A hybrid event for Uehiro Oxford Institute Members and Associates (booking not required).
Abstract
M. K. Gandhi sought to structure his life around ahimsa, the rejection of violence. He was at one time a trustee of the Vegetarian Society and was for a time a "fruitarian". In the 1920s, however, he attracted charges of hypocrisy from the Jain community of Ahmedabad for sanctioning the killing of rabid stray dogs. Were the charges justified? In fact, Gandhi's position on animal ethics is subtle, distinctive, plausibly consistent, and worthy of closer examination. Gandhi saw duties of care (whether made explicitly or implicitly, via the acceptance of a role in society) as creating overriding obligations that constrain our ability to realize ahimsa. A person whose avowed duties of care require a form of violence must honour their vow, even if it commits them to violence against other humans. Yet we have substantial freedom over the duties of care we take on, and in choosing our commitments we should try to extricate ourselves, as far as possible, from conditional commitments to violence. This is, for all of us, an incremental process, and one that begins from a position of thick entanglement in a violent way of life. The overall picture is an ethic of "vow and path", calling on us to undertake a lifelong project of restructuring our obligations. These ideas have relevance beyond the particular socio-religious context in which they were developed. Indeed, they provide an attractive framework for thinking about the problems of contemporary animal ethics.
Venue
Uehiro Oxford Institute, Suite 1 Seminar Area, Littlegate House, 16-17 St Ebbe’s Street, Oxford OX1 1PT (buzzer 1)
Zoom
Please attend in-person if you can. If you need to join online, the Zoom link is available from the Institute's Internal Google Calendar, or on request from axelle.duquesnoy@uehiro.ox.ac.uk
