 1893/1894, oil on canvas
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By David Pierce | Also posted in Collingwood, Education, New Leviathan, Philosophy, Plato | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (12)

NL XXXI: Classical Physics and Classical Politics

September 8, 2018 – 10:52 am

Index to this series

As my beach holiday winds down, so perhaps does the current spate of blog posts. Here is one more. Setting aside Homer, I continue immediately with Collingwood, in part because, in the 2000 paperback impression of the 1992 Revised Edition of the New Leviathan that I take to the shore, I have now also read the Editor’s Introduction by David Boucher. (Back at the cottage, I have to type out the quotes from this that I make below; for quotes of Collingwood himself, I cut and paste from a scan of the 1947 corrected reprint of the 1942 First Edition.)

As I could infer from my pencil-marks, I had read Boucher’s introduction some time before; but I could remember little of it. I think it is aimed at professional philosophers, rather than at anybody who would admire Collingwood for saying, as he does in An Autobiography (page 6), when he describes getting prepared to go to Rugby School,

The ghost of a silly seventeenth-century squabble still haunts our classrooms, infecting teachers and pupils with the lunatic idea that studies must be either ‘classical’ or ‘modern’. I was equally well fitted to specialize in Greek and Latin, or in modern history and languages (I spoke and read French and German almost as easily as English), or in the natural sciences; and nothing would have afforded my mind its proper nourishment except to study equally all three.

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By David Pierce | Also posted in absolute presuppositions, Criteriological Science, dialectic, Galileo, New Leviathan, Principles of Art | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (13)

NL XXX: War As the Breakdown of Policy

September 6, 2018 – 6:05 pm

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By the account of Chapter XXX, called “War as the Breakdown of Policy,” of Collingwood’s New Leviathan (1942), humans have not always made war (30. 1). Why then do we make it now? People say war is a continuation of policy (30. 14); but as Collingwood cleverly points out (30. 15), the original saying, which is due to Clausewitz (30. 69), is ambiguous: a continuation could be an extension or a breakdown (30. 16–17).


Photos taken September 6, 2018
around our cottage
and of the wood that I cut there
in Profesörler Sitesi
Altınova, Balıkesir, Türkiye

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By David Pierce | Also posted in dialectic, New Leviathan, Principles of Art | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (13)

NL XXIX: External Politics

September 4, 2018 – 9:36 am

Index to this series

Executive summary (added September 13, 2018, edited July 19, 2019, and May 19, 2026): Dealing with other bodies politic is the third stage of political life, after societies’

  • formation (as if by marriage),
  • dominion over non-social communities (as if by having children).

Having been used in the first two stages, dialectic can be used in the third, to make peace rather than war. Being the eristic of external politics, war has no psychological cause that would absolutely prevent the making of peace. War is a state of mind, which does not think non-agreement can become agreement. Pacifism has this state of mind.

External politics are international relations. These represent the third of the “stages” in political life (29. 1), which we enumerate:

  1. The joining of wills into a society, which rules itself (29. 11).
  2. Such a society’s ruling over a non-social community in a body politic (29. 12).
  3. Dealing with other bodies politic (29. 13).

Beach scene: Against a calm sea, a man in trunks walks along the shore, while a woman seen in profile sits next to somebody in a chair whose back is towards is. In the foreground are several empty beach chairs

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Collingwood, dialectic, New Leviathan, Philosophy, Plato, Psychology | Tagged , , , , | Comments (12)

On trial for pacifism

March 30, 2016 – 2:44 pm

This is about the 1918 trial of American radical political cartoonist Art Young and others for conspiracy and interfering with enlistment. Most of the article is a quotation of Young’s own words. The words provide some perspective on today’s struggle for freedom of speech.

Capitalism, Art Young, private collection (reproduced in Harper's, Jan 2016, p. 64)

Capitalism, Art Young, private collection (reproduced in Harper’s, Jan 2016, p. 64)

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Freedom, Harper’s, History, Turkey, West Virginia | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (2)