Richard Sorabji on Mahatma Gandhi as Philosopher

Richard Sorabji discusses Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of non-violence with Nigel Warburton for this the 200th episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast. Philosophy Bites has now been downloaded more than 15 million times.

Listen to Richard Sorabji on Mahatma Gandhi as Philosopher

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Comments

[Patrick S. O'Donnell]

The philosophical aspects of Gandhi's thought are well-treated in several books (keeping in mind that Gandhi was not a systematic thinker nor thought of himself as a philosopher as we would use that term today):

Bhikhu Parekh’s Gandhi’s Political Philosophy: A Critical Examination (1989), Margaret Chatterjee’s Gandhi’s Religious Thought (1983), and especially, Raghavan Iyer’s nonpareil study, The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi (1st ed., 1973; 2nd ed., 1983). Iyer's book also treats the metaphysical presuppositions, assumptions, and beliefs of his moral and political thought.

Akeel Bilgrami should be coming out with a book that is also about philosophical dimensions of Gandhi's views.

Finally, although Sorabji cites Gene Sharp on the efficacy of political nonviolence, the latest and by far the best study along these lines is Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (2011). A book of case studies from the 20th century provides a nice companion volume: Adam Roberts and Timothy Garton Ash, eds. Civil Resistance and Power Politics: The Experience of Non-Violent Action from Gandhi to the Present (2009).

[Jim Vaughan]

What intrigued me in the discussion, was the disclosure that Gandhi did not advocate non-violence universally, but took a much more individualised stance to ethics, and urged some to fight, where this was their own "highest good".

His own daily cultivation of non-violence as a life attitude is something beyond religion or belief, but which joins humanists with the foundational values of all major religions. I like that...