Concept
Satyagraha
Overview
Satyāgraha, or "truth force", is a particular form of nonviolent resistance or civil resistance. Someone who practises satyagraha is a satyagrahi.
The term satyagraha was coined and developed by Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) as early as 1919.
Gandhi practised satyagraha as part of the Indian independence movement and also during his earlier struggles in South Africa for Indian rights. Satyagraha theory influenced Martin Luther King Jr.'s and James Bevel's campaigns during the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, as well as Nelson Mandela's struggle against apartheid in South Africa and many other social-justice and similar movements.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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Other methods of deliverance from evil are in the excessive acts of penance performed by the Indians, to which a retreat within themselves is added. Now when the Indian thus internally collects himself, and retreats within his own thoughts, the moment of such pure concentration is called Brahma, the one and the clearly supersensuous state, which the understanding calls the highest possible existence. When this is so…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy
States what Satyagraha is.
I would risk, if necessary, a million lives so long as they are voluntary sufferers and are innocent, spotless victims. It is the mistakes of the people that matter in a Satyagraha campaign. Mistakes, even insanity must be expected from the strong and the powerful, and the moment of victory has come when there is no retort to the mad fury of the powerful, but a voluntary, dignified and quiet submission but not…
Mahatma Gandhi, Freedom's Battle Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation
Names Satyagraha.
Now the power and resolved purpose to resist a strong but unjust opponent is called fortitude (fortitudo), and when concerned with the opponent of the moral character within us, it is virtue (virtus, fortitudo moralis). Accordingly, general deontology, in that part which brings not external, but internal, freedom under laws is the doctrine of virtue.
Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysical Elements of Ethics
States what Satyagraha is.
Philosophers who discussed Satyagraha
Related ideas
- History of the Jews in Germany
- Satya
- Indian independence movement
- South Africa
- Nonviolence
- Mahatma Gandhi
- Martin Luther King Jr.
- Nelson Mandela
- Ahimsa
- World War II
- Civil disobedience
- Henry David Thoreau
- Civil rights movement
Place in the tradition
Part of Indian philosophy.