King on Non-violence

Comments by W. Russ Payne

What is non-violence? And why be non-violent? Developing King’s answers to these questions reveals the philosophical roots of his thought. Specifically, we will see how King’s non-violent methods prominently feature a commitment to the Socratic Method of inquiry.

How does one respond to injustice and oppression? King distinguishes non-violent resistance as a third way between violent aggression and passive acquiescence.

We know what violent aggression is. King offers two arguments against violent responses to oppression.

One argument is tactical or prudential. Violent responses invites only further violent retaliation. In your opponent’s eyes, violent retaliation legitimizes your opponent’s demonization of you.

The other argument against violence is ethical: Violence requires demonizing your opponent, seeing them as something less than human. In committing violent acts, even when they succeed in subduing or defeating an opponent, a person diminishes their own humanity by shrinking their sphere of moral concern.

Acquiescence is surrendering to and accepting injustice. In the case of an injustice against one's self, we can say that morality demands respect for one’s self as well as respect for others and simply accepting injustice, when one has a choice, would be to fail to respect one’s self.  Acquiescence is not necessarily a lapse in self-regard when one is under the threat of violence and any sort of resistance is sure to be futile.  My colleague Kim Pollock makes this clear with the case of the slave who faces no choices beyond obeying the master or being assaulted.  Perhaps the very nature of oppression is to deny people the option of non-violent resistance.  But to accept a situation that is unjust to one's self when the option of non-violent resistance is open is to fail to respect one's self. 

There is also a significant moral failing in silently accepting the oppression of others. King, along with many ethicists, sees justice as a necessary condition for leading the good life. For suppose there is injustice in your community or society. Then you must choose between sympathizing with the oppressed and suffering along with them or ignoring their reality. But ignoring the experience of the oppressed requires that you shrink your sphere of moral concern, limit your understanding, and thereby dehumanize yourself.

Recognizing that there is a third way is the first and perhaps most substantial obstacle for most critics of non-violence. King is very clear about distinguishing the non-violent approach from merely surrendering to unjust domination.

So what is this third way? The third way is to actively oppose the injustice while still showing concern for the well being of all people. Regard for people requires rejecting any intention to harm.

The rejection of harm towards others is not merely a demand for restraint. The practitioner of non-violence goes farther in rejecting resentment and hatred of her oppressors. Even as a person’s support for unjust laws or institutions is opposed, their humanity is to be held in the highest regard.

Beyond intending no harm, the highest expression of the attitude of non-violence is love for the oppressor and for the perpetrator of injustice. One’s love for humanity in general and for one’s self as a human being should extend even to one’s opponent.

The notion of the oppressed loving their oppressors doesn’t sound realistic or right if we only see love as a sort of warm and fuzzy feeling. But this is not what King has in mind when he speaks of love for the perpetrators of injustice:

"This "love stuff" stands at the center of nonviolence. The highest expression of non-injury is love and I think many people misunderstand love at this point. They think that when you talk about "love" you are talking about sentimental, affectionate emotion and I would be the first to say that this is absurd; it is nonsense to urge oppressed people to love their oppressors in an affectionate sense. This is very difficult and almost impossible. So when I try to explain what I mean by this "love stuff" I turn to the Greek language. It has a word agape. Now agape is more than aesthetical or romantic love. Agape is more than a friendship. Agape is understanding, creative, redemptive, good-will for all men." (King, "The Meaning of Non-violence")

I want to dwell on this phrase for a moment: "understanding, creative, redemptive, good-will for all men." King uses this phrase frequently to describe the attitude of agape, the attitude of non-violence. The goodwill towards all that King takes morality to demand of us consists in part in a creative effort to understand others in a redemptive light.

It is all too easy for an injured party to see the source of his suffering as "a bad person." But once one moves beyond hating the sin to hating the sinner, violence is not courageous, but it is self-indulgence in self-righteousness. Agape demands that we try to understand others as also seeking the good, however misguided they may be in their understanding of what is good and how to attain it.

A good part of King’s speech, "Beyond Vietnam" is an extended meditation on how America must look to the Vietnamese citizen.  This kind of reflection on how others must see us is not at all comfortable. But to blind ourselves to these perspectives on account of this discomfort would be to willfully diminish our own rationality and thereby diminish one of the things most distinctively human about ourselves.

It takes genuine courage to face the discomfort of evidence that has the potential to speak against one’s own cherished view of the world. But the ethical person’s mission is to fearlessly seek the truth.

"Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and non-violence, when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know of his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition." (King, "Beyond Vietnam")

Non-violence thus requires that we try to understand how our opponent perceives the world and how that other might see their unjust action as justifiable given their view of the world. Understanding our opponent’s view of the world is necessary for any kind of communication that might correct that person’s view of the world and get them to see how their ways are oppressive to others.

Understanding another’s reasons for holding their views is a necessary condition for evaluating those reasons for soundness or cogency. And it is only by this means that we might come to understand any errors in our own reasoning about what is just and right.

This is good old-fashion Socratic stuff. In advancing the Christian ethic of agape conceived of as "understanding, creative, redemptive, good-will for all men," King advocates an ethic that features the Socratic Method as a central component. The Socratic Method, or the dialectic, that method of understanding and evaluating another perspective through questioning dialogue, is the central component of the philosophical method and the scientific method. To have an incomplete grasp on the truth is the nature of the human condition. But we are not limited to only our own point of view. We can gain new insights from listening to the perspectives different from our own and thinking critically about our own in light of what we hear. This is the very essence of human rationality. It is the exercise of this capacity to understand through dialogue and critical reflection that Aristotle identifies as essentially human and central to leading the good human life.

Here we can say some more about the ethical reasons for being non-violent:

Non-violence has everything to do with virtue in the classical Greek sense. And virtue in this sense has an epistemic component. It does not consist entirely of meaning well, but of meaning well and understanding. The truly big hearted person is also the big minded person.

The non-violent life of King strikes me as a paradigm example of Aristotle’s conception of Eudaimonia or the good life (conceived of as actively flourishing as a rational being).

The non-violent life encompasses the intellectual virtues of open mindedness, curiosity, intellectual courage and perceptiveness as well as social virtues of fair dealing and collegiality and more traditionally moral virtues of empathy and compassion.

The moral argument for being non-violent is not that violent self defense is never within one’s rights or justifiable as permissible (minimally morally acceptable). The moral argument for being non-violent is that this is the way of the most excellent sort of person.

The virtue and goodness upheld here is not mere usefulness or social benevolence. Rather, the virtue implicit in non-violence is upheld as an integral component of what happiness and freedom are available to humans. King fights for his dignity and liberty by being dignified and, as far as possible in an unjust society, being free himself.