Call for Papers | Issue 7(2025): Restorative Justice, Nonviolence and Education
Editorial
An-archy entails the refusal of external domination or coercive rule, while non-violence means the refusal of violent means of action. There is a possible parallel “via negativa”: anarchism, when understood as academic anarchism in its philosophical sense (not the caricature of chaos, or fundamentalism and violent political action), seeks social order based on voluntary cooperation, mutual aid, and equality, without coercive state power. Nonviolence is based a doctrine on justice and conflict resolution without resort to violent coercion, relying on the contrary on persuasion, civil resistance, or solidarity. There is a long history of experimenting this parallel via negativa, defined as “positive nihilism” by philosopher such as (Kropotkin, Nietzsche), contrasting it with a similar expression “negative nihilism”, which denotes a very different reality: resentment, the cynicism of the reduction of human relations into economic and power relations, or the counterfeiting attempts of biased communications. Let’s look closer at the noble and ethical shared etymological structure of this via negativa. Following this view, once law and state authority had been shaken off, harmonious coexistence and a world immune of violence could be realized… as example “a group of pianists dedicating time to building luxury pianos with the help of a group of collective carpenters. Kropotkin argues that this system of collective production could produce necessary luxury items” (Kropotkin, La conquête du pain, p. 131, 1892)…Producing ethical tools may be similarly considered as essentially a question of committed groups of artisans…
In one of the first 20th century work on pacifism, by De Ligt (1934), we find the description of Philo of Alexandria, about the associative type of anarchism where, a community or small civil society association, defines its own ways of resisting corruption, by reinventing new ways of refusing violent interactions: “The Essenes, formally condemning war, resolutely refused any direct or indirect participation in bloodshed. Philo of Alexandria relates, in Quod omnis probus liber XII, that among them not a single man could be found engaged in the making of bows, arrows, spears, swords, or any other instruments of war, nor in the smallest form of military work. Even in times of peace, they declined to produce objects that might provoke acts of injustice or violence. Likewise, they would not hold slaves, for their society rested solely on mutual assistance: ‘To be master of a slave is unjust and impious, since Mother Nature created all men equal and as brothers.’
They distinguished themselves by great nobility of spirit, purity of conduct, and a steadfastness to their convictions […], an association of religious and labouring communities, resorting only to purely peaceful means for the expression of their doctrine. Preaching an ideal contrary to that of the ruling classes, they nonetheless refrained from open conflict with the society in which they lived. Rather, they sought to act in the world as a leaven.” A critical appraisal of any utopia is always essential; without it, even the most admirable ethical ideal risks failing the test of practical reality. The plurality of the values in the world are related to the conditions of evolution of different human societies. The more civilized a society becomes, and the more individuality develops, the more diverse these desires grow (transl. from Kropotkin, op. cite, 131).
William James (1907), has been looking for an alternative answer from the very ascetic one, based on the idea a return to the pacific nature of the human being. He even pointed out a “dilemma that war promotes many virtues considered of high value and pacifism of often passivism” (Beitzel, 2013, 55).
Often when we think about revolutionary means to address the negative critique related to corruption, we are left to deal in a meaningful way with what comes ‘after the Revolution’. Groups of political leaders who reject nonviolence and adopt a bellicose stance may themselves lack military experience—experience that instils a sober, realist perspective on the use of armed force and better tempers the euphoria of warlike intentions, than the opinions of those who have never handled a weapon. Current research in paleoanthropology shows that human species not only distinguishes itself by being the only species capable of nonviolent cooperation, but also of lethal conflicts, involving sophisticated alliances with exogeneous groups (not only the inner group against the exterior) (Meijer, 2025).
On the other hand, militaristic systems, and their believe of being on the right side of History, and their ways of driving humanity into catastrophic disaster (the Nazi soldier did not think about himself as incorporating the side of the absolute evil but of History), is not measuring the essential problem of violence/war. These are essentially of two kinds: 1) as Von Clausewitz defined rightly after the Napoleonic wars in Europe, violence/war should never be underestimated and should always be considered as present in the background of politics (we hear primely in the field of relations between states, but this situation may impact internal politics at all levels). 2) Neglecting the political dimension of violence/war in favor of its purely security-based/military aspect is like lighting a fire in one’s garden and leaving for the weekend. It is reckless to ignore the autonomous nature of violence/war, which—like fire—can grow, spread, alter its form, and exert hidden influence on economic and political decisions, long after quite interactions between humans have been generalized (or after that peace treaties are signed and troops withdrawn from the theatre of direct combat). Violence in general, and collective violence in the form of war in particular, gives rise to what Clausewitz termed the “fog of war”: uncertainty regarding the enemy, uncertainty about oneself, and pervasive confusion in action.
Clear organization and the management of the problem of the fog of violence brings us to the fundamental reason: why we act in one way or the other, based on key reasons and justification for action.
The duty to obey a policy, (a set of rules or the law) may be understood as the associationism views it. If we build on the human capacity of constituting large associative civil society bodies, or if we consider our historical membership into a religious-cultural-political society we find one set of reason to engage into actions according to some principles or values. In contrast, transactionalism can bring a worldview and very different reasons for action. Transactionalism entails the proposition that we/citizens engage in clear, voluntary transactions with the state, when merely receiving (sometimes unavoidable or non-excludable) benefits (like security or public order) grounds obligations on a moral transactional way.
One might object with Luo (Yizhong Luo, 2018, 87), that since one cannot be bound by strictly speaking “voluntarily accepting benefits” or transactions one has no real choice. Residence in one place, or benefit-use are too weak to count as a binding transaction.
Punk anarchism (Parson, 2026) claims that it is simply impossible to reform the systems in which we are facing both the dilemmas of association-based engagement into the civil society and the problem of violence and war. We may well have a history of commitments over time with the other members of our community, which grounds social and moral justification of building up constructivist multilateral collective (ethical) actions, but the lack of proper understanding and freedom of effective maneuver against violence is a real risk. Focusing on violence as searching in resilience the best way of answering this aporia of the existence of evil, is not engaging into the religious, political or philosophical dimension of nonviolence but concentrating on social effects.
This point of view notes the richness of the concepts of resilience, non-violence, and pacifism.
While the first appears to be a form of therapy and training aimed at recovering from experiences of violence, the latter two adopt a broader perspective, addressing a range of philosophical, political, and religious questions. Education in nonviolence may incorporate resilience training, but the reverse is not true (Rosenberg on NVC, 2020). De Traz (2021) in his work “Bouncing back” sees resilience as practical trainings, “neurobehavioral reprogramming” in situations that demand courage or a significant departure from norms, instead of placing the person in a situation of victim of violence. Nonviolent communication (NVC) is training communication, based on the principles of nonviolence and on focusing on personalist and humanistic psychology, creating empathy in conversations, and understanding the crucial need for people to hear one another (Rosenberg, ibid). Wider discussions of the nature of the human society may not always be needed, instead a refined psychology of the process of communication is brought to be core of understanding nonviolence. A creation of communities organized around non-violent principles is either complementary or may be absent from resilience practices, which tends to develop tactics turning crisis into opportunity; it is all about courageously applying ethical reasoning to challenging decisions where established behaviors or “business as usual” are insufficient for De Traz.
The attitude of precisely framing the therapeutic responsibilities of restoring a good balance of life (incl. rights and needs, psychological balance, personal development, etc.) differs from large collective attempts, as some religious groups (for instance 18th Century Protestants escaping persecution in Europe: the Amish, Mennonites and Quakers).
By thinking excessive “passivity” (William James, 1907, our ital.) on the side of escaping violence, we risk missing the “virtue of the Quaker”, looking at the finger pointing at “the ridiculous dress” (Voltaire; Tuccillo 2017).
In contemporary societies, preventing violence or answering violence by retributive means (beside restorative and nonviolent means) may need to bring as well collective engagements aiming at resilience as reconciliation. Achieving and consolidating peace means addressing important part of the problem of violence as well. These dimensions of violence concern a larger framework of dealing with the problem of a real justice-based frameworks; they should be including principles, practices and institutions.
As Tolstoy writes that both resisting violence and thinking about better organizing our world are closely intertwined: “It is far more natural to conceive of a society of people governed by reasonable, advantageous laws, that are recognized by everyone, than of the society in which people live today, obeying only violence.” (Tolstoy, The Law of Love and the Law of Violence, 1970, Ch. 15, §1).
Thoreau has found the words to explain how to resist violence without escaping the complexity of the phenomenon, and boldly not rushing into solutions which, managed unproperly, might just add to the problem: “You do not resist cold and hunger, the winds and the waves, thus obstinately: you quietly submit to a thousand similar necessities. You do not put your head into the fire. But just in proportion as I regard this as not wholly a brute force, but partly a human force, and consider that I have relations to those millions as to so many millions of men, and not of mere brute or inanimate things, I see that appeal is possible, first and instantaneously, from them to the Maker of them, and, secondly from them to themselves.” (Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, quoted from Harry Kalven, Jr. on Thoreau, in: Harrop A. Freemann, et al. 1966. Civil Disobedience, p.26.)
This way of appealing to the human force instead of the brute force is what we understand as inclusivity or a mixed theory of responding to violence (von Hirsch in Haaz, 2025), which is concerned both by retributive and preventive dimensions where retribution is partly a communicative phenomenon, a semiology of addressing the author of a wrong in a proper way, not leaving behind the interests of the victims.
As Gregg, in his classic work on Nonviolence writes, we have good reasons to admire firmness and order in human affairs: “For ages military discipline has won and held men's faith. However crude, indiscriminate, and brief may be the results of organized violence, the world still has immense respect for its show of firmness and order (...) discipline amounts to seventy-five per cent of all the elements that go to make up success in battle... The Duke of Wellington said, “Habit is ten time nature.”...”military genius had discovered and applied with surpassing success a law of life that is even more important to civil than to military existence, namely the means by which the individual can be taught to forget his personal danger and to sacrifice his individual interests for the general welfare. (...) If then, the great masters of military art and science are right, armies are powerful not primarily because of their weapons and their destructiveness, but because of their organization and firm habits.” (Gregg, R. A Discipline for Non-Violence, p. 1.)
Commenting Dostoyevsky’s poetry, Bakhtin invites us to welcome an ideal of absolute freedom, it is not about finding the right new system, but in experimenting in the theory and practice of human emancipation: “nothing conclusive has yet taken place in the world, the ultimate word of the world and about the world has not yet been spoken, the world is open and free, everything is still in the future and will always be in the future.” (Bakhtin, 124, 1984). Should we consider as in 1999 Matrix film, nonviolent utopia as based on a decision-making processes, “red pill and blue pill” (1999 film The Matrix), or on education, the options for bringing sustainable transformation changes.
Dr I. Haaz, Editor in Chief, The Journal of Ethics in Higher Education
Geneva, 2025.09.02
Keywords:
Leading with power vs. resilience and overcoming violence; nonviolence and peace from geographical points of views (Africa, US, MENA..); Global religions and pacifism (Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Christianism, etc. Church’s attitude to war and peace); Pacifism and action (intentional communities, studies of specific actions); Pacifism: its ideas and history; systemic violence in the academia.
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