Was Nicholas Rengger a Pacifist? A Conversation with Kennedy-Pipe

Abstract This essay interrogates whether Nicholas Rengger shared a pacifist sensibility. It argues that Rengger's work, although notoriously hard to classify, invites such a reflection. Arguably, his reading of the just war tradition as one that aims at the restraining of war overlaps with the pragmatic side of a pacifist spectrum that stretches from pragmatic to absolute pacifism. That said, Rengger would probably claim that such a sensibility is already effectively reflected in classical just war thinking as an ethical practice that takes contextual judgement seriously. Rengger was, ultimately, a sceptic who refused to be pigeonholed as a flagbearer of one or the other position, not because he was a dilettante but because he earnestly believed that an imperfect reality does not easily conform to our prefabricated conceptual categories and that we make the best use of our intellect when we respond to life’s unpredictable challenges with compassion and charity.