ABSTRACT
This chapter considers just what pacifism is, starting with ambiguities in the term. It suggests that, for one thing, the ur-version doesn’t really make sense, and second, narrower applications of it, especially to the context of international wars, really inherit the problems of the “ur-thesis.” “Fundamentalist” pacifism has been expressed as a strictly and narrowly ethical view about how individuals as such should behave. Ethical pacifism as applied to every particular individual at all times strikes most people as far-fetched, even crazy. Some foreign policy initiatives are very likely to involve the country making them in shooting or bombing people, and some of those people will almost certainly be civilian. Pacifism is taken to be exclusively about state action, or at least the actions of groups aspiring to political power.
