Community, Violence, and Peace

·期刊原文

Community, Violence, and Peace: Aldo Leopold, Mohandas K Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., And Gautama the Buddha in the Twenty-First Century

By Vasanthi Srinivasan

Philosophy East and West
V.51,n3 (July, 2001) pp.425-429

Copyright 2001 by University of Hawai'i Press

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Community, Violence, and Peace: Aldo Leopold, Mohandas K. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Gautama the Buddha in the Twenty-first Century. By A. L. Herman. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. Pp. xi + 245.

Community, Violence and Peace: Aldo Leopold, Mohandas K. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Gautama the Buddha in the Twenty-first Century, by A. L. Herman, explores the concept of community and the belief that it can resolve the problems of violence and insufficient peace in the twenty-first century. A. L. Herman examines four visions of community exemplified in the works of two Western thinkers, Aldo Leopold and Martin Luther King, Jr., and two Eastern thinkers, Gandhi

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and Gautama the Buddha. The author approaches these thinkers with three questions: first, what kind of sharing is constitutive of a community? Second, how does one belong to a community? And third, can the problems of peace and violence in the twenty-first century be solved through the path of community?

Chapter 1 begins by presenting the key premises of the arguments for community as an antidote to violence and as a harbinger of peace. Using Socrates' defense in the Apology, Herman puts forth two versions of the community argument. First, no one would intentionally do violence to oneself; one's self is shaped by one's community, and no one would intentionally do violence to one's community (p. 45). The second version, called the "community peace argument," proceeds from the premise that everyone would intentionally do peace to themselves, and since one's self is shaped by one's community, everyone would intentionally do peace to one's community (p. 46). The author claims that the second premise, which assumes a close relationship between oneself and the community, is borne out in all four of the thinkers just mentioned. But what is a community? How do individuals come to recognize themselves as belonging to a community?

Chapter 2 focuses on the eco-mystic Aldo Leopold's notions of a "biotic community" and the "land ethic." The "biotic community" extends the boundaries of community to include soils, plants, and animals. Viewing the land as not simply a "resource" but a "fountain of energy" flowing through a "web of interdependent parts," Leopold calls for a "responsible and respectful use" that preserves the "integrity, stability and beauty" of the environment. This "land ethic" is predicated on an "ecological conscience," by which Leopold means the "extension of the social conscience from people to land" (p. 64). Such an ecological conscientiousness does not require supernatural grace or the aid of a divine savior; it evolves from an "intellectual intuition" and "self-transformation" whereby the individual comes to recognize his or her close relationship to the biotic community (p. 65). While giving a sympathetic account of Leopold's "land ethic," Herman points to some crucial theoretical problems. First, the inclusion of "trees, ponds, and wildlife" within the "biotic community" gives rise to "outrageous rights"; second, Leopold does not specify the criteria for distinguishing between "responsible use" and exploitation; and third, the emphasis on the "integrity and stability" of the biotic community threatens to subordinate "human rights" to a larger whole.

Chapter 3 turns to Gandhi's experiments in an "ashramic community" beginning with the Phoenix Farm and ending with the Sevagram Ashram. Attempting a synthesis of John Ruskin's ideas and Hindu ideas, Gandhi built "ashrams" or communal retreats wherein members shared common meals, manual labor, and a set of moral and spiritual practices such as nonviolence, celibacy, and nonpossession. Far from being mere retreats from the world, these ashrams were centers from which Gandhi conducted the Indian struggle for independence. In the process of fusing spirituality and politics, Gandhi evolved the technique of Satyāgraha or nonviolent resistance toward unjust laws and customs. Herman explores the limits and possibilities of Satyāgraha through an imaginary lecture/personal recollection by Professor George P. Conger, who had visited Gandhi at Sevagram. After reassuring his students that

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this "stuff" is going to be on the final exam and that they may have to memorize some dates, Professor Conger recalls his interview with Gandhi just after the Salt March of 1930. Gandhi clarified that nonviolent disobedience toward an unjust law or discrimination was aimed at converting the heart of one's opponent and not merely effecting sociolegal change. As a spiritual technique, Satyāgraha involved rigorous training in self-purification via social service and moral effort guided by God. For Gandhi, Satyāgraha or truth-force was at once a means to forge community and the end of communal life. While admitting that this path was difficult, Gandhi insisted that it was the only effective response to violence.

Herman contends that although the "ashramic community" avoids the problem of "outrageous rights" encountered in Leopold, Gandhi's way of nonviolence gives rise to other problems. One major difficulty has to do with defining and identifying violence in a reasonable manner so as to avoid the arbitrary use of Satyāgraha. The second difficulty pertains to the fact that nonviolent resistance at least initially provokes coercive and violent reprisals from established authorities. Third, the extraordinary effort required to turn the other cheek in the face of injustice and force may generate a spirit of resentment and guilt in the practitioner. Finally, Gandhi's "ashramic community" does not appear to have room for an individual good that may be different from, although not opposed to, the common good.

In chapter 4, Herman analyzes Martin Luther King, Jr.'s idea of a "beloved community." In the course of his nonviolent campaigns for civil rights in the United States, King developed his own version of "Christian Satyāgraha." Inspired by the Sermon on the Mount and Gandhi's Satyāgraha, King placed "love" or "agape" at the center of his attempt to reclaim community. According to King, "agape" involves the "willingness to go to any lengths to restore the human community" (p. 109). The "beloved community" emerged from a recognition of the "interrelatedness of all human beings" and participation in "direct nonviolent social actions" in pursuit of social justice. The essence of such a community is not competitiveness but mutual respect and attunement to a personal God. Like Gandhi, King showed that nonviolent resistance is a powerful response to injustice and that it transforms both the oppressor and the oppressed. Thus the "beloved community" calls for a personal transformation that erases pride and prejudice. According to Herman, neither Leopold nor Gandhi nor King is specific about the concrete ways in which such a self-transformation may be accomplished. To quote Herman, "lacking that means or recipe or way or yoga, we must conclude that merely saying, Consider nature or Love everyone selflessly simply won't do as descriptions of what must be done" (p. 146).

The penultimate chapter examines the Buddha's vision of community. Following a brief summary of the Buddha's life and his first sermon, Herman proceeds to elaborate on what he calls "karmic community." Here, Herman provides a cursory overview of the law of karma as adumbrated in the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gītā. In the former, Herman finds a "karmic individualism" according to which "if you do the crime, then you do the time" (p. 168). In the Gītā, he finds this radical individualism somewhat mitigated by Lord Krishna's "saving grace." Krishna himself

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is able to act as a "savior" because of the accumulation of merit from good deeds in many eons of action. However, Herman argues that Krishna's savior role presupposes that good karma can be stored and transferred, and this presupposition undermines the very principle that makes the law of karma possible. In other words, such storage and transfer between two different beings, Krishna and his devotees, threatens to dissolve the consistent operation of the karma principle.

Herman claims that this problem is resolved to some extent in the Mahayana Buddhist ideal of the Bodhisattva, who prefers to share his or her good karma with the whole community of sentient beings. Since the Bodhisattva identifies herself with the whole community and not with a chosen few, the karma principle is not undercut but approached from the standpoint of the entire community. This "karmic community" or community of "potential merit generators and receivers" extends not only to monks and nuns but to laypersons, gods, nagas, yakshas, ghosts, animals, and all those who enter parinirvāṇa without using up their merit. According to Herman, the inclusion of all sentient beings, alongside the law of karma, overcomes the problem of "outrageous rights" that surfaces in Leopold. How does one come to recognize belonging to this karmic community? Here, Herman concedes that this vision, too, does not delineate how such an awareness is to be realized.

In the conclusion, Herman analyzes some "peak experiences" described by the four thinkers to clarify the meaning and possibility of self-transformation. Drawing upon Abraham Maslow's study, Herman argues that "peak experiences" manifest themselves in a sense of unity, love, community, and a lessening of self-centered ness, and can have either supernatural or natural or psychological origins (p. 185). While all four thinkers considered here identify one or two critical experiences as highly influential in shaping their visions, there is no road map to having "peak experiences." Herman concurs with Leopold, Gandhi, King, and the Buddha in that practical engagement in environmental and social movements is integral to self-transformation. Such practical training fosters a sense of belonging to a larger community, be it of the biotic or the karmic order.

However, the author claims that the problem of "communal altruism" is not easily resolved in the four thinkers. By "communal altruism," Herman refers to the tendency to identify and subsume individual good under the communal good. According to him, it is logically incoherent to argue for an entire world community of altruists alone. Further, psychologically, the altruistic ideal produces guilt and anxiety at not measuring up to the ideal. Politically, communal altruism often derails into abstract and fundamentalist appeals to the nation or race or clan. Therefore, Herman proposes a "communal egoism," which is the "view that when each member of a community pursues his or her own interests or advantage, then the good of the community will be secured" (p. 212). The author hastens to add that he is not simply advocating selfishness but an "extraordinary kind of selfishness wherein one's own best interest lies in promoting the interest of others" (p. 214).

While this alternative may be psychologically realistic, it leaves many questions unanswered. If communal egoism is a more viable path to the different communal visions explored in the book, should we not ask how the four thinkers would re-

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spond to this path? The appeal to the ego-self is particularly problematic with respect to Gandhi and the Buddha, who highlight the ātman-Self and the nonself, respectively. However, we should not forget that both Gandhi and the Buddha strike out on their own individual paths to the highest good. Given that Herman himself concedes that Gandhi recognized the dilemma of the individual good being drowned in the common good, it would have been interesting to see how he might have reconciled the two in practice. Faced with orthodox Hindu pandits who claimed scriptural sanction for untouchability, Gandhi evolved a "critical traditionalism." Calling himself a "spiritual scientist" and identifying himself with the saints and seers who "experiment" with Truth, Gandhi showed that belonging to a tradition did not foreclose questioning and reinterpreting received texts and customs. Such an analysis may have clarified and strengthened Herman's definition of "communal egoism" as an "extraordinary kind of selfishness."

A minor problem concerns Herman's four-stage summary of each thinker in terms of the causal diagnosis, the proffered solution, and the way to the solution. Inspired by the Buddha's First Sermon, this analytical device reinforces the cross-cultural tone of this book at the cost of obscuring or oversimplifying crucial metaphysical issues. For instance, the trial run of the four-stage recipe in Plato's Republic leads the author to claim that Plato seeks to "solve" the problem of injustice by rooting out "ignorance" (the cause) by way of an education in "soul-natures," proper vocational training, and "soul-realization" (pp. 26-27). The attunement to the Forms and the dialectical pursuit of the Forms as the most choice-worthy vocation get lost in this "spiritual" reading of Plato's "solution" as one of "self-realization." Otherwise, I found that Herman's analysis was well-organized and clear, and this formulaic summary seemed superfluous.

In general, this is a thought-provoking book on communal visions in both the West and the East. Herman succeeds in showing the continuity between different thinkers with respect to the dilemma of individual and community. The author's rendition of the transformative personal experiences of Leopold, Gandhi, and King illuminates their virtues of honesty and courage with an eye on the historical, political, and religious contexts. He also manages to weave in brief reviews of Socrates, Huxley, and Kant, among others. With its small biographical sections on each thinker and a delightful style, this book would be very useful in introductory courses on comparative philosophy and social ethics.