nonviolence the renunciation of violence in personal, social, or international affairs. It often includes a commitment (called active nonviolence or nonviolent direct action) actively to oppose violence (and usually evil or injustice as well) by nonviolent means. Nonviolence may renounce physical violence alone or both physical and psychological violence. It may represent a purely personal commitment or be intended to be normative for others as well. When unconditional – absolute nonviolence – it renounces violence in all actual and hypothetical circumstances. When conditional – conditional nonviolence – it concedes the justifiability of violence in hypothetical circumstances but denies it in practice. Held on moral grounds (principled nonviolence), the commitment belongs to an ethics of conduct or an ethics of virtue. If the former, it will likely be expressed as a moral rule or principle (e.g., One ought always to act nonviolently) to guide action. If the latter, it will urge cultivating the traits and dispositions of a nonviolent character (which presumably then will be expressed in nonviolent action). As a principle, nonviolence may be considered either basic or derivative. Either way, its justification will be either utilitarian or deontological.
Held on non-moral grounds (pragmatic nonviolence), nonviolence is a means to specific social, political, economic, or other ends, themselves held on non-moral grounds. Its justification lies in its effectiveness for these limited purposes rather than as a way of life or a guide to conduct in general. An alternative source of power, it may then be used in the service of evil as well as good. Nonviolent social action, whether of a principled or pragmatic sort, may include noncooperation, mass demonstrations, marches, strikes, boycotts, and civil disobedience – techniques explored extensively in the writings of Gene Sharp. Undertaken in defense of an entire nation or state, nonviolence provides an alternative to war. It seeks to deny an invading or occupying force the capacity to attain its objectives by withholding the cooperation of the populace needed for effective rule and by nonviolent direct action, including civil disobedience. It may also be used against oppressive domestic rule or on behalf of social justice. Gandhi’s campaign against British rule in India, Scandinavian resistance to Nazi occupation during World War II, and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s actions on behalf of civil rights in the United States are illustrative.
Nonviolence has origins in Far Eastern thought, particularly Taoism and Jainism. It has strands in the Jewish Talmud, and many find it implied by the New Testament’s Sermon on the Mount.
See also CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE , GANDHI, PACIFIS. R.L.H.