1st Edition
The Global Gandhi Essays in Comparative Political Philosophy
This book is a comparative study of Gandhi’s philosophy and analyzes his relevance to modern political thought. It traces the intellectual origins of Gandhi’s nonviolence as well as his engagement with Western thinkers – ancient as well as his contemporaries. The author discusses Gandhi’s exchanges with eminent thinkers like Tolstoy and Thoreau, and looks at his vision of pluralism, democracy, and violence through the lens of philosophers like Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, and Cornelius Castoriadis. Further, it explores Gandhi’s association with Abdul Ghaffar Khan and the Khilafat Movement. Finally, the book examines Gandhian thought in the light of his global followers like Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela.
An invaluable resource for the contemporary mind, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of politics, political thought, Gandhi studies, and philosophy.
Acknowledgments. Introduction: Gandhi and the otherness of the other. 1. Gandhi and Thoreau: the duty to disobey 2. Gandhi and Tolstoy: desperate old men wandering like Oedipus at Colonus 3. Beyond violence: a comparative analysis of Hannah Arendt and Mahatma Gandhi 4. Two concepts of pluralism: a comparative study of Mahatma Gandhi and Isaiah Berlin 5. Gandhi and Castoriadis: self-government and autonomy 6. Gandhi and Abdul Ghaffar Khan: critique of religious fanaticism 7. Gandhi and the Khilafat 8. The Gandhian vision of democracy. Conclusion: Gandhi and the Global Satyagraha. Bibliography
Biography
Ramin Jahanbegloo is an Iranian–Canadian philosopher. He is presently the Executive Director of the Mahatma Gandhi Centre for Nonviolence and Peace Studies and the Vice-Dean of the School of Law at Jindal Global University, Sonipat, India. He is the winner of the Peace Prize from the United Nations Association in Spain (2009) for his extensive academic works in promoting dialogue between cultures and his advocacy for nonviolence, and more recently the winner of the Josep Palau i Fabre International Essay Prize. Some of his most recent publications are Gadflies in the Public Space (2016), The Decline of Civilization (2017), Letters to a Young Philosopher (2017), and On Forgiveness and Revenge (2017).
"Gandhi's contribution to modern philosophy and thought is often overlooked because his insistence on truth and non-violence is seen primarily as a spiritual quest. Ramin Jahanbegloo has admirably corrected this by positioning Gandhi in the midst of some of the most prominent thinkers of our times. As a result we not only arrive at a more profound appreciation of how Gandhi impacted liberal democratic theory, but we also get, as a bonus, a fresh perspective on philosophers about whom we thought we had heard the final word." - Dipankar Gupta, former Professor, Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
