Pacifism and Supreme Emergencies

Nicholas Parkin

Abstract: A common (and powerful) response to the anti-war pacifist position predicated on the impermissible killing of innocent persons, to which I am partial, is that in certain cases some terrible disaster might only be prevented by recourse to war. It may follow, then, that war may be permissibly waged to prevent some terrible disaster from occurring. The sort of disaster required for this argument is one of the possible outcomes of the so-called ‘supreme emergency.’ In this talk I will outline the problem that supreme emergencies present for the anti-war pacifist position, and propose one solution by which that position can be maintained. To do so I argue that supreme emergencies are morally tragic situations. This means that while it may be morally impermissible to allow some terrible disaster to occur, it may also be morally impermissible to wage war to prevent it. I also suggest that agents responsible for waging (or not waging) war in morally tragic situations, thereby killing many innocents (or allowing many innocents to be killed), may be excused from blame for doing so.

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