Traditional Philosophies and Gandhi’s Approach to the Self in Pain

Abstract

Traditional dominant Western philosophical approaches tend not to focus on the self in pain, regarding such concerns as prephilosophical or nonphilosophical and as secondary to objective rational analysis. Traditional dominant Indian philosophical approaches often focus on the self in pain, but this karmic experience is viewed negatively, as based on illusion and ignorance and as an obstacle to the goal of moksha and nirvana. Gandhi formulates a new, creative, challenging, contextually informed and controversial philosophical approach to the self in pain. In his philosophical focus on satya and ahimsa, Gandhi provides a philosophical approach to relative truth, absolute truth, nonviolence and ontology in understanding and transforming the self in pain. After providing a formulation of Gandhi’s diverse and sometimes contradictory approaches to the self and self-other relations that shape his analysis of the self in pain and its transformation, we conclude with a suggested approach to the self in pain as a constituted given.