Richard Sorabji presents a fascinating study of Gandhi's philosophy in comparison with Christian and Stoic thought. Sorabji shows that Gandhi was a true philosopher. He not only aimed to give a consistent self-critical rationale for his views, but also thought himself obliged to live by what he taught—something that he had in common with the ancient Greek and Christian ethical traditions. Understanding his philosophy helps with re-assessing the consistency of his positions and life.
Gandhi was less influenced by the Stoics than by Socrates, Christ, Christian writers, and Indian thought. But whereas he re-interpreted those, he discovered the congeniality of the Stoics too late to re-process them. They could supply even more of the consistency he sought. He could show them the effect of putting their unrealised ideals into actual practice. Both learnt the indifference of most objectives—the Stoics from the Cynics, Gandhi from the Bhagavadgita. But both had to square that with their love for all humans and their political engagement. Indifference was to both a source of freedom.
Gandhi was converted to non-violence by Tolstoy's picture of Christ. But he addressed the sacrifice it called for, and called even protective killing violent. He was nonetheless not a pacifist, because he recognized the double-bind of rival duties, and the different duties of different individuals, which was a Stoic theme. For both Gandhi and the Stoics it accompanied doubts about universal rules. Sorabji's expert understanding of these ethical traditions allows him to offer illuminating new perspectives on a key intellectual figure of the modern world, and to show the continuing resonance of ancient philosophical ideas.
Richard Sorabji is an Honorary Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, and a Fellow and Emeritus Professor of King's College, London.
Gandhi’s use of Platonic, Christian, and Stoic values: reinterpretation, experimentation, and mere convergence
Gandhi As Philosopher
Was Gandhi a philosopher? Yes. He was forever seeking a consistent rationale for all that he did, and, more than any philosophers I have encountered, he subjected his views to relentless criticism, sometimes his own, but more often that of other people, which he published voluminously in his weekly newspapers. He wrote daily letters and sought to answer criticisms and explain his ideas in relation to new situations. More-over, he thought himself obliged to live by what he taught. Philosophy as a way of life was the main tradition of ancient and of much subsequent philosophy, and went hand in hand with the thinking to which philosophy has sometimes more recently been confined. Gandhi was indeed a thinker, and he offered philosophical reasons for what he thought. His plea, for example, which we shall meet shortly, that we can learn from religions other than our own, a Hindu from Christ's Sermon on the Mount, has a profound philosophical basis concerning the nature of God and humanity. It should become clearer as we go along why I regard Gandhi as a philosopher, and I shall return to the question in chapter, both to confirm Gandhi's philosophical credentials and to draw a further conclusion about the un-usual character of his philosophical method.
Was Gandhi influenced by the Stoics? No. He felt that some of his views chimed with those of the Stoics, when he read about them. But the Western thought that directly influenced him was rather Plato's account of Socrates and St. Matthew's of Christ, along with writing in those traditions. So Platonic and Christian influences will certainly need discussing. But whereas those influences are well known, few have noticed the much more indirect relation to the Stoics. Moreover, I hope that the comparison with the Stoics will throw light not only on Gandhi, but also on the Stoics, or sometimes just on the ideas themselves.
Convergence of Stoic Values And Gandhi’s Experimentation
Stoic values overlapped with Gandhi's to some extent. For different reasons, they both sought to practice emotional detachment. Yet, despite the detachment, they both believed in extending love to all humans, and both sought to engage in politics. The emotional detachment gave to both a certain kind of freedom. The concern for all humans took each of them in the direction of human duties, not of human rights. In deciding on duties, each had a conception of being true to your own individual persona. Each was correspondingly suspicious of universal rules of human conduct. Each was ready to accept poverty, though in different ways. Each sought in different ways to square ideals of perfection with imperfect people. Gandhi made a merit of unattainable ideals as a counsel of perfection.
It was particularly hard to realize the Stoic ideals of feeling kinship with all human beings and of detachment from most natural objectives. It was hard to combine detachment with love, whether of family or of all human beings, and again to combine it with the urgency of political objectives. Yet the emotional detachment had to be rigorous if it was to confer the kind of freedom they sought. It was at least rare to fulfill the ideals of being true to your own persona—although the Stoics had a favorite example in the Stoic Cato—and of exercising Stoic freedom—where they had to seek examples outside Stoicism in Socrates and Diogenes the Cynic.
The Stoics tended to admit that probably no Stoic had succeeded in put-ting all their ideals into practice. But Gandhi sought to practice most of these pursuits, and he did so in a wealth of instances and with almost daily commentary, discussion, explanation, and answers to criticism, all within living memory and preserved in writing for posterity. Insofar therefore as his ideals overlapped, albeit only in part, with those of the Stoics, he was showing how their ideals might fare if they actually were put into practice. I do not say that Gandhi always lived up to his ideals, but, given their difficulty, I think that the extent to which he did was remarkable. And in chapter 11, while recapitulating some of his lapses, I shall also offer a reason why I think not so much can be made of the lapses as is sometimes thought.
Gandhi has often been thought of as a politician who made up inconsistent rationales as he went along. I have already said that in fact he sought consistency. Stoicism can reveal how close he was in certain ways to an ethical system that was exceptionally self-consistent, and how little he would have had to change in order to achieve a higher measure of consistency himself.
Gandhi knew the Stoics at most only through a book on three major Stoics that he records having read between 1922 and 1924 in Yeravada jail and which he specially picked out from his huge volume of reading as "an inspiring book."' In addition, it was noticed by Gandhi's learned secretary, Mahadev Desai, that his ideals were sometimes remarkably similar to theirs. In translating into English and commenting on Gandhi's Gujarati translation of the Gita, we shall see that in two places Desai compares statements by the Stoics Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. The comparison between Gandhi and the Stoics is not based on his having read them as he read some of Plato and of Christian thought. But even though the overlap of values was a mere convergence, and not the result of influence, Gandhi's devotion to experiment—the term he used in the title of his autobiography—throws light on the Stoics. The point is that both Gandhi and the Stoics were accused of having impractical and bizarre ethical ideals. If the Stoics did not succeed in achieving their ideals, whereas, I believe, Gandhi to a surprising extent did succeed, this is enough in some cases to throw light in both directions. With the Stoics we can see how some of their ideals might have worked out in practice, and on what scale, if any, they might have been practical, and whether it would have been for good or ill. With Gandhi, we can see how close he came to a much more consistent ethical system than he actually managed to formulate, and we can see where he deviated from consistency. The Stoics could have made him more the consistent philosopher. He could have shown the Stoics how far and in what ways some of their ideals would look practical and attractive, when realized.
Stoicism was founded in Athens by Zeno from Citium in Cyprus around 30o BCE. Zeno studied with philosophers of several schools in Athens, including Crates, a major representative of the shockingly eccentric Cynic individualism. Zeno managed to create out of these origins a respectable and lasting philosophy that became a model for many ordinary Greek citizens and eventually for Roman aristocrats and even for the emperor of the Roman world, Marcus Aurelius.
In later Stoicism from the late second century BCE, the Stoics seem to have responded to the criticism that the ideal Stoic sage had never been realized. They turned their attention instead to the possibility of progressing in the direction of the ideal, and in the absence of the elusive ideal sage they turned to the ordinary person with ordinary problems and imperfections. This gave Stoic ethics an unparalleled ability to reach out across the millennia and tap us on the shoulder. It also inspired the continuous prose in the next three centuries of Cicero's expositions, and of the Stoics, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, which is much easier to read than the early Stoic fragments, although it presupposes that early Stoic thought.
**Contents and Sample Pages**
Sapiens and Sthitaprajna studies the concept of a wise person in the Stoic Seneca and in the Bhagavadgita. Although the Gita and Seneca's writings were composed at least two centuries and a continent apart, they have much in common in recommending a well-lived life. This book describes how in both a wise person is endowed with both virtue and wisdom, is moral, makes right judgements and takes responsibility for actions. A wise and virtuous person always enjoys happiness, as happiness consists in knowing that one has done the right thing at the right time.
Both Seneca and the Gita demand intellectual rigour and wisdom for leading a virtuous and effective life. They provide guidelines for how to become and be wise. Both systems demand a sage to be emotionally sound and devoid of passions. This leads to mental peace and balance, and ultimately tranquillity and happiness. While surveying these similarities, this study also finds differences in their ways of application of these ideas. The metaphysics of the Gita obliges the sage to practise meditation, while the Stoics require a sage to be a rational person committed to analysing and intellectualizing any situation.
This comparative study will be of interest to students of both Ancient Western and Ancient Indian Philosophy. Practitioners of Stoicism and followers of the QM should find the presence of closely-related ideas in a very different tradition of interest while perhaps finding somewhat different prescriptions a spur to action.
Ashwini Mokashi was educated at the University of Pune and at King's College, London. She taught Philosophy at Pune in Wadia and Ferguson colleges and as a guest lecturer at the University of Pane, she taught a comparative course in Ancient Greek and Sanskrit during 1993-95. She now lives in Princeton, New Jersey and works on her writings in philosophy as an independent research scholar. She has served two terms as President of the Princeton Research Forum. Her next project is a personal and philosophical account of a meditational community in Pune and Nimbal.
Trams work began in the fall of 1992, when I envisioned comparing the Stoics with the Gets given what I saw as their apparent similarities in thinking, their ways of addressing the social and societal challenges, and their goals of raising a morally sound community despite all the wars and chaos surrounding them. I worked on these ideas for many years, finally concluding the thesis in 2002. Then I took a long break from the academic studies, went to work in the corporate world, in other words went to the school of life - experienced various ups and downs of life - and realized how important these ideas and ideals are and yet how difficult it is to practice them, to implement them in our lives and to appreciate detachment (vairagya). Pursuit of wisdom, virtue and happiness is a lifelong goal and the process of attaining it is a worthwhile experience. This realization helped me become an improved person at each step of life, with each new challenge teaching me to return to the principles I had already learnt. The themes in the ancient texts continue to dominate the conversation, while the quest for happiness is pursued anew with each new generation. Nevertheless, the ancient wisdom has stood the test of time and it behooves us to apply these principles to modern situations. When I revisited my old writings after a decade or more, I realized the academic work of the comparison between the Stoics and the Gila is not just for the scholars of philosophy, but it has major implications for all. One can evaluate the current challenges in our global community in a cohesive way using these lenses.
A mere hundred years ago, people referred to philosophical and spiritual wisdom for answers to their daily dilemmas. Now in 2018, we are less clear about the purpose of life, about philosophizing an issue and rising over our challenges. Rather we are more into psycho-analysing issues with the modern tools of analytical psychology and as a result even our daily rhetoric is about whether our stress levels are within normal range or abnormal range, what mental disorders people may have and how to treat those, how to control the epidemic of emotional disorders in our schools, workplaces or families. There is a serious lack of in-person communication, a lack of parental authority and a lack of available grandparents or extended family members, who are interested in passing on the ancient wisdom to the new generation. Not to mention a lack of ideal seers, who can guide us in crisis.
At this point, this book attempts to fill that gap by providing some moral, philosophical or spiritual food for thought, so that the new generations can refer to our ancient seers from different parts of the globe and reach their own moral solutions. It is important to find our own paths in life and make principled decisions, understand the constraints of our situations and figure out an optimum solution. If we understand the principles of science and morality, then morally sound solutions will become dear to us. Our knowledge of science will help us understand how things essentially work and our knowledge of morality will help us understand how it ought to be done, clearing a path to attain peace and happiness at least at some optimal level.
In a global sense, the world is divided among those who are working members of a society and those who are not. Productive members of the society have very little time at their disposal to pursue development of virtues in their leisure. They have no leisure. Others do not have the confidence or the luxury of understanding how important it is to pursue the development of virtues. Hence other than looking towards a few ideals in the society - if any - most people are in search of ideals or seers that are not available readily. They look up to the world of celebrities, but celebrities are simply known for being famous and not for being the epitome of virtue or wisdom. We face this gap daily.
Very rarely do we ask, can we develop virtues and become self-reliant to find one's own answers to challenges of life? What does it mean to develop such qualities and how does it lead to the pursuit of happiness? On the one hand, we are aware of our stress levels or anxiety levels, and we try to optimize benefits and minimize challenges of all kinds in conscious or subconscious ways. Sometimes it seems like a zero-sum game.
On the other hand, when we look at the teachings of Stoics and the Gild, we realize that they try to bring us all to a higher plane by creating a positive thought wave, providing goals, showing a path to follow to reach those goals, creating a good ambience both inside in our psyches and outside in our knowledge base trying to create happier circumstances.
The central problem in all the ancient and modem cultures is how to behave, what is virtue and wisdom, and how to inculcate it in society, how to maintain discipline by using law and order, how to encourage people to become good, how to achieve happiness and well-being. The ancient societies tried to address some of these issues by asking people to turn into good ideal human beings who then will enable to create a good society sans criminal activity. The modem societies use force through law and order situations. The police force distinguishes people as good or bad based on their actions/records. Hence it is always important to stay on the good side of the law. Once your record is tainted, there is very little chance to convince others that you are still a good person. These challenges are faced by every new generation. This was true 2,000 years ago and it is true now. We can perhaps find some guidance in these teachings and try to use the ancient wisdom to work on the internal dynamic of an individual as well as a community of such individuals, which will create a better society.
This book puts two great texts together - Seneca and the Gild in a dialogue on these questions. Their dialogue addresses their methods and tools, and discusses their solutions in attaining the goal of individual as well as societal well-being. Whether they succeed compared to each other is not the major point of concern. The concern is how do they succeed in their own spheres and whether together we can create some solutions for our global world that consider some of their strategies for achieving happiness, peace and well-being by creating virtue and wisdom pathways. Given what a global society we live in, where the ways of the East and ways of the West are seriously intertwined in the world, whether one lives in the US, Europe, India or any other country/continent, most urban areas experience some form of cultural mishmash.
There are still a few places in the world, such as villages or small cities, where cultural norms and bonds are very strong and so the expectations of behaviour are very clear. As a result, it is also very clear what misbehaviour is. In such cases, communication is straightforward, as all members have similar values and principles. Any wrong behaviour has a genesis of wrong thinking. Therefore, if the thinking is set straight, the behaviour is also controlled.
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