Pacifists Are Admirable Only if They're Right
Public Affairs Quarterly (forthcoming)
Abstract
The recent explosion of philosophical papers on Confederate and Colonialist statues centers on a central question: When, if ever, is it permissible to admire a person? This paper contends it’s not just Confederates and slavers whose reputations are on the line, but also pacifists like Martin Luther King, Jr., and Daisy Bates whose commitments to pacifism meant they were unwilling to save others using defensive violence, including others they talked into endangering themselves for the sake of racial equality. Other things being equal, that’s gravely immoral if pacifism is false, and we shouldn’t admire people guilty of grave immorality. So, it appears that we shouldn’t admire Bates or King, which is counterintuitive. To solve this problem, I explore several possibilities: that only selective traits of Bates and King are admirable, that Bates and King are admirable despite their grave immorality, and that Bates and King are admirable by virtue of their integrity. However, each of these proposals fails: the first because it inadequately captures our moral phenomenology (we admire people, not just their traits), the second because it ignores the extent to which gravely immoral commitments are constitutive of a person’s moral character, and the third because we ought not to admire people for acting on their immoral beliefs. The paper concludes, first, that either pacifists like Bates and King aren’t admirable or they are, and the latter presupposes the truth of pacifism. Second, I borrow from Vanessa Carbonell’s ratcheting-up argument from moral sainthood to argue that pacifists like Bates and King provide epistemic defeaters to the objection that pacifism is unreasonably costly. Thus, not only are pacifists admirable only if they’re right—they are right.Author's Profile
My notes
Similar books and articles
Admiration and the Admirable.Linda Zagzebski - 2015 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 89 (1):205-221.
Cosmic Companionship: The Place of God in the Moral Reasoning of Martin Luther King, Jr.Thomas J. S. Mikelson - 1990 - Journal of Religious Ethics 18 (2):1-14.
There is a Balm in Gilead the Cultural Roots of Martin Luther King, Jr.Lewis V. Baldwin - 1991 - Fortress Press.
The Concept of Nonviolence in the Political Theology of Martin Luther King.Krzysztof Brzechczyn - 2004 - In Roman Kozłowski Karolina M. Cern (ed.), Prawo, władza, suwerenność [Law, Power, Sovereignty]. Adam Mickiewicz University Press.
To Make the Wounded Whole the Cultural Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.Lewis V. Baldwin - 1992 - Augsburg Fortress Publishing.
Reflections of the Dream 1975-1994, Twenty Years of Celebrating the Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. At Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [REVIEW]Clarence G. Williams - 1996
The Liberatory Thought of Martin Luther King Jr: Critical Essays on the Philosopher King.Robert E. Birt (ed.) - 2012 - Lexington Books.
The Liberatory Thought of Martin Luther King Jr: Critical Essays on the Philosopher King.Robert E. Birt (ed.) - 2012 - Lexington Books.
The Revolution of Values: The Origins of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Moral and Political Philosophy.Ramin Jahanbegloo - 2018 - Lexington Books.
The Great World House: Martin Luther King, Jr., and Global Ethics.Hak Joon Lee - 2011 - Pilgrim Press.
The Great World House: Martin Luther King, Jr., and Global Ethics.Hak Joon Lee - 2011 - Pilgrim Press.
Revolution of Conscience Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Philosophy of Nonviolence.Greg Moses - 1997 - New York, NY, USA: Guilford.
Pacifism and Moral Judgment.Kirsten Meyer - 2015 - In Ralf Stoecker & Marco Iorio (eds.), Actions, Reasons and Reason. De Gruyter. pp. 127-140.
Analytics
Added to PP
2021-11-10
Downloads
0
6 months
0
2021-11-10
Downloads
0
6 months
0
Historical graph of downloads
Sorry, there are not enough data points to plot this chart.
Author's Profile
References found in this work
Political vandalism as counter‐speech: A defense of defacing and destroying tainted monuments.Ten-Herng Lai - 2020 - European Journal of Philosophy 28 (3):602-616.