From the Scale of Despotism to the Scale of Freedom: Violence and Perfectionism in the Nonviolent Tradition

This paper addresses the ways that several major figures in the nonviolent tradition, including William Lloyd Garrison, MK Gandhi, and  M.L. King Jr., understand the place of violence in the service of just causes from the perspective of principled nonviolence. I argue that only a genuinely principled, rather than merely practical, commitment to nonviolence can render violent protest intelligible, in ways that challenge standard ethical outlooks. These perspectives present especially productive challenges for forms of virtue ethics and moral perfectionism.