Essay from the year 2002 in the subject Philosophy - Theoretical (Realisation, Science, Logic, Language), grade: 1,7 (A-), University of Southampton (Politics Department), course: Political Philosophical Theory, language: English, abstract: There are plenty of ideas in international ethics which indicate how states andindividuals should behave and interact. The belief that the use of violence in contactwith others is wrong, represents one of those. Pacifists, fascinated by a world withoutwar or violence, formed different moral positions according to that vision. To have amoral position means that a person or a state must have general kinds of reasons "forsupposing a certain type of act to be his [or its] duty, in a moral sense" (WasserstromR., p. 66). Pacifism describes a duty that might range from non-resistance to any sort ofphysical attack, up to the attitude to use force only in case of self-defence. In the firstpart of this essay the debate will therefore focus on the individual and whether or notpacifism can be made a plausible moral principle for our private lives. Passive andactive non-resistance and self-defence will be the main viewpoints discussed in thissection. It will be followed by debatable moral standpoints for a nation as a whole in thesecond chapter. We will determine, if it is imaginable and desirable for a state to adoptperspectives like 'no force at all', 'no war' or 'wars only in the case of self-defence', as itsrighteous. To provide evidence for the moral verification of pacifist views, we firstly haveto prove whether or not they can possibly be moral positions and secondly if they aredefensible. However, it will be shown, that moral positions are defensible, if one hasplausible reasons to believe that this specific vision is likely to be realised. [...]