Abstract
This chapter examines Akeel Bilgrami’s argument that Gandhi rejected universalizability, moral principles and criticism as incompatible with ahimsa. On this view, Gandhi was a relativist about truth and thought that truth was an exclusively moral notion. Gandhi’s debate with Tagore poses a philosophical challenge to this interpretation. For that debate was about the truth of Gandhi’s moral “principles” and Tagore’s insistence on the individual’s freedom to reject them. This chapter argues that Gandhi accepted criticism and believed in fundamental moral convictions which could be shared across religions even though exceptions were possible. Both Gandhi and Tagore thought of truth as both experiential and cognitive.
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Notes
- 1.
Hare argues that value judgments are “proper universals” whereas universal commands are not. For instance ‘NO SMOKING’ is short for ‘Do not smoke in this cinema’. However, the value judgment ‘You ought not to smoke’ invokes a standard or principle. Hare believes that where ‘ought’ judgments, and in particular moral judgments, are concerned this principle must be completely universal.
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Essays by Gandhi and Tagore cited from Bhattacharya (2008)
Essays by Gandhi and Tagore cited from Bhattacharya (2008)
3.1.1 M. K. Gandhi
“The Poet’s Anxiety” (June 1921, Young India).
3.1.2 Rabindranath Tagore
“The Call of Truth” (1921, Prabasi, Modern Review).
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Puri, B. (2015). Gandhi’s Truth: Debate, Criticism and the Possibilities of Closure in Moral Arguments. In: The Tagore-Gandhi Debate on Matters of Truth and Untruth. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 9. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-2116-6_3
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