Gandhi and the Stoics

Richard Sorabji is author or editor of over 100 books in the History of Philosophy. Three authored books deal with the nature of the physical universe (Necessity, Cause and Blame; Time, Creation and the Continuum; Matter, Space and Motion). Four deal with Mind and Morals (Animal Minds and Human Morals; Emotion and Peace of Mind; Aristotle on Memory; Self: Individuality, Life and Death). He has written a biography, Opening Doors, of the pioneer lawyer, Cornelia Sorabji. His next book will be Moral Conscience through the Ages. He is Honorary Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford; Fellow and Emeritus Professor of King's College, London; former Director of the Institute of Classical Studies, London, 1991-6; former President of the Aristotelian Society, 1985-6; and former Gresham Professor of Rhetoric 2000-2003.

Richard Sorabji offers us a way to think about Gandhi's nonviolence in a philosophically complex way that also places the Mahatma in a much broader historical canvas, one that includes not only Stocisim and ancient philosophy in general, but also early Christianity and its 'recovery' by the Mahatma's correspondent, Tolstoy. The dialogue that Gandhi and the Stoics creates between these great and otherwise disconnected movements provides an immense pleasure to the reader. Suddenly we are able to exit the narrow compass of Indian nationalism, within which Gandhi tends to be squeezed by academics, and consider his career from a number of fresh perspectives.

• Introduction: Gandhi's use of Platonic, Christian, and Stoic values: reinterpretation, experimentation, and mere convergence 1: Emotional detachment: how to square it with love of family and all humans in the Stoics and Gandhi 2: Emotional detachment: how to square with politics in the Stoics and Gandhi 3: Individual freedom: Gandhi's and Isaiah Berlin on Zeno's--sour grapes? 4: Non-violence as universal love: origins and Gandhi's supplements to Tolstoy--dilemmas, successes, and failures 5: From universal love to human rights? 6: Individual duty: persona, svadharma 7: General rules in morality 8: Moral conscience 9: Restrictions on private property in Gandhi, Christianity, Plato, and the Stoics 10: Isaiah Berlin's Stoic revolution: depoliticisation Select Bibliography Index