Under Construction @ Keele 2017 Under Construction @ Keele Vol. III (3) | Page 37

absolute pacifism would argue that violence is always wrong, irrespective of the
target or its intended purpose. Thus the death of civilians would be morally
indistinguishable from those of German soldiers or even of Hitler himself. There is,
therefore, no “greater good” to defend. In this case, pacifism is judged not on its
results, but on its internal, intrinsic merits. In summary, there are, on the one hand, a
wide range of degrees of pacifist belief which are contingent upon contexts such as
the level of violence and the nature of the assailant, and, on the other hand, a
purportedly separate category of “absolute” pacifism which claims to be non-
contingent, denying the use of violence or even resistance in the face of any threat.
For the non-contingent form to exist, its definition must clearly be one without
exception clauses such as ‘except to prevent the deaths of millions of civilians’ or
‘except if the assailant is a tiger’. Any form of exception whatsoever must reveal a
supposedly “absolute” pacifism to be an extreme form of contingent pacifism.
The argument I wish to present requires the creation of a typology specific to
“absolute” pacifism, which will be used in this paper not for classification, but to
discover what happens when the limiting case of true absolute pacifism is sought. I
will therefore analyse in some detail the existing typologies which have been
published for the complete spectrum of pacifism before constructing a new
taxonomy. Creating typologies for the range of pacifist beliefs is, in the words of
David Clough, ‘not a new sport’. 10 The many typological systems are both instructive
and fascinating, providing a road map for what can at first be a confusing maze of
ideas, and