RESEARCH | philosophy

Book Project

I am currently working on a book project, tentatively titled Pacific Resistance: Towards a World Without War.

I. Overview

What would it take for us to live together without war? This question can seem hard to get off the ground. When we are constantly surrounded by war, hoping for peace and trusting others to act for the sake of peace will seem both pragmatically foolish and morally irresponsible. But failing to hope for peace and to trust in others carries its own risks, leading us to act in ways that actualize, or contribute to, the outcomes we fear, and narrowing the kinds of futures that are possible for us. Pacific Resistance shows us how to take the opening question seriously, by developing a form of pacifism that functions to resist war – treating war not as an event, but as a hegemonic force. Through philosophical explorations of hope, trust, and moral imagination, the book offers a political vision for how to transform a society that is organized around fighting wars, into one that is organized around pursuing peace.

Pacifism has a long history, and its shape at any particular moment is strongly influenced by the context in which it is developed. Before Christianity was adopted as the religion of the Roman empire, for example, one influential strain of pacifism focused on the Christian imperatives to turn the other cheek in response to violence, to love one’s enemies, and to return love for hate. This was a deeply personal and virtue-centered version of pacifism. In contrast, Jane Addams’ pacifism, as it took shape during World War I, was bound up with her social work with children, immigrants, and women, and her efforts to alleviate poverty; and the pacifism of Martin Luther King, Jr. was shaped by his work for racial justice and his commitment to nonviolent civil disobedience.

While drawing on the rich tradition of pacifism, Pacific Resistance develops a distinct form of pacifism that is responsive to our current moment. War has become hegemonic, both as a force that organizes our political, social, and economic systems, and as moral discourse that inures us to war. I show how the dominant moral and political frameworks that examine war (and ultimately justify it), such as just war theory and realism, lead us to consistently and systematically overestimate what war can accomplish. The pacifism I propose functions to critically examine the dominant frameworks that justify war, and provides a more objective way to evaluate the justifiability of war. Pacific Resistance, then, is not an anti-war position per se, but a way to think more clearly about the limits of war and the possibilities of peace.

Published Papers

"What is the Aim of a Just War?" Jurisprudence (forthcoming)

(An earlier draft of this paper won the APA's Frank Chapman Sharp Memorial Prize for best unpublished work on the philosophy of war and peace in 2021.)

Just war theory has long held that the aim of a just war is peace, and not victory. Peace, however, does not feature in either of the two traditional pillars of just war theory: jus ad bellum (which governs the conditions under which we may go to war) and jus in bello (which governs the scope and manner of killing in war). This paper examines the question, which has so far been ignored in the literature, of how exactly just war theory orients a war towards peace. Establishing this foundational claim, which I will refer to as the Peace Claim, is crucial in order for just war theory to hold the middle ground between its two main rivals, realism (which holds that we must pragmatically pursue victory) and pacifism (which holds that we must nonviolently pursue peace).

"The Problem with Preparing to Kill in Self-Defense," Journal of Applied Philosophy 41, no. 4 (2024): 575-589

In a society marked by liberal gun ownership laws, and an increasingly militarized police force, how should we think about cases where a homeowner shoots a person who has mistakenly knocked on the wrong door, or where a police officer shoots someone who is unarmed? The general tendency – by shooters, courts, and many observers – is to use the framework of self-defense. However, as I will argue, relying on the framework of self-defense is inappropriate in these cases, because theories of self-defensive killing are built-up around a very specific type of case, namely, a random, sudden, one-off encounter between roughly equally matched strangers. When a person who acts in self-defense has undertaken certain preparations to kill in self-defense – such as buying a gun, or undergoing certain kinds of training – they transform what would have been defensive violence into offensive violence. But because the self-defense framework distinguishes only between defensive and aggressive violence, it cannot easily register the unique moral features of offensive violence. Relying on the self-defense framework, then, produces judgments that are overly permissive of killings by gun owners and police, masking them as self-defensive when in fact they are much more morally fraught.

“Narrowing the Gap Between Anti-Militarism and Pacifism,” The Acorn: Philosophical Studies in Pacifism and Nonviolence 23,

no. 1/2 (2023): 104–109

"Trust and Contingency Plans," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 52, no. 7 (2022): 689-699

Trusting relationships are both valuable and risky. Where the risks are high, it might seem rational to try to mitigate the risks while still enjoying the benefits of the trusting relationship, by forming a contingency plan. A contingency plan involves contingent punishments for defection, which are meant to encourage the trusted partner to act trustworthily. (Some prenuptial agreements might function in this way.) I argue, however, that such contingency plans suffer from an internal tension wherein the contingency planner both seeks and undermines a particular level (or kind) of trust. There are two problems in particular: one, the planner fails to see the trusted partner as sincerely engaged in the relationship, and two, the planner separates herself out from their joint project by seeing her flourishing as separate from her partner’s. Contingency plans, then, are not just about the future; they cast a moral shadow on what we are doing now.

"Talking to Children About War," Journal of Pacifism and Nonviolence 1, no. 1 (2023): 52-64

I explore the question of how we should talk to children about war. From a young age, children are exposed to scenarios of violence (for example, in books, toys, and advertisements). My conjecture is that we do this in order to teach children to enjoy the “good” kind of violence and to abhor the “bad” kind. We teach children that defensive war is the good kind of violence, and aggressive war is the bad kind. But, I argue, if we raise children in the expectation of war, and shape their moral development by teaching them that killing is sometimes necessary and good, we mold their moral personalities and constrain their imagination in ways that make it difficult for them to seek genuine peace.

"Hoping for Peace," Australasian Journal of Philosophy 98, no. 2 (2020): 211-221

When the odds of achieving world peace seem so long, do hopes for peace amount to anything more than wishful thinking? In this paper, I introduce the idea of meaningful hope, which can help us to understand hopes for peace as genuine hopes. When we act on meaningful hope, we draw on the value of the hoped-for future, in order to give our hopeful activities a meaning they would not otherwise have had. If my account is true, then meaningful hope, by loosening the grip that non-ideal conditions hold over how we live, gives us a way to move towards living a life of our choosing.

"Pacific Resistance: A Moral Alternative to Defensive War," Social Theory & Practice 40, no. 1 (2018): 1-20

It is widely believed that some wars are just, and that the paradigm case of a just war is a defensive war. A familiar strategy used to justify defensive war is to infer its permissibility from the case of self-defensive killing. I show, however, that the permission to defend oneself does not justify killing, but instead calls for nonviolent resistance. I conclude that on the account of self-defense I develop, the appropriate way to respond to a war of aggression is not by prosecuting a defensive war, but by engaging in a form of nonviolence I call pacific resistance.

Works in Progress

"Fight Till the End? How to Think About Surrender and Defensive War" (under review)

What should a state do if it is aggressed against, but cannot win a defensive war? While just war theorists have discussed the question of when and how to end a defensive war, a major underlying assumption is that the state can win, is winning, or has won its defensive war. But what if the state cannot win, is losing, or has lost? Then it seems that there are two options: (1) the state can choose to fight, risking violation of the injunction against fighting futile wars; or (2) the state can choose to surrender, which seems to involve a failure of self-respect and a failure to uphold the principle against aggression. I argue that under these circumstances, states should take seriously a different framework – nonviolent resistance. I show how nonviolent resistance offers a productive solution, making nonviolence not only a permissible option, but a good one, as well.

"Stop-and-Frisk: How Not to Use Idealizing Assumptions"

Stop-and-frisk is a tactic legalized in Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968), as a kind of exception to the Fourth Amendment, which requires probable cause for a search and seizure. In Terry, the Court explained that police need only reasonable suspicion that a person might be armed and dangerous, in order to conduct a stop-and-frisk. The data on how stop-and-frisk is used disproportionately on Black men is extensive and well-known. But supporters of the tactic, like Philadelphia’s Democratic mayor, say police should be able to use stop-and-frisk as long as it is done in a constitutional (i.e., non-racist) manner. I argue that liberal supporters of stop-and-frisk are mistaken in thinking that it can be done in a constitutional manner, showing that the assumptions that are embedded in Supreme Court doctrine about stop-and-frisk make it the case that we will just exacerbate the kinds of racism that liberal supporters of stop-and-frisk find objectionable.

"On the Need for Civic Solidarity"

In this paper, I examine what might explain the recent proliferation of calls for solidarity. I begin with a brief overview of how solidarity has been traditionally understood, and offer a conjecture for why the American liberal tradition adopted liberté and égalité, but rejected fraternité. I argue that a well-ordered society requires not only justice, but also solidarity, for two reasons. First, solidarity offers us a way to break out of social hierarchies that are imposed on us. Solidarity is a way for members of privileged and oppressed social groups to act together as social and political equals. And second, solidarity attunes us to the social/political needs of others that might not be captured by claims of justice.

"War and the Failure of Moral Imagination"

Many theorists of war hold that (1) war is sometimes justified, and (2) when it is, it is justified because violent resistance is necessary in order for a community to protect its rights or to stand up for themselves. These theorists has been very successful in aligning the martial with the moral, so that we understand fighting as a moral obligation. In this paper,

I explore the possibility that a belief in the necessity of violence betrays the difficulty that war theorists have imagining nonviolent responses to violence. Through an analysis of William Faulkner’s short story, "Odor of Verbena," I highlight four lessons for how we, as members of a society that has moralized violence, might give ourselves more space to imagine so that in the face of injustice or tragedy, our options are not so quickly reduced to violence.