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81. The Acorn: Volume > 15 > Issue: 1
Richard McCutcheon Gandhi Confronts Imperial Violence: How Amritsar Changed His Political and Spiritual Life (Part I)
82. The Acorn: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1/2
Barry L. Gan, Sanjay Lal, Greg Moses The Acorn Visions: Three Editors Contribute Reflections on What the Journal Means
83. The Acorn: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1/2
Marilyn Fischer Essential Bibliography of Jane Addams’s Writings on Peace
84. The Acorn: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1/2
José-Antonio Orosco Essential Bibliography of Cesar Chavez
85. The Acorn: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1/2
Barry L. Gan Seeds of Duty: Holding to Nonviolence in Being and Truth
86. The Acorn: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1/2
Gail Presbey Moving North, Thinking South: Report on the 2016 World Social Forum
87. The Acorn: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1/2
Predrag Cicovacki, Carlo Filice, Sanjay Lal Author Meets Critics: Predrag Cicovacki, Author of Gandhi’s Footprints, Meets Critics Sanjay Lal and Carlo Filice
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Two critics respond to Predrag Cicovacki’s book, Gandi’s Footprints. Cicovacki opens the discussion by presenting his motivations for exploring a paradox, that Gandhi’s work is widely revered but not widely emulated. Cicovacki explores a resolution to the paradox by suggesting how Gandhi’s promising visions may be followed without being imitated, especially Gandhi’s insight that we must seek spiritual grounding for life in a materialistic world. Critic Sanjay Lal affirms Cicovacki’s insight but suggests that precisely because Gandhi’s aspirations for spiritual life were profoundly transformative we should take care not to dilute them into our conventional wisdoms. Critic Carlo Filice asks how Gandhi’s commitment to unified reality could be more clearly articulated once a distinction is drawn between spirit and matter, also how Gandhi’s nonviolence could manage to embrace important exceptions. In reply to critics, Cicovacki proposes an approach to Gandhi informed by the insights of Tagore.
88. The Acorn: Volume > 16 > Issue: 1/2
José-Antonio Orosco Abolition as a Morally Responsible Response to Riots: Lessons on Violence from Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Cesar Chavez
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In this paper, I sketch out, following the suggestions of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Cesar Chavez, a morally responsible response to urban riots. This approach recommends that we focus our attention on two structural features of society that underlie and prompt urban riots. First, I examine how King recommends that we must understand the economic conditions surrounding such violence. Next, following the suggestion of Cesar Chavez, I argue we must attend to cultural violence, especially those social narratives surrounding the construction of masculinity and security in our culture. Chavez’s analysis builds on Gandhi’s notion of “constructive” nonviolent action. Chavez suggests intervening in culture to provide alternative accounts of safety and success in our society, as well as constructing new institutions and practices that embody those understandings. I conclude by examining two contemporary social movements--prison and police abolition--which attempt to embody this morally responsible response to urban violence.
89. The Acorn: Volume > 17 > Issue: 1
Sanjay Lal Affirming a Vital Connection: Nonviolence and the Disavowal of Death as a Harm
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Having freedom from the fear of death is a quality needed not just by peace activists; however, it is in particular need of affirmation by those espousing a philosophy of nonviolence. A rich philosophical literature explores the supposed harmfulness of death, but the topic is scarcely discussed by peace theorists. This paper shows the significance of the topic for highlighting the attractiveness of nonviolent philosophy given certain non-religious understandings of death that are well suited for advancing nonviolence. Classic Stoic and Epicurean disavowals of the harmfulness of death are presented, criticisms of the Epicurean position are outlined, and the example of Mahatma Gandhi is provided as an ally to Epicureans in response to the criticisms discussed. The second part of the paper more concretely illuminates the implications that a Gandhian rejection of the harmfulness of death has for living nonviolently in everyday life.
90. The Acorn: Volume > 17 > Issue: 1
Anthony Sean Neal, Dwayne A. Tunstall, Felipe Hinojosa (R)evolutions of Consciousness in Thurman and Newton: Anthony Neal, Author of Common Ground, Meets Critics Dwayne A. Tunstall and Felipe Hinojosa
91. The Acorn: Volume > 17 > Issue: 1
John Nolt Anger, Despondence, and Nonviolence: Reflections on the D.C. Climate March
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Reflections on anger, despondence, and nonviolence are prompted by student responses to the 2016 election, especially given the likely implications for climate change policy. The author reflects on the value of nonviolence, environmental activism, and participation in a national climate march.
92. The Acorn: Volume > 17 > Issue: 1
Corey L. Barnes Imperatives of Peace: A Lockean Justification for Cosmopolitan Principles
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Cosmopolitanism seems to appeal to liberal neutrality because both are committed to core values such as reciprocity, autonomy, respect for the individual, personal accountability, and inclusivity. Further, cosmopolitanism is legitimate for many only insofar as it endorses value-pluralism in open societies, which is a staple of liberal neutrality. And yet, one might think that there is a moral obligation to create a cosmopolitan community. One can think of this as moral (normative) cosmopolitanism. To the end of creating a cosmopolitan community, certain values ought to be fostered in laws and public policies, and certain attitudes ought to be cultivated. This leads to a potential impasse, namely if cosmopolitanism is committed to neutrality then it cannot promote its normativity, and if it is not committed to neutrality then it cannot promote value-pluralism. I propose a solution to this potential impasse by examining several of the democratic and cosmopolitan commitments of Alain Locke. What I take from Locke is his grounding of both pluralism and moral cosmopolitanism in democratic, time-honored principles that exist in all acts of free association, namely: liberty, equality, and fraternity. These values, of necessity, pervade all political conceptions of good lives because all political conceptions require what acts of free association allow, namely community with others. To this end, I provide an argument for how someone can consistently be committed to both moral cosmopolitanism and liberal neutrality.
93. The Acorn: Volume > 17 > Issue: 2
Jack DuVall Gene Sharp and the Twenty-First Century
94. The Acorn: Volume > 17 > Issue: 2
Matthew Rukgaber Guns as Lies: A Kantian Criticism of the Supposed Right to Bear Arms
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Using Kant’s argument that lies are evil and reprehensible in themselves regardless of the benefits that may result, I show that guns can be understood in similar terms. In a unique reading of Kant’s radical and often ridiculed ideas, I maintain that lies have this status because of the way they pervert our relationship to the truth and thus to morality and reason. Lies turn truth and reason into mere means to be used rather than to be obeyed. Kant believes that the result is arrogance, insincerity, and self-deception in the form of moral impurity and depravity. This gives way to the morally bankrupt logics of the passions for honor, dominance, and possession. I argue that this destruction of virtue and of our relation to the moral law can be found in our relation to guns. Guns are not just killing machines; they are deception machines. It is for that reason, regardless of the costs and benefits, that the Kantian should deny that we have any right to them.
95. The Acorn: Volume > 17 > Issue: 2
Charles K. Fink Nonviolence and Tolstoy’s Hard Question
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Pacifists are often put on the defensive with cases—real or imagined—in which innocent people are threatened by violent criminals. Is it always wrong to respond to violence with violence, even in defense of the innocent? This is the “hard” question addressed in this article. I argue that it is at least permissible to maintain one’s commitment to nonviolence in such cases. This may not seem like a bold conclusion, yet pacifists are often ridiculed—sometimes as cowards, sometimes as selfish moral purists—for their refusal to use violence in defense of others. In this article, I try to show that such scorn is unjustified.
96. The Acorn: Volume > 18 > Issue: 1/2
Tommy Curry, Anthony Neal, Dwayne A. Tunstall Subjects of Vulnerability: Author Meets Critics: Tommy Curry, Author of The Man-Not, Meets Critics Anthony Neal and Dwayne Tunstall
97. The Acorn: Volume > 18 > Issue: 1/2
Duane L. Cady Remembering Mulford Q. Sibley (1912–1989): A Thirty-year Commemoration
98. The Acorn: Volume > 18 > Issue: 1/2
Andrew Fiala The Pacifist Tradition and Pacifism as Transformative and Critical Theory
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Pacifism is often painted into a corner as an absolute rejection of all violence and war. Such a dogmatic and negative formulation of pacifism does leave us with pacifism as a morally problematic position. But pacifism is not best understood as a negative claim. Nor is pacifism best understood as a singular or monistic concept. Rather, there is a “pacifist tradition” that is grounded in an affirmative claim about the importance of nonviolence, love, community building, and peaceful conflict resolution. This more positive conception of pacifism aims to transform social and political life. When understood in this way, pacifism is a robust and useful critical social theory. This paper explores the philosophy of pacifism in an attempt to reconceptualize pacifism as a tradition of normative critical theory. The paper argues that pacifism ought to be understood on analogy with other critical theories—such as feminism; that pacifism should be understood in terms of the “pacifist tradition”—along lines familiar from interpretations of the “just war tradition”; and that pacifism should be seen as offering interesting themes and ideas that are worthy of philosophical attention.
99. The Acorn: Volume > 18 > Issue: 1/2
Steven Steyl What Can Virtue Ethics Offer Pacifists?
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Though warfare has been a popular subject of inquiry in Aristotelian virtue ethics since antiquity, pacifism has almost never been afforded sympathetic study. This paper helps to fill that lacuna by asking whether and how secular virtue ethics can provide a theory of pacifism, whether and how it might defeat some common/foreseeable objections, and what additional work needs to be done in order for virtue ethicists to provide a philosophically robust account of pacifism. I begin by translating a pacifist argument from suffering into an argument from the virtue of compassion. Compassionate agents, sensitive as they are to others’ plights, will be highly averse to lethal warfare. In the second section, I argue that cases for pacifism like this one, which are rooted in individual virtues, cannot constitute a complete argument for pacifism because of the commonly held view that the virtues are reciprocal/unified, and that such an argument will therefore require supplementation in order to be action-guiding. The third section elaborates on what I call the impracticality objection. Any convincing account of pacifism will have to respond to this objection, and I argue that virtue ethical pacifism is especially vulnerable to it. In the fourth section, I highlight two avenues available to the virtue ethicist who defends pacifism from the impracticality objection. Neither of these avenues is viable without further research, however, so while I insist that virtue ethical pacifism is not defeated by the impracticality objection, I maintain also that this form of pacifism requires further scholarly work.
100. The Acorn: Volume > 19 > Issue: 1
Greg Moses, Sanjay Lal From Canons of Peace to Shoots of Resistance: Editors' Introduction