Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• MANTENA, KARUNA

Titel

Another Realism: The Politics of Gandhian Nonviolence

Ist Teil von

• The American political science review, 2012-05, Vol.106 (2), p.455-470

Ort / Verlag

New York, USA: Cambridge University Press

Erscheinungsjahr

2012

Quelle

Worldwide Political Science Abstracts

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Although Gandhi is often taken to be an exemplary moral idealist in politics, this article seeks to demonstrate that Gandhian nonviolence is premised on a form of political realism, specifically a contextual, consequentialist, and moral-psychological analysis of a political world understood to be marked by inherent tendencies toward conflict, domination, and violence. By treating nonviolence as the essential analog and correlative response to a realist theory of politics, one can better register the novelty of satyagraha (nonviolent action) as a practical orientation in politics as opposed to a moral proposition, ethical stance, or standard of judgment. The singularity of satyagraha lays in its self-limiting character as a form of political action that seeks to constrain the negative consequences of politics while working toward progressive social and political reform. Gandhian nonviolence thereby points toward a transformational realism that need not begin and end in conservatism, moral equivocation, or pure instrumentalism.