GANDHI, KING, AND THOREAU:
ANARCHISM, CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE, AND NON-VIOLENCE
Nicholas F. Gier, Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, University of Idaho
See Gier’s The Virtue of Non-Violence: from Gautama to Gandhi for much more.
EURO-AMERICAN INFLUENCES ON GANDHI
• Leo Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You. Pacifism and a worldly Christianity.
• John Ruskin’s Unto This Last. Socialism and working for the good of all.
• Henry David Thoreau’s On Civil Disobedience. Influence on Tolstoy.
ANARCHY VS. ANARCHISM
• Anarchy is a state of chaos.
• Anarchism is a political theory that rejects the authority of government.
• Naïve anarchists believe that humans would thrive without government. A commune.
• Militant anarchists only say that human life would be no more chaotic than it is now under the state.
TYPES OF ANARCHISM
• Naïve Anarchism: very optimistic view of human nature. No resistance or revolution.
• Militant Anarchism: mixed view of human nature. No promise of a better life. Resistance, revolution, and martyrdom.
• Theoretical Anarchism: there is a contradiction between personal autonomy and political authority.
• Autos + nomos = self-legislating vs. external laws of the state.
IS THOREAU AN ANARCHIST?
• “Government is best that governs not at all” (OCD, #1).
• Just as there should be no standing army, there also should be no standing government.
• Government has done nothing positive?
• It’s the people themselves who have created both wealth and virtue (#2).
• But “practically speaking,” Thoreau would settle for better government rather than no government (#3).
THOREAU NOT AN ANARCHIST
• No objection to taxes for schools and hiways.
• But citizens do have a right to disobey laws they think are unjust or unnecessary.
• Citizens do not have to surrender their consciences to the state. Right to revolt.
• If a law “requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law” (#18).
WHAT TO DO WITH UNJUST LAWS?
• (1) obey them; (2) amend them, but obey until we succeed; or (3) transgress them?
• Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Both peaceful and violent transgressions.
• Thoreau finally supported John Brown.
• Disobeyed the poll tax. One night in jail.
• “I came into this world. . . to live in it, be it good or bad. . . . All change is for the better” (#19).
BE PRISONERS OF CONSCIENCE
• “Under a government that imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison” (#22). Gandhi and King agree.
• Prison: “the only house in a slave state in which a free man can abide with honor.”
• “When all subjects have refused allegiance, and all officers have resigned from office, then the revolution is accomplished” (#23).
• Gandhi vs. Indian army and police.
• The advantage of being poor. Quote #23.
IS GANDHI AN ANARCHIST?
• “Village republicanism” as an "enlightened anarchy" in which "everyone is [her] own ruler."
• This village still has its political authority vested in five elected representatives.
• False choices of violent overthrow of the state and withdrawal to the mountains.
• Gandhi: active nonviolent resistance to change the laws of the state.
• The good of all always trumps self-interest.
THEORETICAL ANARCHISM FAILS
• Confusion of moral authority and political authority.
• The former involves the right to be obeyed, while the latter consists of the right to coerce.
• If we are truly autonomous, then no state can force us to obey.
• Example of the tax patriot.
• The concept of moral authority is a meaningless concept.
FIRST PRINCIPLE OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
• One violates the law out of the greatest respect for the rule of law as a principle.
• Socrates’ respect for Athenian law.
• Gandhi: traditional Indian village could govern itself justly.
• King: always confident that American democracy will eventually treat all of its citizens fairly.
SECOND PRINCIPLE OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
• Gandhi: always plead guilty to the charges brought against you.
• “None of us had to offer any defense. All were to plead guilty to the charge of disobeying the order.”
• “I am here to invite and submit cheerfully to the highest penalty that can be inflicted upon me for what in law is a deliberate crime and what appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen.”
GANDHIAN SELF-SUFFERING
• One should take the penance of your oppressors upon yourself.
• Usually Gandhi’s judges felt as if they were the ones charged and convicted.
• Thoreau: my one night in jail made the state look foolish.
• Moral and political ju-jitsu.
• “Tough love“ with his family.
• Gandhi: "The only way love punishes is by [self]-suffering."
THIRD PRINCIPLE OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
• CD does not seek the abolition of the rule of law but the reformation of law.
• Or a simple demand that the dispossessed and the disenfranchised be included in existing laws.
• Blacks and gays demand no “special” rights but simply the rights granted to all citizens.
• CD does not seek the abolition of the rule of law but the reformation of law.
• Or a simple demand that the dispossessed and the disenfranchised be included in existing laws.
• Blacks and gays demand no “special” rights but simply the rights granted to all citizens.
RELIGION AND THE STATE
• Strong spiritual dimension to Gandhi’s and King’s political activism.
• But there is no sectarian agenda.
• Same rights for all Indians or Americans regardless of their religion.
• Inclusive and nonjudgmental rather than the exclusive and judgmental program of the Religious Right.
PROCEDURAL LIBERALISM
• Classical liberalism had a moral basis. John Adams: liberty is nothing without virtue.
• “Procedural” liberalism is morally neutral. The state has no role in morality/religion.
• Conservative critique hits home.
• Must speak of civic virtues as well as personal virtues.
• Is a civic virtue of nonviolence possible?
FIRST PRINCIPLE OF NONVIOLENCE
• MLK: “True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.”
• Active Non-Violence The person is required to actively resist and/or confront the oppressor.
• Passive resistance is cowardice. A violent defense is better than being a coward.
• MLK: “His mind and emotions are always active, constantly seeking to persuade this opponent that he is wrong. The method is passive physically, but strongly active spiritually.”
SECOND PRINCIPLE OF NONVIOLENCE
• Convert the Opponent. Active nonviolence does not seek “to defeat or humiliate the opponent, but to win his friendship and understanding.”
• MLK: “The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness.”
• MLK: “There is within human nature something that can respond to goodness.”
• Worked with British and Americans, but how about Hitler and Saddam Hussein?
THIRD PRINCIPLE OF NONVIOLENCE
• Attack the problem not the person. The attack is against the forces of evil and not the persons themselves, because they are the ones you want to convert.
• A version of “hate the sin but love the sinner.”
• The battle is between the forces of justice and those of injustice, not between blacks and whites.
• Then the victory will be for all persons not just whites. Universalizes the principles.
• MLK: “forces of light and the forces of evil.” Some of the Manicheanism that we see strongly in Gandhi.
FOURTH PRINCIPLE OF NONVIOLENCE
Self-Suffering. The willingness to accept suffering rather than to inflict it. Gandhi: “Rivers of blood must flow may have to flow before we gain our freedom, but it must be our blood.” (MGMLK, 50)
This is eminently Gandhian and Christian at the same time. King identifies it as the doctrine of turning the other cheek. It is also the Bodhisattva ideal of Mahayana Buddhism. Gandhi said that he was doing penance for others. Different from Christ and the Bodhisattva, who were considered to be sinless. Christian view that “unearned suffering is redemptive.” Gandhi: something are not secured by reason but by suffering alone.
Gandhi implies that it may not be unearned: I cannot ask my disciples to be pure if I am not spiritually pure myself. There is wrong in me that made them make the mistake they committed.
FIFTH PRINCIPLE OF NONVIOLENCE
No violence of word or thought. The power of love and the destructive effects of hate. Buddhist thought is especially powerful on this point.
Not a love of affection but pure agape love defined as “understanding, [compassionate], redemptive goodwill.” It is “an overflowing love that is purely spontaneous, unmotivated, groundless, and creative. It is not set in motion buy any quality or function of its object. It is the love of God operating in the human heart” (MGMLK, 52).
Eros as yearning for the divine; philia as the reciprocal love between friends; and agape as the unconditional love that expects nothing in return. The best way to test whether you are capable of agape is to try to love someone you hate.
MORE ON AGAPE
• Eros as yearning for the divine; philia as the reciprocal love between friends; and agape as the unconditional love that expects nothing in return.
• “Agape is not a weak, passive love. It is love in action. Agape is love seeking to preserve and create community.”
• Test for agape: try to love someone you hate!
• Agape based on “the fact that all life is interelated.” Buddhism’s basic point.
SIXTH PRINCIPLE OF NONVIOLENCE
• The universe is on the side of justice.
• Requires religious belief or at least an evolutionary, progressive universe.
• “Whether we call is an unconscious process, an impersonal Brahman, or a Personal Being of matchless power and infinite love, there is a creative force . . . that works to bring the disconnected aspects of reality into a harmonious whole.”