Table of Contents
In a world spiraling back toward conflict, philosopher Martha Nussbaum reveals how Benjamin Britten's War Requiem offers profound lessons about emotional pacifism, just war, and the possibility of reconciliation after devastating violence.
As global tensions escalate and wars rage across multiple continents, we desperately need wisdom about how to think about violence, vengeance, and peace. Britten's 1962 masterpiece, composed to commemorate World War II, combines traditional Latin mass with anti-war poetry to create what Nussbaum calls a "total thought work" about the human heart in times of conflict.
Key Takeaways
- Emotional pacifism—controlling aggressive instincts while acting when necessary—offers a more realistic approach than absolute pacifism or unchecked vengeance
- Just wars can be fought without losing one's moral center, but this requires extraordinary discipline and constant vigilance against retributive impulses
- Music uniquely captures the emotional reality of war because it affects our bodies and emotions directly, bypassing rational defenses
- Reconciliation after conflict requires deliberate effort to understand former enemies' perspectives and shared humanity
- Religious and cultural traditions contain both violent and peaceful strands—we must consciously choose which to embrace
- Personal relationships model the possibility of love triumphing over persecution and social hostility
- Art can preserve moral lessons across generations by making abstract principles emotionally compelling
- The greatest danger in just war isn't losing to evil enemies but becoming evil ourselves in the process of fighting
Timeline Overview
- 00:00–05:35 — Introduction: Britten's War Requiem as a response to global conflict and its relevance to contemporary wars in Ukraine and Palestine
- 05:35–26:52 — The Philosophy of Pacifism: Exploring Gandhi's influence, the distinction between emotional and action pacifism, and the challenges of maintaining moral integrity during warfare
- 26:52–35:39 — Violence & The Biblical Tradition: How Britten reinterprets Christian themes to reject vengeance while embracing love and reconciliation
- 35:39–END — Schopenhauer: Contrasting pessimistic and tragic worldviews on whether beauty and meaning can survive human fragility and suffering
The Impossible Balance: Fighting Evil Without Becoming Evil
Modern conflicts force an agonizing choice between two forms of moral failure. We can lose externally to evil enemies, allowing injustice to triumph. Or we can win but lose internally, becoming corrupted by the very violence we use to defend good. Martha Nussbaum suggests Benjamin Britten's War Requiem offers a third path through this dilemma.
Britten composed his masterpiece in 1962 to rededicate Coventry Cathedral after its World War II bombing. But rather than celebrating victory or mourning defeat, the work grapples with how nations should reconcile after devastating conflict. By interweaving traditional Latin mass for the dead with Wilfred Owen's anti-war poetry from World War I, Britten created what Nussbaum calls a "total thought work" that summons critical reflection about war's moral complexities.
The composer's vision becomes especially relevant as global conflicts multiply. Unlike previous generations who witnessed prolonged peace, today's world faces simultaneous wars in Ukraine, Palestine, and other regions. These conflicts revive ancient questions about when violence is justified, how to maintain moral clarity during fighting, and whether reconciliation remains possible after unspeakable atrocities.
Britten's international casting choices—an Englishman, German, and Russian in the leading roles—embodied his hope that former enemies could collaborate in building peaceful futures. Though the Soviet Union prevented their singer from participating in the premiere, the symbolic gesture reflected Britten's central conviction: nations that have been at war must consciously choose cooperation over continued hostility.
Gandhi's Radical Vision: Emotional Pacifism vs Action Pacifism
Nussbaum draws a crucial distinction between two forms of pacifism that often get confused in moral arguments. Action pacifism prohibits all violence regardless of circumstances, while emotional pacifism focuses on controlling aggressive instincts and retributive desires even when force becomes necessary.
Gandhi represented the extreme of action pacifism, believing no violence was ever justified—not even killing a rabid animal threatening human life. He advised Indians facing British rule to absorb blows without retaliation, making their oppressors "look silly" through moral superiority. This strategy proved effective against the British, who retained some moral constraints despite their thuggish behavior.
But Gandhi's approach failed catastrophically when applied to different contexts. He urged similar tactics against Hitler, suggesting Jews should convert the Nazi leader "by the power of nonviolent love." This recommendation revealed the limitations of absolute pacifism when facing enemies who lack moral constraints entirely. As Nussbaum notes, even committed pacifist Pete Seeger immediately enlisted when America entered World War II, recognizing that defeating Hitler required force.
Emotional pacifism offers a more realistic alternative. This approach emphasizes controlling vindictive impulses and maintaining respect for human dignity while acknowledging that violence sometimes becomes morally necessary. Military leaders at West Point struggled with this balance, wanting to train soldiers who could act decisively without losing their moral center or becoming like Lieutenant William Calley, who led the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam.
The psychological challenge proves immense. Combat situations rarely allow for careful moral reflection, and officers may give morally questionable orders under pressure. Yet the ideal remains coherent: warriors motivated by love of country and rational calculation of moral necessity rather than personal vengeance or aggressive instincts.
The Long Road to Inner Peace: Lessons from Mandela
Nelson Mandela exemplifies the extraordinary difficulty of achieving emotional pacifism. Despite his eventual reputation for reconciliation, Mandela confessed that overcoming his desire for retribution required his entire 27-year imprisonment. Even this extraordinary leader needed constant practice and self-examination to uproot vengeful impulses.
Mandela's process involved systematic work on his personality and motivations. He studied Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, finding Stoic teachings helpful for understanding and redirecting angry emotions. When moved to a better prison with an Afrikaner cook who disliked black Africans, Mandela learned the man's language and showed interest in his family circumstances. This empathy revealed how the cook himself had been ground down by apartheid's system, enabling Mandela to build an unlikely alliance.
This pattern of understanding former enemies' perspectives became central to South Africa's transition. When choosing a national anthem, Mandela refused to simply impose the freedom movement's song. Instead, he created a composite anthem incorporating verses from both the old Afrikaner anthem and the liberation movement's song, plus a final stanza in English about the country's shared future.
Such reconciliation requires recognizing that most people act from what they consider good reasons rather than pure malice. The Afrikaner cook wasn't motivated by sadistic hatred but by economic insecurity and cultural conditioning. Understanding these motivations doesn't excuse harmful actions but creates possibilities for future cooperation that pure condemnation cannot achieve.
Even within committed nonviolent movements, maintaining emotional pacifism proves challenging. Gandhi's followers repeatedly lapsed into violence when he wasn't physically present during partition. Mandela constantly had to intervene to prevent his supporters from seeking various forms of retribution against white South Africans. These failures underscore how difficult the path of emotional pacifism remains even for those ideologically committed to it.
Reinterpreting Sacred Violence: Britten's Biblical Transformations
Britten's War Requiem confronts Christianity's complex relationship with violence by deliberately choosing which theological strands to emphasize. The traditional Requiem Mass contained vindictive elements that both Anglican and Catholic churches had already repudiated by 1962, recognizing its portrayal of a vengeful God as incompatible with modern Christian understanding.
The composer used musical structure to guide listeners away from retributive theology. The terrifying Dies Irae (Day of Wrath) section displays the traditional appeal of divine vengeance through thunderous orchestration. But Britten then leads audiences toward more peaceful elements within the same text, particularly the Pie Jesu verses depicting Christ as suffering rather than wrathful.
The work's climactic moment comes in the Agnus Dei, where Britten sets Wilfred Owen's poem "At a Calvary near the Ancre" to the traditional "Lamb of God" text. Owen's verse equates common soldiers with the crucified Christ, suggesting that modern warfare represents the same prideful violence that killed Jesus. The traditional ending requesting eternal rest for the dead becomes instead a plea for peace among the living: "Dona nobis Pacem" (Grant us peace).
Most radically, Britten includes Owen's heterodox retelling of the Abraham and Isaac story. In the traditional account, God provides a ram when Abraham prepares to sacrifice his son, and Abraham obeys by sparing Isaac. Owen's version has Abraham hear the angel's message but kill Isaac anyway, driven by what Nussbaum calls "egocentric motives" that override divine mercy.
This retelling exposes how people use religious justifications for violence that stems from personal or political motivations rather than divine commands. Whether the driving force is blood lust, national pride, or desire for revenge, the result involves humans choosing violence despite having moral alternatives. Owen's Abraham represents all leaders who continue wars even when peaceful resolutions become possible.
Why Music Matters: Art as Moral Education
Nussbaum argues that music provides uniquely powerful moral education because it affects our bodies and emotions directly rather than just our rational faculties. Following Schopenhauer's analysis, she suggests music represents our emotional strivings and conflicts more immediately than other art forms.
The War Requiem demonstrates this power through its physical impact. The clashing and bashing of full orchestra forces listeners to feel war's emotional reality in their bodies. Even musically uneducated audiences find the work terrifying and moving, compelling them to examine what emotions were aroused and why.
This bodily engagement makes music especially suited for confronting war's moral complexities. Unlike prose arguments about just war theory, musical experience bypasses intellectual defenses and creates visceral understanding of violence's human cost. Listeners don't simply think about war's devastation—they feel it physically and emotionally.
Britten enhanced this effect by combining traditional Latin text with Owen's English poetry, creating what Wagner called a Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art). The interplay between sacred and secular texts, ancient and modern languages, forces audiences to grapple with moral questions on multiple levels simultaneously.
Peter Pears's distinctive high tenor voice contributed essentially to the work's impact. His clear articulation and unusual vocal quality allowed him to embody both Christ and the common soldier, making the connection between sacred and secular suffering personally compelling rather than abstractly theological.
Beauty Through Tragedy: Choosing Aristotle Over Schopenhauer
The War Requiem ultimately takes sides in a fundamental philosophical debate about whether human projects retain value despite their fragility. Schopenhauer argued pessimistically that life's struggles prove worthless because we either fail to achieve our goals (causing pain) or succeed but then become bored (also causing pain). This logic suggests that art should reveal life's futility rather than celebrating human achievements.
Aristotle offered a tragic but ultimately affirmative alternative. Tragedy hits hard and we lose much that we value, but the very act of grieving acknowledges the worth of what we've lost. A human life's value isn't negated by death, and what Aristotle calls the "noble" or "beautiful" (kalon) can shine through even amid devastating loss.
Britten clearly chose the Aristotelian path. Though his work depicts war's terrible devastation, it simultaneously reveals beauty and nobility in human love, sacrifice, and hope for reconciliation. Peter Pears standing before audiences as both Christ and common soldier embodies this vision—dignity and love persisting through persecution and violence.
The composer's personal life exemplified this philosophy. Rather than being tormented by social hostility toward homosexuality, Britten and Pears maintained what Nussbaum describes as a relationship of extraordinary beauty and commitment. Their 39-year partnership combined sexual, creative, and spiritual love, challenging society's assumptions that same-sex relationships were inherently corrupt or unstable.
The couple donated 365 of their love letters to the nation after Britten's death, allowing the public to witness the beauty that had sustained them through decades of legal persecution. This gesture embodied Britten's conviction that love could triumph over hatred if people committed themselves to understanding rather than condemning what they initially found threatening.
Practical Implications for Modern Conflict Resolution
Britten's War Requiem and Nussbaum's analysis offer concrete guidance for individuals and societies grappling with contemporary conflicts and their aftermath.
Develop Emotional Self-Regulation Before Crisis
Practice controlling retributive impulses during peaceful times rather than waiting for conflicts to emerge. Study examples like Mandela's 27-year process of uprooting vengeful desires through philosophical reflection and empathy exercises. Create personal practices—meditation, journaling, studying moral exemplars—that strengthen your capacity for emotional pacifism when stakes become high.
Understand Your Opponents' Motivations
When facing conflict, invest time in genuinely understanding what your opponents believe motivates their actions. Most people, even those causing harm, act from what they consider good reasons rather than pure malice. This understanding doesn't require agreement or capitulation but enables more effective responses and creates possibilities for eventual reconciliation.
Distinguish Between Necessary Force and Revenge
When violence becomes unavoidable, maintain clear distinctions between defensive action motivated by love of what you're protecting versus offensive action motivated by desire to inflict suffering. Churchill's "blood, toil, tears and sweat" speech exemplified this approach—emphasizing British determination to defend their freedom rather than desire to punish Germans.
Design Reconciliation Into Victory
Plan for post-conflict reconciliation while still fighting rather than waiting until after victory. The Marshall Plan's success in rebuilding Germany stemmed partly from Allied leaders who had already committed to emotional pacifism during the war itself. Consider how former enemies might be included in future cooperation before their defeat becomes complete.
Choose Cultural Narratives Consciously
Recognize that religious and cultural traditions contain both violent and peaceful strands. Actively choose which elements to emphasize in education, art, and public discourse. Like Britten selecting specific biblical themes while rejecting others, individuals and societies can consciously promote reconciliatory rather than retributive cultural narratives.
Use Art for Moral Education
Support and create artistic works that help people experience moral truths emotionally rather than just intellectually. Music, visual art, literature, and film can make abstract principles about war and peace emotionally compelling in ways that rational arguments alone cannot achieve.
Model Dignity Under Persecution
When facing unjust treatment, focus on maintaining your own dignity and moral clarity rather than seeking immediate vindication. Britten and Pears's response to social hostility—creating beautiful art and generous public service rather than responding with bitterness—eventually helped change public attitudes more effectively than confrontational tactics might have accomplished.
Practice Preventive Reconciliation
Work on understanding and empathy even with groups you're not currently in conflict with but might face tensions with in the future. Building relationships and mutual understanding during peaceful times creates foundations for reconciliation if conflicts do emerge later.
Common Questions
Q: How can emotional pacifism work in situations where enemies show no moral constraints?
A: It requires combining internal emotional discipline with external strategic thinking—maintaining humanity while using necessary force effectively against those who lack moral boundaries.
Q: What's the difference between appeasement and emotional pacifism?
A: Appeasement avoids necessary action from weakness or fear, while emotional pacifism acts decisively when needed but without vindictive motivations or retributive goals.
Q: Can reconciliation work when war crimes have been committed?
A: It requires acknowledging atrocities honestly while focusing on preventing future violence rather than inflicting proportional suffering on perpetrators.
Q: How do you maintain hope for reconciliation during active conflict?
A: By remembering that most conflicts eventually end and that post-war societies must be built by former enemies learning to cooperate for mutual survival.
Q: What role should religious institutions play in promoting peace?
A: They should emphasize reconciliatory rather than retributive theological themes while acknowledging that sacred texts contain both strands and require conscious interpretation.
The Eternal Choice Between Love and Vengeance
Britten's War Requiem ultimately confronts us with a fundamental choice that every generation must make anew: whether to let love or vengeance guide our responses to conflict and injustice. The composer's masterpiece suggests that while we cannot eliminate war entirely, we can choose how to conduct ourselves during conflicts and how to build peace afterward.
This choice becomes especially urgent as global conflicts multiply and traditional restraints on violence weaken. The work's continued relevance nearly seven decades after its premiere testifies to humanity's persistent struggle with these same moral challenges across different eras and contexts.
The path of emotional pacifism demands more courage than either absolute pacifism or unchecked aggression because it requires maintaining moral clarity in situations that naturally provoke simplistic responses. But as examples like Mandela and Britten demonstrate, this difficult path offers the best hope for preserving both justice and humanity in a world that will always contain conflicts.
