Pacifism and the Just War.

by Jenny Teichman
Review by: Douglas P. Lackey
Noûs, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Dec., 1993), pp. 546-548
Published by: Wiley
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546 NOUS

tion," which is the objection that Berkeley would do away with spiritjust as he has done
away with matterif he were to be consistent. He also respondsto S.A. Grave'sclaim that
Berkeley accepts both the "DistinctionPrinciple"(which says that the mind and its ideas
are entirely distinct) and the "IdentityPrinciple"(which says that an idea is identicalwith
an episode of awarenessor act of perceiving) and that these principlesare incompatible.
Winkler's strategy is to argue that there is scant evidence that Berkeley accepted the
Identity Principle, but ample evidence that he accepted that ideas are at least weakly
distinct from the mind and its acts and operations.

Jenny Teichman:Pacifism and the Just War. (Oxford:

Basil Blackwell, 1986. 137 pp.)
DOUGLAS P. LACKEY
Baruch College and the GraduateCenter
City University of New York.

This short book is full of ingenious arguments,but it suffers from an ambivalence that
muffles its message. The message, as I understandit, is that pacifism is a much stronger
position than is commonly believed, and that the just war theory is much weaker than is
commonly believed. Yet in the end she accepts a form of just war theory.
Pacifism, Teichmanrecognizes, is not a theory but a cluster of theories. There are
those who oppose all coercion, those who oppose all violence but accept some coercion,
those who oppose all war but accept some forms of violence, those who accept some state
violence but not personal violence, and so forth. Each of these positions is defended by
differentphilosopherswielding differentmoral theories. In Teichman'shands, the diver-
sity of pacifisms become a strength:many criticismsof "pacifism"turnout to be effective
against some sorts but inefficaciousagainst others. Well and good, but in parallelfashion
one might note that the just war theory similarlylacks an essence, and proves an equally
elusive target. The debate is manageableonly if one form of pacifism is defended per
book, and in fact what Teichmanis most interestedin is the pacifism thatsays it is morally
impermissiblefor states to wage war.
Two argumentsagainst pacifism of this sort arouse Teichman'sire. The first is Nar-
veson's classic (ancient?) argumentthat pacifism is self-contradictorybecause it postu-
lates an inviolable right to life, yet denies that this right may be defended. But an
indefensibleright, the argumentgoes, is no right at all. Teichmanis quite right to say that
appeal to a right to life is not the only defense of pacifism around, but her particular
rebuttalis thatNarveson'sposition thatone can use violence againstviolence implies that
one can use torture to prevent torture, starvationto prevent starvation, and so forth.
"This," she says, "is a very childish logic coupled with a very primitive moral code, a
moralityof savages." (p. 34). Now Narvesonis not a visiting cannibalbut a fellow who
has been on the civilized scene for years, and for all his faults one must believe that any
analysis which reduces his positions to a "childishlogic" must itself be defective. For it
seems that all he requires is the argumentthat if anyone has any right it is sometimes

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 TEICHMAN'SPACIFISMAND THE JUST WAR 547

permissible to defend it with violence, and Teichmanhas not shown that there are no
rights at all or that those rights which subsist may not (sometimes) be violently defended.
The day may arrive when all rights are defensible by non-violent means-potential
aggressorshavingbeen conditionedto faint when consideringattack-but thatday has not
come nor it is clear that such nonviolence representsmoral progress.
The second anti-pacifist argumentTeichmanrebuts is the argumentthat he right of
states to use judicial force within their borders implies the right to use military force
beyond the border.Teichman'slist of differencesbetween police actions and wars, center-
ing on the intrastateseparationof powers, is astute and goes beyond what I have seen
anywhere else. There is, however, her unfortunateaside that talk of "state violence" by
civilized states is opportunisticrevolutionaryrhetoric. When Nelson Mandela, in his
liberation day speech (2/11/90), said "Our resort to armed struggle in 1960.. .was a
defensive action against the violence of apartheid,"one might contest his policy, but not
his choice of words.
Teichman'scriticisms of the standardtheory of just war are devastating, perhapstoo
much so. The rules of just cause, legitimateauthority,permissibleintention, and so forth,
will not standscrutiny;the rules aboutpermissiblemeans of war are arbitrary,the distinc-
tion between combatants and noncombatantsinsupportable.The complete success of
these criticisms supposes that the just war theory is some disciplined abstraction,subject
to the assaults of distinction and counterexamplethat Teichmanhurls against it. But it
seems to me that the just war theory,as we find it practicednowadaysby Walzer,Cohen,
et. al., is the philosophicaldopplegangerof internationallaw, and internationallaw is the
productof treaties, conferences, codificationsof tradition,and so forth, hardlythe sort of
thing in which one expects consistency,clarity,and theoreticalrigor. When dealing with a
camel constructedin the committee room of history, the question should be whether the
whole thing does more harm than good, whether the just war theory generates facile
rationalizationsfor aggression that would not have otherwise occurred. I see no way of
approachingthis problem aside from considerationof concrete cases, but the book re-
spects the confines of professionaltaste and not a single actualwar is namedin the index.
Teichman's own theoretical contributionscome in her discussions of self-defense,
absolute obligations, and deterrentthreats.She acknowledgesThomson's argumentsthat
the right to self-defense justifies much less than is commonly thought, but in the end she
accepts the right as absolute, with the cautionarynote that self-defense is not the same
thing as self-preservation.It follows thatone may permissiblykill innocentattackerswho
threaten one's life but not bystanderswho block one's way to safety. The problem is
complicated and Teichman'sanalysis is as good as any now in the field. One wonders,
still, whether one must spare the bystanderand kill the innocent (e.g., psychotic, or
unwitting) attackerif the bystanderis in the way because of his own negligence.
The absoluterightto self-defense does not entail an absoluteobligationto exercise that
right. Teichmanbelieves that there are absolute moral obligations, but she thinks that
these absolute obligations are so limited in scope that what are normally taken to be
absolute obligations, for example, the obligation not to kill the innocent, are not in fact
absolute and can be overriddenby the right to self-defense.

Having discovered that the British settlers intendedto hunt them down like animals
and exterminatetheir race, would [the Tasmanians]have been justified in throwing
[an] infectious substanceinto the homes of the settlers, knowing it would cause the

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548 NOUS

painful deaths not only of the menfolk with the guns, but also of babes in arms and
other innocents?...Yes (p. 110)

By this standardthe WarsawUprising is perhapsthe only just war ever fought, not a
bad result in my view. So the pacifists are right in saying thatwar is such an evil that it is
never obligatoryto fight and the just war theoristsare rightthatthe altemativesmay be so
bad that it is sometimes permissible to fight, provided the choice is truly forced. How
chastenedjust war theoristswill be by this restrictionI cannotsay. For my part, I wonder,
if it is permissiblefor the Tasmaniansto use the poison thatis theirsole hope, why is it not
permissiblefor me to supply them with poison, even though my choice to give it to them
is not forced?
Teichman's discussion of nuclear deterrentthreats presumes, as most do, that the
actual execution of the nuclear threatis impermissible.The idea that the use of nuclear
weapons could be made sufficiently precise as to make the collateral civilian casualties
acceptablenever gets on the boards, perhapsbecause the argumentrequiressome princi-
ple of double effect, a doctrinethat Teichmannever stoops to analyze, despite its popu-
larity in just war circles. Accordingly, her discussion focuses on the argumentthat the
nucleardeterrentthreatis merely a conditionalthreat,one which, if successful, prevents
the fulfillment of its own condition. Teichmaningeniously notes that an unconditional
nuclear threatalso might fail to come off, and (we might add) it might fail to come off
precisely because it has been made. If non-fulfillment is the moral core of the issue,
conditional threats are no better than unconditionalthreats, and few grant the permis-
sibility of unconditional intentions to use nuclear weapons. No further rationale for
nuclear threatscan be found, Teichmanargues, since there is no forced choice to make
these threats. This argumentwill not impress that generation of politicians who mis-
takenly but sincerely have believed that conditional nuclear threatsare the best or only
way to preventnuclear attack.
From the above I must conclude that Teichman'ssystematic argumentsare largely
unsuccessful. But her book contains many sharp barbs, sudden illuminationsstemming
from the motjuste, andpenetratingjabs at the pious cant surroundingjust war rationaliza-
tions.

David Braine The Reality of Timeand the Existence of

God (Oxford U. Press, 1988) xvi + 383pp., $74.00
cloth.
GEORGE N. SCHLESINGER
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

The aim of this ambitiouswork is to derive theism from the premise that finite things are
incapableof persistingthroughtime without Divine sustenance. It is virtuallyimpossible
to give a summaryof the book. Merely to mentionto the unusuallylarge numberof topics
dealt with would produce an oversize list.

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