Robert Holmes is one of the leading proponents of nonviolence in the United States, and his influence extends to the rest of the world. However, he has never presented his views on nonviolence in full-length book form. The Ethics of Nonviolence brings together his best essays on the topic, both classic works and more obscure pieces, as well as several important essays that have never been published. Holmes started his career by following Dewey and James, and then turned toward metaethics. The Vietnam War finally led him toward moral problems related to war and violence. For the last forty years he has been a great proponent of nonviolence and pacifism in the style of Tolstoy and Gandhi. If ethics is meant to be more than a purely academic exercise, the theoretical ethics of philosophy must be shown to be relevant to applied morality; the ongoing process of making moral judgments must add value to the world we live in. For Robert Holmes, no aspect of reality is more in need of ethical thinking and reform than the culture of war and violence that cannot be ignored. There are morally viable alternatives to this violence, Holmes argues, and he scrutinizes the sources and implications of such positions. Holmes shows that nonviolence and pacifism can lead us toward a more peaceful and humanely dignified world.
In a world riven with conflict, violence and war, this book proposes a philosophical defense of pacifism. It argues that there is a moral presumption against war and unless that presumption is defeated, war is unjustified. Leading philosopher of non-violence Robert Holmes contends that neither just war theory nor the rationales for recent wars (Vietnam, the Gulf War, the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars) defeat that presumption, hence that war in the modern world is morally unjustified. A detailed, comprehensive and elegantly argued text which guides both students and scholars through the main debates (Just War Theory and double effect to name a few) clearly but without oversimplifying the complexities of the issues or historical examples.
How do we know what we know? How do we know if it's true? Is there a difference between "fact" and "belief"? Is what we perceive to be real and "reality" the same? Ultimately, what can we know and what is beyond us? Science and religion respond in their own distinct ways to these questions, often in apparent conflict. But is it possible that they are both, in the end, simply complimentary expressions of our human condition? I have been intrigued by these questions for a lifetime and have woven them into a story of what might happen if science and faith collaborated in an attempt to bring about a second coming of Jesus. What if our advanced scientific capabilities were the necessary condition to bring life to faith and belief? What if... Bob Holmes is a retired educator and Human Resources manager. He has graduate degrees in Education and Social Science and served for 20 years as an elected member of his regional school committee. Bob originally planned to be a professional historian; he has a degree in Early American History from the College of William and Mary, in Williamsburg, Virginia, and has pursued history as an avocation throughout his life. He and his wife, Diane, have lived in their colonial farmhouse in Western Rhode Island for over 40 years. Here, where two of their three children were born at home, they raised all three kids and maintained a small farm. Bob is a collector of all things old and interesting and has involved his three grandchildren in his various hobbies. One of those hobbies is writing, and thus this book. Currently, he and Diane are enjoying their role as grandparents and their life as retirees.
The threat to the survival of humankind posed by nuclear weapons has been a frightening and essential focus of public debate for the last four decades and must continue to be so if we are to avoid destroying ourselves and the natural world around us. One unfortunate result of preoccupation with the nuclear threat, however, has been a new kind of "respectability" accorded to conventional war. In this radical and cogent argument for pacifism, Robert Holmes asserts that all war--not just nuclear war--has become morally impermissible in the modern world. Addressing a wide audience of informed and concerned readers, he raises dramatic questions about the concepts of "political realism" and nuclear deterrence, makes a number of persuasive suggestions for nonviolent alternatives to war, and presents a rich panorama of thinking about war from St. Augustine to Reinhold Niebuhr and Herman Kahn. Holmes's positions are compellingly presented and will provoke discussion both among convinced pacifists and among those whom he calls "militarists." "Militarists," we realize after reading this book, include the majority of us who live a friendly and peaceful personal life while supporting a system which, if Holmes is correct, guarantees war and risks eventual human extinction. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
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