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Thinking about Ethical Politics: Gandhi’s Spirituality versus Levinas’s Philosophy

  • Article: Special Issue on Gandhi, Israel, and the Jews
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Abstract

In 1962, Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995) was asked about the political implications of his ethics and the possible similarity between his philosophy and the writing of Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948). They both were aware of the considerable tensions between politics and ethics. Both tried to construct ethical politics, and both thought about the ethical aspects of politics. The differences were obvious. Gandhi was an Indian thinker who embraced Hinduism, Christian ethics, Western philosophy, and Leo Tolstoy’s spiritual writings. Levinas was a Western philosopher with a traditional Jewish background, familiar with Russian literature. Gandhi was a social figure and political leader who based his attitude and activism on spirituality. Levinas was a phenomenological philosopher who based his perspective on ethics, underpinning his political philosophy. Nevertheless, this article suggests a philosophical study of Gandhi’s writings compared to Levinas’s teachings. This new perspective explains Gandhi’s philosophy by focusing on the establishment of the subject, the validity of ethics, the search for truth, and the epistemological stance. This study would structure Gandhi’s political position based on spiritual and ethical thinking. This could clarify three main principles of Gandhi’s doctrine: striving for the truth, self-control, and nonviolence.

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Notes

  1. The French original was published in 1961 and in English translation in 1969. The book aroused great curiosity immediately upon publication. As a result of a series of lectures and events, it could also be read to identify the importance that Levinas ascribed to the political discourse that was subordinate to ethical discourse. On the book, see Fagenblat 2010; Capili 2011; and Cohen-Levinas 2011.

  2. See Levinas 1969: 24–26.

  3. We need not expand here on the importance of the tension between ethics and politics. It is sufficient to cite several general references and to direct the reader’s attention to how the discussion I propose here can contribute to further thinking on this long-standing philosophical debate. Much has been written on the political significance of the philosophy of Levinas. The following references are meant to draw the reader’s attention to a few essential articles that have shaped the scholarship on Levinas’s approach to political. The pioneering research on this subject was undertaken by Don Awerkamp in 1974 in a doctoral dissertation dealing with the different dimensions of “justice” established by Levinas’s ethics (see Awerkamp 1977; see also Messina 2018; Herzog 2020). Most studies have focused on the incorporation of the concept of justice into the ethical framework of Levinas’s writings (see, for instance, Chalier 1993: 109–31; Critchley 1999; Bergo 1999). From a different angle and building upon the previous question, Levinas’s exploration of justice holds significance when considering Gandhi’s political philosophy, particularly the connection between political institutions and ethical imperatives. In this context, the politics of nonviolence becomes a relevant subject for both Levinas and Gandhi.

  4. The limited scope of this article precludes me from surveying the philosophical research on Gandhi, which is our point of departure. On this topic, see, for example, Fischer 1950, 1982; Deats 2005; and Hamilton 2015.

  5. On Tolstoy’s role in Gandhi’s doctrine, see Lavrin 1960; Green 1983; Lee 2012; Addams 2017; and Coovadia 2020.

  6. The subject constitution is one of the important questions of philosophical discourse from the nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century. Also noteworthy, beyond discussion of the question of subject constitution, is the blurring of the status of this question that followed the crisis of humanism and the major political problems of the first half of the twentieth century: colonialism and postcolonialism, the world wars, and the Holocaust. Attention should also be paid to these historical circumstances, as they too helped constitute the background for Gandhi’s ideological and political development.

  7. Here, it is helpful to put the cart before the horse, even if only in a footnote, as the quest for truth, which is an important and profound motivation in the thinking and writings of Gandhi, is undermined by the renewed European philosophical discourse.

  8. Many books have been devoted to accounts of the life of Gandhi. See, for example, Fischer 1950; Brown 1989; and Rothermund 1998; see also Gandhi 1925–29. Although Levinas has been the subject of significantly fewer biographies than Gandhi, we can point to a substantial list of books that have surveyed the history of his life. See, for example Lescourret 2005; and Malka 2006.

  9. I borrow this expression from the writing of Levinas and his account of the circumstances that led him to assume the direction of École Normale Israelite Orientale. And see Malka 2006; and Ben Pazi 2016: 35–37.

  10. On Tolstoy Farm, the Farm’s establishment, and the educational experiment conducted there, see Bhana 1975; Hunt 1998; Hunt and Bhana 2007; and Joseph 2020: 53–58. For the relation between Kallenbach (owner and master builder of Tolstoy Farm) and Gandhi, see Lev 2012.

  11. On the role of École Normale Israelite Orientale and its educational and social establishment, see Laskier 1983; Katz 2012; Sohn 2013; and Ben Pazi 2016.

  12. On Gandhi’s attitude toward Tolstoy and Tolstoy’s enthusiasm for Gandhi’s approach, see the correspondence between them: Murthy 1987. In his autobiography, Gandhi wrote: “Three moderns have left a deep impress on my life, and captivated me: Raychandbhai by his living contact; Tolstoy by his book, The Kingdom of God Is within You; and Ruskin by his Unto This Last” (1925–29: 76).

  13. The new Russian literature’s influence on Levinas has been the subject of some research (see O’Keeffe 2006; Vinokur 2008). However, the importance of Fydor Dostoyevsky, which Levinas frequently cites, and his book The Brothers Karamazov, is beyond doubt. And even if he is critical of the ethical force of the literature, Dostoyevsky’s importance is identifiable (see Iser 1978; Meir 2002; Toumayan 2004; Edelglass 2005; Ben Pazi 2015).

  14. The concept of subjectivity and the constructive validity of the subject is beyond the limits of this article, but a few significant references have to be made: Tähtinen 1979: 36–47, 63–73; Levinas 1993; Ameriks and Sturma 1995; Grayling 1995; and Badiou 2013.

  15. On the spiritual meaning of the subjectivity in Gandhi’s discourse and the meaning of the transmigration of souls in his doctrine, see Bilgrami 2003; and Gandhi 2004: 18–85.

  16. On the phenomenological research towards the validity of the subject in Levinas’s work, see Harrington 1982; Critchley 1999; Biesta 2003; and Fryer 2004.

  17. For how to think about the truth in Levinas’s philosophy and following Levinas, see Wyschogrod 1974; Nuyen 1991; Cohen 2001; and Meir 2011.

  18. On the concept of truth in Gandhi’s writings, see Richards 1995: 1–35; Johnson 2006; Rudolph and Rudolph 2006: 177–98; and Puri 2015: 77–101.

  19. We cannot focus, in this context, on the Indian tradition of Satya and various traditional developments of Satya and Satyāgraha. For the philosophical perspective of Satya, see Alackapally 2002: 225–45; Kahn 2009; and Dasgupta 2011. On Gandhi’s concept of Satya, see Allen 2008: 49–55.

  20. “Self-rule” is among the most well-known phrases associated with Gandhi’s philosophy. See Parel 1997, 2000; and Steger 2000.

  21. Gandhi’s political doctrine and political action are often linked to one another, first and foremost concerning nonviolence. On the meaning of ahiṃsā, see Schmidt 1968; Tähtinen 1976; Klostermaier 1996; Jaini 2004; and Gandhi 2019.

  22. On the optional way of thinking philosophically about Gandhi’s religious view, see Richards 1995.

  23. See also Horwitz 2006.

  24. On the importance of this tension and the different ways of contending with it, see the wonderful description of this problem that Kant suggested: “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made” or “From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned” (in his 1784 “Idea for a General History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose” [Proposition 6]). And in Appendix I (“On the Disagreement Between Morals and Politics with Reference to Perpetual Peace”) to his 1795 treatise on Perpetual Peace, Kant wrote: “Politics says, ‘Be wise as serpents’; moral adds the limiting condition, ‘and guileless as doves.’ If these percepts cannot stand together in one command, then there is a real quarrel between politics and morals” (1915: 162).

  25. There are a few common and significant works dedicated to this tension and the problems that link to it. See, for example, Gutmann and Thompson 2006; Lord 2006; and Rorty 2011.

  26. Buber’s attitude to Gandhi and the tension between ethics and politics in his philosophy are beyond the bounds of this article. I want to mention Buber in the context of the awakening of national identity with an ethical attitude.

  27. See Meir 1997.

  28. On the role of messianic discourse in the philosophy of Levinas, see Wyschogrod 1974: 159–99; Handelman 1991: 306–45; Chalier 1993: 143–47; Ward 1996; Bernasconi 1998; Kavka 2004; Levy 2006; Bouretz 2010; Ben Pazi 2017; Sunshine 2019; and Herzog 2020.

  29. These words were taken from verses by which Gandhi was influenced when, following the theosophical movement, he sought to get to know the Bhagavadgītā, Chapter 2, verses 62 and 63.

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Pazi, H.B. Thinking about Ethical Politics: Gandhi’s Spirituality versus Levinas’s Philosophy. Hindu Studies 27, 361–375 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11407-023-09346-1

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