Editors provide a substantive introduction to the history and theories of perfectionism and neutrality, expertly contextualizing the essays and making the collection accessible.

This volume shows how Gandhi's thought and action-oriented approach are significant, relevant, and urgently needed for addressing major contemporary problems and concerns, including issues of violence and nonviolence, war and peace, religious conflict and dialogue, terrorism, ethics, civil disobedience, injustice, modernism and postmodernism, oppression and exploitation, and environmental destruction. Appropriate for general readers and Gandhi specialists, this volume will be of interest for those in philosophy, religion, political science, history, cultural studies, peace studies, and many other fields.

The problem of necessary evil is a sub-class of the problem of moral dilemmas. In cases of genuine moral dilemmas the agent cannot avoid doing evil whatever he does. In some cases of genuine moral dilemmas, the options facing the agent are incommensurable. But in some other cases of genuine moral dilemmas, though wrong doing is inescapable, there is a rationally best course of action. These are cases of necessary evil. There are several views regarding the doing of necessary evil. (...) On the closure view it is never necessary to do what is evil. This is the view of some utilitarians and of Kant. Then there are people who believe that it is sometimes necessary to do evil. Of these some (like John Gardner) believe that evil in such cases is justified even though it remains an evil; while there are others (like Gandhi) who believe that evil in such cases can never be justified but it can at best be excused or pardoned. Some even think that in some extreme cases the individual who does evil (even if it is the lesser evil) should be punished even though the individual could not avoid doing evil whatever he chose. The paper stresses the significance of the distinction between justified wrong doing, pardonable wrong doing, and excusable wrong doing. (shrink)

In the first section I compare and contrast Rawls's and Gandhi's views on civil disobedience as a form of persuasion. I discuss the difficulties facing such forms of civil disobedience; the argument that such forms of civil disobedience are redundant is examined and rejected. Some modifications of Rawls's theory are suggested regarding when civil disobedience is justified and what form it should take. Also, I argue, as against Rawls, that the Rawlsian State should, when that is necessary to prevent anarchy, (...) be allowed to use severe measures against disobedients. In the second section I develop a second strand in Gandhi's thinking about civil disobedience, which links it with non?cooperation and which appears to be partly discrepant with his view of civil disobedience as a form of non?coercive persuasion. I attempt to show that Gandhian civil disobedience may effectively frustrate the evil policies of the State, without converting the State and yet without being coercive in any evil sense. (shrink)

The paper considers how Mahatma Gandhi?s Law of Ahimsa (or non-violence) can be reconciled with the necessity of violence; some of the strategies that Gandhi adopts in response to this problem are critically examined. Gandhi was willing to use (outward) violence as an expedience (in the sense of necessity), but he was opposed to using non-violence as an expedience. There are two versions of Gandhi?s doctrine. He makes a distinction between outward violence and inner violence. Both versions grant that outward (...) violence is often necessary and must be administered with compassion. On the more demanding version, outward version is never justified, not even when it is necessary; it is at best excused or pardoned. On the less demanding version, outward violence under certain conditions is justified. (shrink)

Two kinds of intrinsically valuable entities are distinguished - those that are ends-in- themselves (and therefore sacred) and those that are intrinsically good. It is suggested that it is the individual rather than the group that is sacred in the primary sense. To be sacred or an end-in-itself implies that the sacred entity must not be replaced by a potential entity even if more good can be promoted by doing so. It is suggested that only entities that have an irreducible (...) consciousness should be candidates for the sacred in the primary sense. If so, it would follow that groups are not sacred in the primary sense unless perhaps one regards them as unitary beings. It is argued that though groups have rights that are not reducible to the rights of individuals, this is consistent with the view that the ultimate justification of these rights is provided by an appeal to the interests of the relevant individuals; groups can be derivatively sacred. Activities of collectives can sometimes be intrinsically good, and such considerations, too, would be relevant to deciding upon which collectives should be retained and which modified or replaced. (shrink)

In A paper called ‘The Responsibility of Psychopaths’, I think I succeeded in establishing that we cannot rule out a priori the possibility that psychopaths may be shown to be lacking in responsibility. I also examined some arguments that try to show the psychopathto be lacking in responsibility, but I concluded that these arguments were not very successful. In this paper I intend to make and examine some more attempts at showing the psychopath to be lacking in responsibility. But before (...) I do that there is one point to keep in mind. (shrink)

It is neither possible, nor desirable, to have a system of dealing with criminals that does away with norms. But Lady Wootton sometimes talks as if it is possible and desirable to do away with norms. And she claims that in her pragmatic system norms have been done away with. She believes her pragmatic system of dealing with criminals is, unlike our present system, scientific. There are at least two respects in which she seems to be claiming that her system (...) is scientific, unlike the present system. Firstly, she seems to think that her system is scientific in the sense of being a workable system; she believes that in her system, leaving aside the moral and other limitations that she mentions, the last word ‘is always with the statistician’. Under the present system, on the other hand, she argues, we are asked to answer questions—such as ‘could he have helped what he did?’—which are inherently insoluble. (shrink)

It is generally agreed that at least those who suffer from severe mental subnormality, like idiots, are not responsible for the antisocial actions that they may commit. Even Lady Wootton agrees that in the case of idiots and imbeciles ‘the defect is so great that no dispute is likely to arise, either as to the reality of the handicap or as to its effect in impairing capacity to conform to expected standards’. 1 This passage, incidentally, contradicts some of her other (...) views, e.g. the view that we can never make judgments about people's capacity. (shrink)