Abstract

LACA-AROCENA, Francisco A.. Bertrand Russell: relative political pacifism. Convergencia [online]. 2011, vol.18, n.57, pp.129-144. ISSN 2448-5799.

Following Bertrand Russell's biography (1872-1970), logic-mathematician, philosopher, 1950 Literature Nobel prize winner and pacifist militant during almost all the conflictive 20th century, this paper analyzes the double conflict that faces a pacifist: one of civil disobedience to a government that has declared a war, and that of relative social marginalization with a public opinion when this is favorable mostly to that war. After a brief analysis of Pacifism contrasting it with a double tradition in the political Anglo-Saxon thinking, the utilitarianism and the social contract theory, this paper puts emphasis in Russell's personal distinction between "prestige" and "value" wars. He was a pacifist in the First World War considering it a prestige war, but was an opponent partisan to Nazism in the Second World War understanding that it was a combat of values. He will come back to a pacifist activism in his opposition to the Vietnam War. These different stances before war, related to what in each case is in jeopardy, is known as "relative political pacifism" whose most genuine representative was Russell himself.

Keywords : relative pacifism; utilitarianism; social contract; public opinion; prestige; values.

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