Europeans and Americans tend to hold the opinion that democracy is a uniquely Western inheritance, but in The Common Cause, Leela Gandhi recovers stories of an alternate version, describing a transnational history of democracy in the first half of the twentieth century through the lens of ethics in the broad sense of disciplined self-fashioning. Gandhi identifies a shared culture of perfectionism across imperialism, fascism, and liberalism—an ethic that excluded the ordinary and unexceptional. But, she also illuminates an ethic of moral imperfectionism, a set of anticolonial, antifascist practices devoted to ordinariness and abnegation that ranged from doomed mutinies in the Indian military to Mahatma Gandhi’s spiritual discipline. Reframing the way we think about some of the most consequential political events of the era, Gandhi presents moral imperfectionism as the lost tradition of global democratic thought and offers it to us as a key to democracy’s future. In doing so, she defends democracy as a shared art of living on the other side of perfection and mounts a postcolonial appeal for an ethics of becoming common.

Notwithstanding his contributions to religion, nonviolence, civil rights, and civil disobedience, among other areas, Gandhi's most significant contribution is that as a political philosopher. While he is not often treated as such, Gandhi was, as Anthony J. Parel argues, a political philosopher sui generis, both in his philosophical method of constant self-criticism and his framework of philosophical analysis. Gandhi wrote daily on politics, but he did so as an activist; political philosophy was to him not just a way of understanding truths of political phenomena but was directly related to understanding those truths in action. If realized in action these truths would give rise to new political institutions, which in turn would create a corresponding peaceful political and social order. Parel dubs this order Pax Gandhiana. The main contention of Pax Gandhiana is that peace cannot be achieved by politics alone. Peace requires the confluence of the canonical ends of life: politics and economics (artha), ethics (dharma), forms of pleasure (kama), and the pursuit of spiritual transcendence (moksha). Modern political philosophy isolates politics from the other three ends, but Gandhi's originality, according to Parel, lies in the way that he brings all four together. In fact Gandhi's political philosophy is relevant not only to India but also to the rest of the world: it is a new type of sovereignty that harmonizes the interest of individual states with the community of states. Arguing against scholars who dispute a theoretical unity in Gandhi's writings, Parel suggests that Gandhi is the preeminent non-western political philosopher, and in this book he seeks to identify the conceptual framework of Gandhi's political philosophy, the Pax Gandhiana.

Is it possible to build an authentically democratic system in politics without concrete ethical foundations? Addressing this question in the wake of the contemporary crisis in democracy worldwide, the volume re-evaluates Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s key thoughts. It foregrounds their relevance to the ongoing struggles that attempt to reconcile the apparently dissimilar orientations of politics and ethics. Collecting fresh interdisciplinary researches, the book provides insights into Gandhi’s complex — and occasionally turbulent — intellectual and political relationships with influential figures of Indian society and politics, whether critics such as B. R. Ambedkar and friends like Rabindranath Tagore and Jawaharlal Nehru. It also presents an informed political biography of Gandhi, encapsulating the salient details of his long trajectory as a unique mass mobilizer, socio-political activist and ideologue — from his days in South Africa to his death in independent India. This book will immensely interest scholars and students of political theory, philosophy, ethics, history, and Gandhian studies.

Ethical Religion by M.K. Gandhi is a collection of insightful essays and reflections by the renowned Indian spiritual and political leader, providing a moral framework for ethical living, exploring the intersection of religion, spirituality, and social justice. Key Points: Gandhi emphasizes the importance of ethical principles and moral values in religion, urging individuals to live a life guided by compassion, truth, and non-violence, and highlighting the transformative power of ethical conduct. The book explores Gandhi's belief in the unity of all religions, promoting a universal and inclusive approach to spirituality that transcends sectarian divisions and fosters harmony among diverse faith traditions. Ethical Religion delves into Gandhi's vision of a just and equitable society, examining the relationship between spirituality and social change, and advocating for the eradication of poverty, discrimination, and violence through ethical means.

This volume shows how Gandhi's thought and action-oriented approach are significant, relevant, and urgently needed for addressing major contemporary problems and concerns, including issues of violence and nonviolence, war and peace, religious conflict and dialogue, terrorism, ethics, civil disobedience, injustice, modernism and postmodernism, oppression and exploitation, and environmental destruction. Appropriate for general readers and Gandhi specialists, this volume will be of interest for those in philosophy, religion, political science, history, cultural studies, peace studies, and many other fields.

Critically investigating Mahatma Gandhi's claim that his anti-colonial nationalism can remain untainted by violence, this study addresses important and timely questions that are central to the study of nationalism, and more broadly, to other forms of collective identity formation as well. Does the possibility exist for a nationalism that is not rooted in violence, either physical or conceptual/epistemic? Can adherents to a philosophy of nonviolence indeed forge national identities without conjuring up troubling dichotomies that pit superior insiders against inferior outsiders? The examination of these critical questions through the lens of Mahatma Gandhi's construction of an Indian nonviolent nationalism allows a test of an extreme case, since Gandhi is generally seen as the prime example of a nonviolent political thinker and activist.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948) was one of the few men in history to fight simultaneously on moral, religious, political, social, economic, and cultural fronts. His life and thought has had an enormous impact on the Indian nation, and he continues to be widely revered - known before and after his death by assassination as Mahatma, the Great Soul.

A study in comparative virtue ethics.

“Was Gandhi a philosopher? Yes.” So begins this remarkable investigation of the guiding principles that motivated the transformative public acts of one of the top historical figures of the twentieth century. Richard Sorabji, continuing his exploration of the many connections between South Asian thought and ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, brings together in this volume the unlikely pairing of Mahatma Gandhi and the Stoics, uncovering a host of parallels that suggests a deep affinity spanning the two millennia between them. While scholars have long known Gandhi’s direct Western influences to be Platonic and Christian, Sorabji shows how a look at Gandhi’s convergence with the Stoics works mutually, throwing light on both of them. Both emphasized emotional detachment, which provided a necessary freedom, a suspicion of universal rules of conduct that led to a focus not on human rights but human duties—the personally determined paths each individual must make for his or her self. By being indifferent, paradoxically, both the Stoics and Gandhi could love manifoldly. In drawing these links to the fore, Sorabji demonstrates the comparative consistency of Gandhi’s philosophical ideas, isolating the specific ideological strengths that were required to support some of the most consequential political acts and experiments in how to live.