Gandhi and Socrates

Vasunia, Phiroze

doi:10.1080/00020184.2015.1045722

Cited by 2 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…We advise everyone to turn his mind again and again to Socrates words and conduct". (Gandhi 1958(Gandhi -1994 In a stimulating article, Phiroze Vasunia (Vasunia 2015) studied Gandhi's paraphrase and its connections to Ruskin's Unto This Last, 8 stressed Gandhi's own preparedness for death and dying for a just cause, and made clear which translation Gandhi used (Cary 1905;Vasunia 2015, p. 179). He demonstrated Socrates's/Gandhi's willingness to self-sacrifice and die worthily rather than to escape in a cowardly manner.…”

Section: Daniel In South Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Ruskin has described vividly how one who wants to live by Socrates's ideas should acquit himself in the different vocations" (Gandhi 1958(Gandhi -1994. However, just as Gandhi stated that Ruskin elaborated the ideas of Socrates, we may focus on the reversed direction: Gandhi read Socrates through the lens of Ruskin (Vasunia 2015). Ruskin stated that there are five intellectual professions/vocations in a civilized nation: the soldier (for defense), the pastor (for teaching), the physician (for health), the lawyer (for enforcing justice), and the merchant (for provisions), and that their duty is to die for their cause in case of battle, falsehood, plagues, injustice, and famine.…”

Section: Daniel In South Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The sixth article renders the second and third speech with Socrates's answer to the verdict and the definite voting for the death penalty by the jurors. For a study of especially the sixth article, (see Vasunia 2015).…”

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Gandhi and the World of the Hebrew Bible: The Case of Daniel as Satyagrahi

Noort

2022

Religions

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Among the biblical characters used as examples in developing and explaining satyagraha, Daniel is the most important after Jesus. In Gandhi’s speeches and writings from 1909 to 1946, Daniel served as the ideal satyagrahi both in South Africa and in India. Over time, Daniel received company in the gallery of examples in which Socrates occupied a prominent place. Depending on theme, place, and audience, past and present characters from different traditions and scriptures accompanied Daniel. They represented the development of aspects of satyagraha: nonviolent active resistance as a weapon of the strong, courageous actions as a deliberate choice without excitement, love for the antagonist, preparedness to suffer, and no fear of death. All these aspects are embodied by the Gandhian Daniel. Gandhi emphasized the active role of Daniel as a resister, not the traditional view of the victim of court intrigues. In this paper, I argue that the image of the ideal satyagrahi Daniel could be strengthened by combining the court narratives from the first half and the apocalypses from the second one of the biblical book. The article provides context both for Gandhi’s political and religious practice and for the book of Daniel. The strange world of apocalypses seems to contradict the model of the Gandhian figure Daniel. However, they are crisis literature, and it makes sense to observe how the protagonist and his audience in times of occupation, persecutions, and war ask for guidance. Apocalypses show how Jewish resistance to foreign rule was conceived. The result of the survey is a complex image of competing literatures from roughly the same period and the hands, heads, beliefs, and sufferings behind them. The view of the end of history, a program of nonviolence, and hope in the Daniel apocalypse serve as contrast propaganda to contemporary visions on the violent Maccabean revolt and the Seleucid persecutions. They offer a nonviolent counterweight to the ideology of the state propaganda of the Seleucids. They contradict the historiographic idealization of the Maccabean revolt and its armed resistance.

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Section: Daniel In South Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Daniel In South Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Gandhi and the World of the Hebrew Bible: The Case of Daniel as Satyagrahi

Noort

2022

Religions

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“…He continued to use the term to describe his economic ideals after returning to India. On the background of sarvodaya , see Vasunia 2015.…”

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Beyond Parliament: Gandhian Democracy and Postcolonial Founding

Parasher

2022

Political Theory

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Through a study of Gandhian political writings in mid-twentieth-century India, this article explores the neglected question of how the issue of representative democracy shaped anticolonial thought. The rise of a Gandhian perspective on electoral representation was made possible by the account of modern democracy given in Gandhi’s "Hind Swaraj" (1909). From the 1930s, four key Indian thinkers influenced by Gandhi expanded on "Hind Swaraj" to argue that capitalist economics were a threat to democratic equality and produced the kinds of unaccountability and elite capture of legislatures that they identified in Western European parliamentary states. In response, Gandhian thinkers developed proposals for federalist postcolonial constitutions, combining a system of participatory legislative councils with collectivist agrarian socialism. I trace the intellectual origins of Gandhian democratic thought in the 1930s and 1940s and outline how its main proponents articulated ideas of antiparliamentarism and moral economics. Revisiting the Gandhian tradition, I suggest, highlights the importance of economic ethics in participatory theories of democracy and popular sovereignty.

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Gandhi and Socrates

Cited by 2 publications

References 6 publications

Gandhi and the World of the Hebrew Bible: The Case of Daniel as Satyagrahi

Gandhi and the World of the Hebrew Bible: The Case of Daniel as Satyagrahi

Beyond Parliament: Gandhian Democracy and Postcolonial Founding

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