“Good-Bye to Nonviolence?”

• Author: William E. Scheuerman
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129211038611
• Published date: 01 December 2022
• Date: 01 December 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/10659129211038611

Political Research Quarterly

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129211038611

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When John Rawls’ (1971, 366) Theory of Justice

described civil disobedience as necessarily nonviolent,

noting that violence was likely “to injure and to hurt” and

therefore inconsistent with politically motivated law-

breaking as a public “mode of address” akin to political

speech, it codified what soon came to be widely viewed

as the standard liberal view. Rawls rejected the spiritually

oriented pacifisms of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther

King, endorsing nonviolent lawbreaking not on the basis

of an “abhorrence of the use of force in principle,” but

instead because it was congruent with civility, moral con-

scientiousness, and basic respect for the law. Nonviolence

provided evidence of “one’s sincerity” while buttressing

the idea of “disobedience to law within the limits of fidel-

ity to law,” for Rawls (1971, 366–67) (and his liberal con-

temporaries) an essential feature of civil disobedience.

Although Rawls had little to say either about the political

contours of nonviolence or its conceptual parameters, he

characterized it as fortifying civil disobedience’s core

elements. Protestors could legitimately “warn and admon-

ish” those who had violated basic liberties and common

liberal principles of justice (Rawls 1971, 366). But, Rawls

added, they should not threaten to harm anyone.

Not surprisingly, Rawls and other Anglophone liberals

from the 1960s and ’70s are usually interpreted as having

refurbished the idea of nonviolent civil disobedience, as

previously advocated and practiced by Gandhi, King, and

many others. That standard reading has recently provided

a launching pad for a body of theoretical reflection that

challenges strictly nonviolent civil disobedience’s privi-

leged normative status. To be sure, some, typically more

radical, voices during the 1960s and ’70s already sug-

gested the possibility of violent civil disobedience

(Morreall [1976] 1991; Zinn [1968] 2002). Yet, even if

the marriage of nonviolence to civil disobedience occa-

sionally seemed strained, today it appears to be in sham-

bles, with the once marginal idea of politically motivated,

possibly legitimate, violent lawbreaking now common-

place among theorists of political obligation. Some still

view violent lawbreaking as falling under the conceptual

rubric of civil disobedience (Allen 2009; Brownlee 2012;

Celikates 2016a, 2016b; Moraro 2019; Simmons 2005,

2015; Welchman 2001); others embrace uncivil disobedi-

ence and related terms (e.g., resistance) in part because

they hope to justify some types of political violence.1

Whatever their particular terminological preferences,

they target Rawls and worry that liberalism’s marriage of

nonviolence to civil disobedience founders on its failure

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38611PRQXXX10.1177/10659129211038611Political Research QuarterlyScheuerman

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1Indiana University Bloomington, USA

Corresponding Author:

William E. Scheuerman, Indiana University Bloomington,

Bloomington, IN 47405-7000, USA.

Email: wscheuer@indiana.edu

“Good-Bye to Nonviolence?”

William E. Scheuerman1

Abstract

John Rawls and other liberals from the 1960s and ’70s are usually interpreted as having refurbished the idea of

nonviolent civil disobedience, as practiced by Gandhi, King, and many others. That standard reading has recently

provided a launching pad for a growing body of critical theoretical reflection that challenges strictly nonviolent civil

disobedience’s privileged normative status. Here I offer a revisionist account of both liberal (and especially) Rawlsian

nonviolent disobedience and recent attempts to supersede it. Recent critics occasionally miss their targets: the main

differences separating Rawls from the critics revolve around competing empirical assessments of contemporary liberal

societies and rival accounts of political violence. Rawls and other liberals, in fact, provided normative space for

limited forms of “violent” lawbreaking, when resulting typically not in injuries to other persons but perhaps damage

to property. The debate about nonviolent vs. violent political illegality needs to pay closer attention to the difficult

issue of how best to understand and define political violence. Although we may need to provide normative space

under unjust conditions for limited types of violence (e.g., property damage), substantial grounds remain for principally

favoring lawbreaking that avoids injuring or violating persons.

Keywords

political violence, civil disobedience, resistance, John Rawls, liberalism

2022, Vol. 75(4) 1284–1296

Article