DOCSLIB.ORG

Foundations of Non-Violence: From

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Foundations of Non-Violence: From LANZA DEL VASTO'S STRUCTURAL PHILOSOPHY ON WAR AND PEACE Antonino Drago former at Naples, Pisa and Florence Universities As a biographical note on Lanza del Vasto (for short, LdV), I recall that he born in San Vito dei Normanni (Brindisi), South Italy 29-9-1901, from a rather high class family (the origin of the father was Sicily, the mother Belgium and the grand mother France). He graduated in Philosophy at Pisa University in 1928. Without accepting any social role and in opposition to the Italian Fascism, he cumulated experiences in pilgrimage, humble working, private teaching while he was a poet, painter, actor, sculptor, writer, musician. In a Fascist Italy, which ignored at all conscientious objection, at July 30th 1936 he wrote to his mother that, in the case he was appealed to the military Army, he will declare his refusal even at cost to be shot. He was distressed by the feeling that a second World war was coming. His mind was captured by the questions: Why mankind fall again and again in wars? Why wars rise from peace times as regularly as the tides do? Can human beings be able to survive without wars? He decided that in the World there was only one man capable to give an answer, Gandhi. In 1937 he went in India for “espiating Europe”, a society where each – honest or dishonest - person, by merely doing its duty, contributes to rush to a new disastrous World war. He was disciple of Gandhi, being called by him Shantidas (Peace servant). His “meeting with the truth” overcome his expectations: “I hoped much from my meeting with Gandhi, I found out much more. My thinking, as well as my dream, was surmounted: I saw an issue to the miseries, abuses, servitudes, revolts and wars; the justice as a mathematical and musical exactitude in the acts; the unity of life in the simplicity; the candour of the wise man at the inside as at the outside; the non-violence or the rejection of all which disturbs the harmonious order of the things….” Shortly, the achieved unity of a human life responding to the mankind questions. Also Gandhi’s teachings made clear to LdV that war is unavoidable when people’s life is aimed to the grievance and the exploitation. The every-day life of Gandhi was an example of how rather one can unite in his life the spiritual with the social at the highest degree. Also the life in the Gandhi’s community offered an impressive evidence of how a social group can live in peace although his participants differ at all in their religious beliefs, ethnic origins, ancient cultures and urgent needs dictated by the survival. His book on his Indian experience, Return to Source (1943), illustrates how such a kind of life unites peace and justice so that war is very unlikelihood; and hence the great social and historical value of the Gandhian non-violence, later conceived by him as “a revolutionary and innovative social power”. This deep experience led him to a total conversion in the body – which was obliged by him to conform to the material life of the poor Indians – and in the spirit – which re-discovered the basic of Christian faith, i.e. the conversion to love an enemy even in the struggle. A call received during a pilgrimage to the sources of the Gange river pushed him to come back in Europe to promote “a Peace Army”, i.e. to start inside the Western civilization Gandhian communities aimed to fight wars. However, once he came back in Paris, his ambitious programme met great difficulties. The further reflection on his project led him to overcome his previous anti- militarist attitude for accepting the implicit suggestion received by Gandhi’s life, to introduce non- violence in the basic structure of a society. He started from constituting a group of Gandhian followers. Encouraged by the ecumenical spirit of Gandhi, in particular his teaching to deepen each his own religious tradition, LdV together with his group re-visited Gospel; which was recognised to be in deep agreement with Gandhi’s non- violence. After few years, in 1948, he together with some of this group started in south France a first community of "Western Gandhians". He called it “Community of Ark” according to two meanings; Noah's Ark, built for saving some persons together with all animals from the scourge of the deluge caused by modern civilization; and the Ark of the new alliance between God and mankind, i.e. non-violence. Later this community promoted non-violent Campaigns against the French war in Algeria, against nuclear bombs and nuclear plants, for a loyal recognition of French conscientious objectors, against the expropriation of Larzac's plateau by Army. He died in a Spanish Ark Community (La Longuera, Murcia) 5-1-1981. After ten years of communitarian life he felt the need to give to his enterprise a theoretical basis which – in the spirit of Gandhian teachings - had to explain the negative social events – as wars are - by means of a chain of detailed causes originated from the personal evil; hence, it had to unite in a continuum the spiritual teachings with the political theories. He had conceived this extraordinary enterprise already in 1937 but he wrote his book Les quatre Fléaux (The Four Scourges) in 1959. It represents an unsurpassed effort for connecting together theology, anthropology, sociology, economics, politics, international relations and history. In agreement with the ecumenical spirit of Gandhi, he considered the basic teachings of all great religions as the most ancient, persistent and at the same time world-wide teachings on most wise attitudes. Through them he looked for a universal and adequate answer to wars and in general to modern times. LdV started by focussing the attention on what constitutes a central core of all religions believing in a creator God. All they have to answer to a basic problem (theodicy): Why the benevolent God created a world, and in particular the human nature, where the evil entered? This corresponds to a universal problem of the secular thinking too: How to explain the conflict between the Good and the Evil inside the mankind history? And moreover it is the basic problem of all people involved in the tiring work for peace: Why one more war? Why peace does not come without impediments? Several great religions offer stories about the fall of the first men from a privileged position to the present, painful position. In the Hebrew-Christian tradition this is the story of the Original Sin (Genesis 3). Also Gandhi shared this religious tenet (Hind Swaraj, beginnings of chp. X). LdV offered a new interpretation of this text on the Original Sin. In modern times someone suggested that the Original sin was a disobedience act which introduced men to the knowledge. Instead according to LdV, the fall is caused by a reduction of the original capability of a knowledge-contemplation, to a knowledge-calculation of his own advantage at the expenses of others and Nature. This Sin is that to divert the human mind from the direct knowledge of the intimate nature of every being – a first God and even animals -, to an interested calculation aimed to exploit all beings so that the good, which originarily is natural to men, in fact is no more spontaneous. As a consequence of this sin concernining relationships, the behaviour of a man is similar to that of an animal: "In the same way a wolf has teeth, a snake poison, so a man has his intelligence for making war to nature and to all other men". Spontaneous to a man/woman is rather to build a lot of conventions, laws and rules allowing the more clever men to prevail upon the naive persons. That introduces in every man an artificial level located between the natural level and the super-natural level, whereas in a society it introduces a lot of legal or conventional customs under which a man – conscious or not - in fact exploits in a regular way his environment. As a result, all men, both evil ones or benevolent ones contribute to the pyramidal structure of the society, where weaker men have to support the heaviest social weights. Notice that in the subsequent chapter 4 Genesis presents how the Evil pervaded the whole society of the primordial times: brothers, family, town. Maybe this text inspired LdV to illustrate t the growth of evil inside the more complex society of modern times. He achieved it by means of new interpretations of Apocalypse 8 (scourges) and 13 (two Beasts dominating mankind) as presenting an evil structured in social institutions. That anticipated Johan Galtung's suggestion to add to the notion of non-violence inside personal inter-relationships, the notion of a structural non- violence, that performed by social institutions. Truly, the above texts belong to the Christian Bible; however, they describe a historical situation that all religions consider as "an extreme evil"; i.e. a society founded and structured according to the evil; or, in sociological terms, a time in which the political power persecute religions and even the whole mankind. A similar view is in Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj (1909, end of chp. VI). In ‘30s a similar society was experienced by those European peoples which were subjugated by the Stalinist, Facist, Nazist and Franchist dictatorships How people can reach such an aberration? Through the interconnections of even more numerous social customs the original sin grows up till to constitute ever more social institutions which in the history, may persist as scourges – Misery, Servitude, War and Revolt - irrespectively of the populace’s will.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Complete List of Books in Library Acc No Author Title of Book Subject Publisher Year R.No
    Complete List of Books in Library Acc No Author Title of book Subject Publisher Year R.No. 1 Satkari Mookerjee The Jaina Philosophy of PHIL Bharat Jaina Parisat 8/A1 Non-Absolutism 3 Swami Nikilananda Ramakrishna PER/BIO Rider & Co. 17/B2 4 Selwyn Gurney Champion Readings From World ECO `Watts & Co., London 14/B2 & Dorothy Short Religion 6 Bhupendra Datta Swami Vivekananda PER/BIO Nababharat Pub., 17/A3 Calcutta 7 H.D. Lewis The Principal Upanisads PHIL George Allen & Unwin 8/A1 14 Jawaherlal Nehru Buddhist Texts PHIL Bruno Cassirer 8/A1 15 Bhagwat Saran Women In Rgveda PHIL Nada Kishore & Bros., 8/A1 Benares. 15 Bhagwat Saran Upadhya Women in Rgveda LIT 9/B1 16 A.P. Karmarkar The Religions of India PHIL Mira Publishing Lonavla 8/A1 House 17 Shri Krishna Menon Atma-Darshan PHIL Sri Vidya Samiti 8/A1 Atmananda 20 Henri de Lubac S.J. Aspects of Budhism PHIL sheed & ward 8/A1 21 J.M. Sanyal The Shrimad Bhagabatam PHIL Dhirendra Nath Bose 8/A2 22 J.M. Sanyal The Shrimad PHIL Oriental Pub. 8/A2 Bhagabatam VolI 23 J.M. Sanyal The Shrimad PHIL Oriental Pub. 8/A2 Bhagabatam Vo.l III 24 J.M. Sanyal The Shrimad Bhagabatam PHIL Oriental Pub. 8/A2 25 J.M. Sanyal The Shrimad PHIL Oriental Pub. 8/A2 Bhagabatam Vol.V 26 Mahadev Desai The Gospel of Selfless G/REL Navijvan Press 14/B2 Action 28 Shankar Shankar's Children Art FIC/NOV Yamuna Shankar 2/A2 Number Volume 28 29 Nil The Adyar Library Bulletin LIT The Adyar Library and 9/B2 Research Centre 30 Fraser & Edwards Life And Teaching of PER/BIO Christian Literature 17/A3 Tukaram Society for India 40 Monier Williams Hinduism PHIL Susil Gupta (India) Ltd.
    [Show full text]
  • The Origins of Non-Violence
    The Origins of Non-violence Tolstoy and Gandhi in Their Historical Settings Martin Green The Origins of Non-violence This book describes the world-historical forces, acting on the periphery of the modern world—in Russia in the nineteenth century—which developed the idea of nonviolence in Tolstoy and then in Gandhi. It was from Tolstoy that Gandhi first learned of this idea, but those world-historical forces acted upon and through both men. The shape of the book is a convergence, the coming together of two widely separate lives, under the stress of history. The lives of Tolstoy and Gandhi begin at widely separate points— of time, of place, of social origin, of talent and of conviction; in the course of their lives, they become, respectively, military officer and novelist, and lawyer and political organizer. They win fame in those roles; but in the last two decades of their lives, they occupy the same special space—ascetic/saint/prophet. Tolstoy and Gandhi were at first agents of modern reform, in Russia and India. But then they became rebels against it and led a profound resistance—a resistance spiritually rooted in the traditionalism of myriad peasant villages. The book’s scope and sweep are enormous. Green has made history into an absorbing myth—a compelling and moving story of importance to all scholars and readers concerned with the history of ideas. www.mkgandhi.org Page 1 The Origins of Non-violence Preface This book tells how the modern version of nonviolence—and Satyagraha, and war-resistance, and one kind of anti-imperialism, even— were in effect invented by Tolstoy and Gandhi.
    [Show full text]
  • Nuclear Information and Resource Service
    NUCLEAR INFORMATION AND RESOURCE SERVICE 6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 340, Takoma Park, MD 20912 301-270-NIRS (301-270-6477); Fax: 301-270-4291 [email protected]; www.nirs.org "We do not support construction of new nuclear reactors as a means of addressing the climate crisis. Available renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies are faster, cheaper, safer and cleaner strategies for reducing greenhouse emissions than nuclear power." International Organizational Signers (165, as of 12 pm, July 22, 2009) Africa Groupe Martin Luther King, Democratic Republic of Congo Earthlife Namibia, Windhoek, Namibia Community Research and Development Centre, Benin City, Nigeria Earthlife Africa, Cape Town, South Africa Sustainable Energy Africa, Cape Town, South Africa The GreenHouse Project, Durban, South Africa Watercourse, Cape Town, South Africa South Durban Community Environmental Alliance, South Durban, South Africa Pelindaba Working Group/ South African Coalition Against Nuclear Energy, Broederstroom, South Africa Coalition for Peace in Africa, Johannesburg, OR, South Africa Groundwork, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa Environmental Monitoring Group, Cape Town, SK, South Africa Gender and Energy, Cape Town, South Africa Namaqualand Actiongroup for Environmental Justice, Komaggas, South Africa Uganda Environmental Education Foundation, Kampala, Uganda Asia Journalists Against Nuclear Weapons, Thanjavur Chapter, Thanjavur, TN, India All-India Minority Forum, Mumbai, India Indian Doctors for Peace and Development, Luchiana, India Indian Board of
    [Show full text]
  • Knowledge and Belief According to Lanza Del Vasto
    Knowledge and Belief according to Lanza del Vasto Antonino Drago, Naples 1. Religious belief and scientific knowledge communitarian interconnection of several minds this original sin grows up to became two cpecific social In past millennia religious traditions suggested a kind of institutions for exploiting Nature, that is Science and its wisdom from which science divorced since its beginning, application, Technology. By means of such two actors LdV belief being then considered as a backwards attitude with vividly illustrates the advanced life of modern times as respect to the triumphant scientific reason. Apparently, no already represented by the biblical story. In fact, in modern sacred text suggested an adequate analysis on both the times they gained, more than any cultural force of modern admirable intellectual construction built by scientific reason society, an unprecedent authority on all peoples; till to lead and modern way of life, essentially advantaging progress them to entry in a society subjugated by the spirit of with respect to all traditions. possession. Since one century a new attitude on scientific knowledge According to this interpretation LdV holds, in a parallel was proposed by a particular renewal of religious belief, way to Induist tradition and some other religious traditions the non-violent philosophy of life suggested by Tolstoy too, that present Western civilisation represents the great- (Tolstoy 1880), Gandhi (Gandhi 1908) and Lanza del est renewal of the original sin, since for the first time it was Vasto (Lanza del Vasto 1959). All they criticized Western institutionalized in Science and Technology and then it science inasmuch as it is severed from both ethics and was applied world-wide.
    [Show full text]
  • Statement from the Workshop “Path of Nonviolence: Towards a Culture Of
    Pax Christi International/Catholic Nonviolence Initiative Reflections gathered during the workshop on Path of Nonviolence:s Toward s a Culture of Peace 4-5 April 2019, Rome As Christians committed to faithfully following in the footsteps of Jesus, we are called to take a clear stand for active nonviolence and against all forms of violence. In this spirit, people from many nations gathered for Path of Nonviolence: Towards a Culture of Peace, a consultation held at the Holy See’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development on April 4-5, 2019 in Rome. This was an important follow-up to the Nonviolence and Just Peace conference held in Rome in April 2016 co-sponsored by the then-Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and Pax Christi International. Our recent gathering of people of God from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Oceania, Europe, and the Americas included lay people, theologians, members of religious congregations, priests, bishops, and cardinals. Many of us live in communities experiencing violence and oppression. All of us are practitioners of justice and peace. We are grateful for the special focus that Pope Francis has placed on the spiritual and practical power of active nonviolence to promote integral human development and cultures of peace, including through the 2017 World Day of Peace message on “Nonviolence: A Style of Politics for Peace,” where he proclaimed: “To be true followers of Jesus today…includes embracing his teaching about nonviolence.” We know that Jesus consistently practiced nonviolence in a context that was extremely violent, but “nonviolence was not just a response to particular situations in the life of Jesus – it was the whole life of Jesus” (Cardinal Peter Turkson, University of San Diego, October 7, 2017).
    [Show full text]
  • A Messenger of Peace
    Louis CAMPANA, préface du livre de Joseph SIBY LANZA DEL VASTO: A MESSENGER OF PEACE Tout fleuve a sa source, ses confluences, son delta qu'il partage parfois avec d'autres fleuves qui ont leurs propres sources et confluences. Tous se retrouvent dans l'océan, lequel par l'évaporation reconstitue et distribue les eaux indispensables aux sources... Tout ouragan a ses causes, celui des océans en fièvre tout comme ceux d'une civilisation assaillie par l'esprit de conquête, de profit, de puissance... Conscient du danger que représente cet esprit destructeur, en 1933, Lanza del Vasto part en solitaire et en mendiant de Rome à Bari. Il va à la recherche de la source. Il écrit alors durant ce périple le début des Principes et préceptes du retour à l'évidence, et décide d'un voyage sans retour en Inde auprès de celui qu'il pressent comme « une oasis de verdure et de paix ». J'ai nommé Gandhi. Sur les pentes de l'Himalaya, il termine ce recueil de poésie parfumé de renoncement sacré et volontaire. Entre-temps, en voyageant, il étudie la Guita, les Vedas, les Upanishads tout autant que les religions annexes de l'Inde tel le Jaïnisme. Il se penche aussi sur le Sanscrit, ancêtre des langues indo-européennes, et s'ouvre aux interprétations diversifiées des sources de la non-violence... Le Pèlerinage aux Sources est le livre publié en 1943, en pleine guerre mondiale qui relate les dix-huit mois en Inde. Il connaît un succès inattendu. Approches de la vie intérieure, paru en 1962, sont le reflet de ses expériences avec des maîtres hindous et jaïns auxquels il se confronte avec ses propres racines judéo-chrétiennes.
    [Show full text]
  • What Is Non-Violence?
    What is and who uses non-violent resistance? (note: This workshop is ideally done in partnership with a guest speaker from an International Peace organization in your area. Every community has one, they may be working unobtrusively, but they do exist! Ask at your local Amnesty International group, or through places of worship, grassroots action groups, Rotary Club, Mission Outreach, etc) Introductory Activity ~ Workshop Activity A: Discuss : Ask the children what types of violence exist in the world. (ie. psychological abuse, economic abuse, intimidation, physical violence, racial violence, religious) What is the difference between discrimination and violence? What does non-violence means to them? Ask the children to give examples from their own experiences of non-violence, ie situations where they were either players or spectators of non-violence. Show the short film that can be found on YouTube : “Be the change you want to see in this world! Mahatma Gandhi” 2:06 A must watch video that teaches us that we should not always have to wait for others or things to happen of their own. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGyutkBvN2s. Relaxation / Experience Peace: Use quiet music from another ethnic experience. Guide them through imagining another “peaceful situation” ie. Remembering a scene where you either did not respond using nonviolent resistance or that you turned away in order to not respond at all. Now this time, put yourself back into that memory. What was the situation? Location? What was the day like? Weather/ What preceded what you were about to see? What did you witness? Now instead of responding as you did at the time, IMAGINE what sort of nonviolent response you could do.
    [Show full text]
  • Bibliografia Gandhiana
    BIBLIOGRAFIA GANDHIANA Testi posseduti dalla Biblioteca Multimediale Internazionale Pace-Ambiente-Sviluppo del Centro Studi Sereno Regis A cura di Diomira Fortunato INDICE Caratteristiche biblioteconomiche del catalogo Pag. 3 Catalogo alfabetico per titoli Pag. 4 Filmografia e risorse multimediali Pag. 52 Indice per autori Pag. 55 Argomenti della bibliografia Pag. 85 2 Caratteristiche biblioteconomiche del catalogo Il catalogo che qui presentiamo è relativo alla sezione gandhiana della Biblioteca Multimediale Internazionale Pace-Ambiente-Sviluppo del Centro Studi Domenico Sereno Regis e riporta la descrizione bibliografica completa, secondo gli standard previsti dal Servizio Bibliotecario Nazionale (SBN). La prima parte del catalogo riporta l'elenco alfabetico delle opere con l'indicazione del numero di inventario e della collocazione. Segue l'elenco degli autori con l'indicazione del titolo delle opere a cui si riferiscono e l'indice degli argomenti in riferimento alla collocazione utilizzata. Le norme di descrizione bibliografica adottate sono quelle utilizzate da SBN e fanno riferimento alle Regole Italiane di Catalogazione per Autori e all'International Standard Bibliographic Description ISBD(M). La descrizione bibliografica secondo l'ISBD è così articolata: Area del titolo e dell'indicazione di responsabilità: : complemento del titolo / prima indicazione di responsabilità ; altre indicazioni di responsabilità Area della pubblicazione luogo di pubblicazione ; altro luogo : nome dell'editore , data di pubblicazione Area della descrizione fisica designazione specifica ed estensione del materiale : indicazione delle illustrazioni ; dimensioni Area delle note ((Note 3 CATALOGO ALFABETICO PER TITOLI 4 Aforismi e pensieri / M. K. Gandhi ; a cura di Massimo Baldini ; traduzione di Lucio Angelini. - Roma : TEN, 1995. - 97 p. ; 21 cm. Inventario: 8767 Collocazione: 1 1.0.7.GAN.59.A Nessun vincolo al prestito Inventario: 13246 Collocazione: 1 1.0.7.GAN.59.B Nessun vincolo al prestito Aforismi e pensieri di Gandhi / a cura di Sara Poledrelli.
    [Show full text]
  • 00 Copertina DEP N.37 2018
    Numero 37 – Luglio 2018 Numero monografico Issue 37 – July 2018 Monographic Issue Stronger than Men. Women who worked with Gandhi and struggled for women’s rights Editor: Chiara Corazza ISSN: 1824-4483 DEP 37 Numero monografico Indice Introduzione , Chiara Corazza p. 1 Introduction p. 5 Ricerche Geraldine Forbes, Gandhi’s Debt to Women and Women’s Debt to Gandhi p. 8 Julie Laut, "The Woman Who Swayed America": Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, 1945 p. 26 Chiara Corazza, Dreams of a Poetess. A Subaltern Study of Sarojini Naidu’s Poetry and Political Thought p. 48 Thomas Weber, Gandhi e le donne occidentali, traduzione di Serena Tiepolato p. 70 Bidisha Mallik, Sarala Behn: The Silent Crusader p. 83 Sharon MacDonald, “The Other West”: Gandhian Quaker, Marjorie Sykes (1905–1995) p. 117 Holger Terp, Ellen Hørup and Other Gandhian Women in Denmark. p. 135 Documenti Sarala Behn, In the Mountains p. 151 Sujata Patel, Costruzione e ricostruzione della donna in Gandhi, traduzione di Sara De Vido e Lorenzo Canonico p. 161 Testimonianze Arun Gandhi, Kastur, Wife of Mahatma Gandhi p. 173 Radha Behn Bhatt, Personal Reflections p. 177 Strumenti di ricerca Suggerimenti bibliografici , a cura di Chiara Corazza p. 180 Recensioni, interventi, resoconti Thomas Weber, Going Native. Gandhi’s Relationship with Western Women (Chiara Corazza) p. 183 Sital Kalantry , Women’s human rights and migration. Sex-selective abortion laws in the US and India (Sara De Vido) p. 185 George A. James, Ecology is Permanent Economy: The Activism and Environmental Philosophy of Sunderlal Bahuguna (Bidisha Mallik) p. 189 Anita Anand, Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary (Sharon MacDonald) p.
    [Show full text]
  • Lanza Del Vasto's Structural Ethics on War and Peace
    1 PATIENTS’ DIRECT ACCESS TO THEIR ELECTRONIC MEDICAL 4 RECORD USING THE INTERNET: A LANZA DEL VASTO’S LITERATURE REVIEW STRUCTURAL ETHICS ON Marie C. Leroy a & Michel Dupuis b WAR AND PEACE Antonino Drago Abstract: Patient-accessible medical record is an important element of evolution in the patient-physician relationship: patients want to become more active in their health care pro- cess. We want to highlight the results of studies that analyse the impact of patients having access to their electronic medical record using the Internet on patients, on physicians and on Abstract: Motivated by the alarming recurrence of wars, Lanza del their relationship. The studies were identified using “Pub Med” and “Web of Knowledge”. Vasto became Gandhi’s disciple. From a social interpretation of biblical The search was limited to articles published between 2000 and October 2012. We focused texts (Genesis 3 and 4, Apocalypse 8 and 13, Mt 5) he derived a charac- on articles about patients accessing, through Internet, their electronic medical record that are terization of non-violence as the conversion from not only personal created and filled in by physicians. 26 studies were selected and analysed. Quantitative data negative drives, but also from the influences of negative social institutions were obtained through questionnaires, analysis of the log-ins and analysis of the records, while and the entire civilization. His intellectual categories comprise an ethical qualitative data were obtained through interviews and focus groups. The specificity of our conception of four essentially different models of development. This review refers to the electronic means through which patients access their electronic medical pluralism subsists inasmuch as the representatives of each model do not (and particularly Internet).
    [Show full text]
  • Gandhi: 'Hind Swaraj' and Other Writings
    Hind Swaraj is Mahatma Gandhi's fundamental work. It is a key to understanding not only his life and thought but also the politics of South Asia in the first half of the twentieth century. For the first time this volume presents the 1910 text of Hind Swaraj and includes Gandhi's own Preface and Foreword (not found in other editions) and anno- tations by the editor. In his Introduction, Anthony Parel sets the work in its historical and political contexts. He analyses the significance of Gandhi's experiences in England and South Africa, and examines the intellectual cross-currents from East and West that affected the formation of the mind and character of one of the twentieth century's truly outstanding figures. The second part of the volume contains some of Gandhi's other writings, including his correspondence with Tolstoy, Nehru and others. Short bibliographical synopses of prominent figures mentioned in the text and a chronology of important events are also included as aids to the reader. CAMBRIDGE TEXTS IN MODERN POLITICS EDITORS John Dunn King's College, Cambridge Geoffrey Hawthorn Faculty of Social and Political Science, University of Cambridge Political aspirations in the twentieth century are usually expressed in the political languages of Western Europe and North America. In Latin America, Africa and Asia, however, in the movements of 'national liberation' from colonial rule, in the justification of new states, and in the opposition to such states, these aspirations have also drawn on other traditions, and invented new ones. Outside the West, the languages of modern politics and the ideas these languages embody are nowhere simple, and almost nowhere deriva- tively Western.
    [Show full text]
  • LANZA DEL VASTO Return to the Obvious
    CATHOLIC Subscription: Vol. XL No. 7 SEPTEMBER, 1974 I 25c Per Yoor Price It! Return to the Obvious { By LANZA DEL VASTO '(This article is composed of excerpts from Lanza del Vasto's book PRINCIPLES AND PRECEPTS OF THE RETURN TO THE OBVIOUS, recently published by Schocken--Books of New York, $4.95. English translation copyrirht © 1974, Scl;tocken Books Inc., reprinted by permission. The parentheses refer to the source in the text. The Editors.) _ Economy and Work If you close your hand, the world will remain closed to you like a fist. If you want the world to open up to you, open your hand first. (17) Savi.J)g is shameful. It is contrary to the law of nature. See the abundance of wate~, of leaves and grass, of precious flowers spent by one fine day; the silver of morn.mg and the gold of evening thrown to· the wind. Give as fong as you have. When you have nothing left, ask. Give others the chance to do you some good. It will be secret and most subtle charity. (15) Where have you taken the right to give, you who have nothing you have not 0 received, you who ~ve given nothing in return for what you have been given? Do .not give: share. (19) · --. Don't waste your time earning your living. Earn your time; save your life. (30) Here and there give a helping hand with the liarvest. Redeem yourself by deeds. lf you want to lead a holy life, !first try rto be honest.
    [Show full text]