Hart’s bizarre thoughtlessness regarding pacifism
“It has long been one of the oddities of American Christian ethics that–in matters pertaining to war–the pacifist and realist positions have been treated as the only available options for Christian moralists. But pacifism and realism are mere inversions of one another, inasmuch as they share more or less the same view of what warfare is. Both accept the premise that war is by its nature evil, while only peace is an unqualified good; the pacifist may believe that peace (understood simply as the absence of strife) is best achieved by refusing to participate in war, and the realist that peace (understood as a secure and just social order) is best achieved by answering violence with violence, but both then accept that the Christian never has any choice in times of war but to collaborate with evil: he must either allow the violence of an aggressor to prevail or employ inherently wicked methods to assure that it does not.” —David Bentley Hart, In the Aftermath, p. 150
I’m having trouble extracting very much good sense from this passage at all; it seems premised on a rather egregious misunderstanding of pacifism and realism both. If the pacifism Hart’s talking about is Yoder’s, and the realism is Niebuhr’s–since those are the only names Hart mentions in the review–one could respond to these claims point-by-point like this:
- “Both accept the premise that war is by its nature evil…” Yoder and Niebuhr both would agree with this statement only inasmuch as by “evil” is meant, belonging solely to the world-in-sin. Niebuhr obviously thinks that war is sometimes a positive Christian duty, even an act of love–though surely it is a form of love that remains under the judgment of the ideal law of love, embodied in Christ’s nonresistance. Yoder believes that war is “outside the perfection of Christ,” and so alien to life in Christ, but holds that the state will sometimes have to wage war because of its (in some sense God-given) role in the rebellious world. It’s not entirely wrong to say that Yoder and Niebuhr both hold war to be evil, I suppose, if the contrasting position is that war is neutral, potentially both good or evil, which Hart himself seems to believe. Even here, though, I would doubt if the disagreement is as stark as the contrast seems to suggest. Yoder, Niebuhr, and Hart would all want to say that war’s inevitability in this world (for all would say that war is inevitable) flows directly from the world’s sinfulness, and is therefore a sign of sin and brokenness. Calling war a neutral “tool” masks this fact for the moment, and make war falsely appear on the same plane as, say, private education (which can be used unjustly, as a means of propping up racist structures, but isn’t necessarily so used).
- “…only peace is an unqualified good….” The same problem appears here. Neither Niebuhr nor Yoder would say that an unjust peace is an unqualified good. Everyone (Hart included) would agree that ultimate peace, the final peace of Christ, is an unqualified good. So what difference is Hart trying to point out?
- “…the pacifist may believe that peace (understood simply as the absence of strife) is best achieved by refusing to participate in war…” This statement, that the pacifist understands peace “simply as the absence of strife,” is so utterly inane as to be bewildering. I haven’t heard anyone accuse pacifists of being this stupid since my first year of college. It’s especially bizarre to see it attached (indirectly) to Yoder, who occasionally chastises older Mennonites for approaching this same error. Even a cursory reading of Christian pacifists of any era would reveal that the refusal to participate in war was never thought to be identical to the ultimate peace of Christ, but only a sign of it, a witness to Christ’s ultimate purposes.
- “…both [pacifists and realists] accept that the Christian never has any choice in times of war but to collaborate with evil…” Again, perfectly false, unless it’s meant in the completely trivial sense that neither Yoder nor Niebuhr–nor any other intelligent Christian thinker–think it’s possible to live without complicity in the world’s rebellion. Both think of war as a special case inasmuch as it uniquely reveals the intrinsic fallenness of human society, but neither think it impossible to act in constructively charitable way in times of war.
The main mistakes going on here seem to be two. First, Hart’s distinctions between pacifism/realism and the older orthodoxy on war are far too hasty and, as formulated, demonstrably false. There are surely legitimate distinctions somewhere within them that are worth arguing over–e.g., the intrinsic sinfulness of the act of killing–but Hart’s rhetoric only obscures the matter. Some of Hart’s distinctions actually name points of commonality between the traditions, and not any real difference at all. Second, Hart’s distortion of pacifism is paralyzingly drastic; he misunderstands Niebuhr’s Christian realism, too, but not so devastatingly.
I remember reading somewhere a vague apology for his hastiness regarding his condemnation of pacifism in The Beauty of the Infinite, saying that he had just been reading Yoder and was too riled up. Maybe this is just too incendiary an issue for Hart, and his passion has so far kept him from speaking clearly and accurately.
14 April 2009 |
Comments (7)
Tags: David Bentley Hart, John Howard Yoder, Just War, Reinhold Niebuhr
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One could add a further inaccuracy regarding Hart’s reading of realism: Niebuhr’s word for “a secure and just social order” is not in any very full sense “peace,” but “relative justice.” If he does call it peace, it’s only in a provisional and self-consciously inadequate way. Presumably the orthodox traditions could comfortably use these terms in exactly the same way.
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This is bizarre. I like Hart’s work, but it does sometimes veer into inexplicabilities! For all his brilliance, it seems he often treats his interlocutors dismissively. But I’m guilty of this, too.
I wonder how he would defend himself?
Hart’s blunder illustrates the inherent problem with his favorite rhetorical strategy (at least in the articles I’ve read): polemic. Polemic, almost by definition, does not seek to understand the opponent in a sympathetic mode, and so is prone to caricatures and generalizations that have an unclear relationship to actual, particular realities. The article on “Christ and Nothing” especially illustrates this latter tendency, as Hart himself notes several times through the article. For rhetorical force, Hart can’t be beat, but intellectual charity is a virtue which I have not seen deployed much in the work of his I’ve read. Perhaps this is just an unfortunate side-effect of the form of the short essay. Is he less polemical in his more sustained pieces?
I really don’t think that polemic by definition excludes intellectual charity, though it’s impossible to deny that, as a matter of fact, it usually does. Part of the reason I enjoy Hart, though, is that his polemic usually is against real figures and real argument, rather than stupid strawmen. The pacifism he dismisses is a stupid strawman, which is why it struck me as bizarre (a word that, though strong and somewhat polemical, I meant sympathetically!). It’s just a bit of evidence that whereas his critiques of Heidegger or Nietzsche are born of a long, even sympathetic struggle with their thought, Yoder has very obviously never merited that same level of attention for him.
To the last question, as to whether he’s less polemical in his more sustained pieces, the answer is a clear no. He just is a polemicist. I have detected, though, a fairly explicit attempt to respond to the accusations of mean-spiritedness in his more recent work.
Peruse his recent Atheist Delusions for some real polemic. Can’t really judge whether or not he excludes intellectual charity, though, since I’m not all that familiar with the folks he engages throughout it. There are some borderline mean-spirited zingers in there.
I kind of enjoyed his “Christ and Nothing,” but especially his “Tsunami and Theodicy.”