Professor Douglas Allen, from University of Maine, USA will be delivering a seminar titled "Gandhi’s Philosophy: Theory, Practice, and Relative Truth". 

Abstract

Gandhi is not interested in abstract theoretical or academic philosophical formulations, but rather in philosophy as practice. His focus is on living philosophy, on how we can live an ethical and spiritual life of satya (truth) and ahimsa (nonviolence). This is not to endorse a common misconception that Gandhi is simply a practical person of no philosophical interest or significance. His practice is grounded in a profound, dynamic, moral and ontological theoretical framework. Gandhi is primarily a moralist with his primary concern with developing moral character and practice and with ethics as first philosophy. This is different not only from the history of Western philosophy, but also from traditional Indian philosophy with its emphasis on the primacy of epistemology and metaphysics. The integral relations of truth and nonviolence provide the theoretical basis for Gandhi’s philosophy and practice. They reveal the presuppositions, values, and principles informing his approach to swaraj, satyagraha, swadeshi, and other key concepts. Usually unappreciated is Gandhi’s invaluable analysis of the distinction and integral relations between relative truth and Absolute Truth. On the one hand, this challenges philosophical alternatives of essentialism and absolute foundationalism, and, on the other hand, modern unlimited relativism. In our philosophical approach, we embrace absolute regulative ideals, but our philosophy and practice always involve the recognition of our human, situated, contextualized world of relative truth with the dynamic, imperfect, open-ended philosophy project of moving from one relative truth to greater relative truth closer to the absolute ideal. 

About the Speaker

Douglas Allen is Professor and former Chairperson of Philosophy at the University of Maine, U.S.A. Professor Allen served as President of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy and is the Series Editor of Lexington’s Studies in Comparative Philosophy and Religion. Author and editor of 15 books and 150 book chapters and scholarly journal articles, he has been awarded two Fulbright and one Smithsonian grant to India, the Maine Presidential Research and Creative Achievement Award, and Distinguished Maine Professor Award (given to the outstanding professor in teaching, research, and service). Allen’s recent Gandhi books include The Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi for the Twenty-First Century and Mahatma Gandhi. His recent Gandhi articles and book chapters include “Peacebuilding in the 21st Century: Gandhian Perspectives,” "Gandhi and Socialism," "Gandhi in Times of Terror," "The Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi Today: Nonviolence, the Ego, and the Transformed Life and World," and "Gandhi on Value: The Value Relation, Modernity, and Corruption." A peace and justice scholar-activist, Doug Allen has been active in Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam/Indochina Antiwar Movement, the Anti-Apartheid Movement, and other struggles resisting violence and war.