Sensual Austerity and Moral Leadership: Cross-Cultural Perspectives from Plato, Confucius, and Gandhi on Building a Peaceful Society [1 ed.] 303089150X, 9783030891503

Citation preview

Sensual Austerity and Moral Leadership Cross-Cultural Perspectives from Plato, Confucius, and Gandhi on Building a Peaceful Society Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra Richard Grego

Sensual Austerity and Moral Leadership

Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra Richard Grego

Sensual Austerity and Moral Leadership Cross-Cultural Perspectives from Plato, Confucius, and Gandhi on Building a Peaceful Society

Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra Political Science Florida State College at Jacksonville Jacksonville, FL, USA

Richard Grego Philosophy and Cultural History Florida State College at Jacksonville Jacksonville, FL, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-89150-3    ISBN 978-3-030-89151-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89151-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: ilbusca / Getty Images This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

While sensual pleasure (or abstinence from it), morality, and leadership, are well-worn paths of research, there are few studies that explore the connection between them and the relevance of that connection for building a peaceful and harmonious society. Our interdisciplinary and cross-cultural research aims to fill this critical gap by arguing that this connection has significant philosophical and public policy implications. We examine how the connection between sensual austerity and moral leadership engaged great minds from different cultural traditions—Plato from ancient Greece, Confucius from ancient China, and Gandhi from modern India—and suggest that this kind of engagement could be productively applied to social theory in the contemporary world. We make a case, both explicitly and implicitly, that such study is not just an exercise in examining cross-­cultural ideas from a historical perspective, but is also an exploration of diverse pathways for building peaceful, harmonious, and moral societies in any era. In our earlier collaborative research, we explored similar concepts, focusing especially on related themes from Asian and global cultural traditions and their value for conflict resolution. Hence, the idea for this book did not emerge in a vacuum but proceeded from our earlier research in comparative philosophy, ethics, peace, and conflict resolution. Our prior research was more specialized and did not focus as much on cross-cultural moral and political philosophy or on Plato and Confucius in particular. However, in the course of these projects we noticed an interesting and incongruous trend in the literature on classical political thought and its global legacy: while there is a rich body of research on the moral and political theories of the thinkers we examine in this book, little work has v

vi 

PREFACE

been done on their ideas about sensuality, which happens to play an important—sometimes central—role in their social-political philosophy and moral psychology. The role of sensual austerity specifically is vital to their views on moral leadership and social justice but has been largely overlooked in the literature. While exploring materials in this connection more generally, we came across a vast body of work on sensual pleasure and how it shapes social dynamics, but found few studies that focused on the role that sensual austerity plays in fostering moral leadership. We came across several books on sex and leadership but found nothing focused on cross-­ cultural conceptions of the relationship between sensual austerity and moral/political leadership. With this in mind, our study therefore takes an original approach: it introduces this theme with special attention to the comparative political philosophies of Plato, Confucius, and Gandhi, and argues for further scholarship in this area. We also argue that recognizing the link between sensuality and moral leadership will benefit not only interdisciplinary academic research, but also current national and international policy studies, since it has enormous implications for contemporary public affairs. We came from different academic backgrounds and combined our expertise in the areas of comparative political theory, Asian and Western politics, international relations, conflict resolution, world civilizations, intellectual history, and comparative philosophy of mind/metaphysics to develop this argument and elaborate on it. This book, therefore, is an interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, comparative political philosophy project. It is also a book on conflict resolution and peace, as it explores not only the link between sensual austerity and moral leadership across cultural traditions, but also their conflict resolution potentials. We believe that our book will appeal to both academics and community/national/world leaders interested in morality and leadership, and will hopefully encourage them to think in new ways about the relevance of such ideas. Such novel vantage points on this theme are perhaps especially relevant as we face professional-social-political challenges on issues like gender relations, gender identity, sexual exploitation in the workplace, female sexuality and legal rights, religious morality and the law, and the sexual messages and behaviors of political, religious, and corporate leaders in our twenty-first-­ century global community. Following the dictum that any theory is of dubious value unless it also has practical implications, we hope that both academic researchers and social-political leaders will find this book useful, as its argument has some profound policy implications.

 PREFACE 

vii

This research would not have been possible without the invaluable assistance we received from various sources. Interactions with students, colleagues, reviewers of this and our prior publications, and discussions in seminars and conferences on the theme we explore here helped develop ideas for this research. We wish to direct our thanks to all who participated in these interactions and discussions. Debidatta has taught in the areas of political theory, Asian politics, and human rights at the University of Central Florida, and Richard has been teaching moral and political philosophy, intellectual-cultural history, philosophy of mind-metaphysics, and cross-cultural philosophies of religion and science at Southern New Hampshire University and Florida State College at Jacksonville. We thank our students, as interactions with them were helpful in exploring issues such as the crisis of morality in our time and how thinkers from the East and West have reflected on this crisis. We wish to thank our better halves, Seema and Terry, and friends for tolerating and supporting us while we were focusing on the book during the pandemic’s isolation and while neglecting other important responsibilities. Debidatta also thanks his ten-­ year-­ old son, Asim, for being understanding and tolerating his father spending long hours on the computer, and neglecting play time with him, while working on this book. Last, but not least, we are thankful to Amy Invernizzi of Palgrave Macmillan and Tikoji Rao M. of Springer Nature for encouraging us and working with us throughout the publication process. Jacksonville, FL Jacksonville, FL 

Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra Richard Grego

Contents

1 Introduction  1 2 The Philosopher King: Body, Mind, and Eros 23 3 Moral Social Order and the Ideal Ruler, the Sage-King 67 4 Brahmacharya, Nonviolent Social Praxis, and Leadership111 5 Parallels, Variations, and Pathways155 Index177

ix

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Though affiliated with three different intellectual traditions, the philosophies of Plato, Confucius, and Gandhi nonetheless share a similar concern: the link between sensual austerity and the kind of character that moral leadership and political governance require. Sensual austerity, they remind us, plays an important role in determining the kind of rulers a state can and should have, what goals a ruler should pursue, and how the ruler should pursue them. In this study, we seek to address this significant but long-neglected connection. We also argue that this idea, if not culturally universal, certainly spans diverse social contexts in major world civilizations and for this reason alone deserves more attention in the literature. We focus on thinkers from three traditions—Plato, from the classical Greek tradition; Confucius from the classical Chinese tradition; and Gandhi from the modern Indian tradition. We find that similar considerations shaped their ideas and thinking on sensual abstinence and politics, and that they were all concerned with the nature of an ideal state and ruler in this respect. For Plato it was the philosopher king in the Republic. For Confucius it was the sage-king in the ideal political community. For Gandhi it was the brahmachari-leader in the Ramrajya. The theme of moral self-cultivation in politics has been largely neglected in contemporary political science, which for Aristotle was the master science. In his view, social life and state affairs were intrinsically connected and participation in politics was an essential duty, since “only a beast or a god”1 could live outside the state.  Ancient Greek thought arose in the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. A. Mahapatra, R. Grego, Sensual Austerity and Moral Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89151-0_1

1

2 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

milieu of small city states and, perhaps because of this, viewed politics as a noble, rather than a lowly, profession—a view contested by many later Christian thinkers. St. Augustine, for instance, made a distinction between Civitas Dei and Civitas Tempora (the respective cities of God and humanity)2 and argued that only in the former can there be perfect happiness. Plato, Confucius, and Gandhi argued that political life necessarily entails humanity’s supreme virtues. For all of them, politics involves, to borrow from political scientist George Sabine, important “preferences, choices, sense of moral imperatives.”3 Dissatisfied with their own political lives and institutions, they devoted their lives and thought to improving them—with particular emphasis on the nature of virtuous political leadership. They advocated a restrained life for political rulers, a life in which sensual self-restraint, and self-discipline in every aspect of personal life, was vitally important to their role as leaders. None of them were kings themselves, but they could certainly be termed ‘kingmakers’: Plato and Confucius were royal advisors and Gandhi influenced the first generation of policymakers after India’s independence. We explore here how parallel conceptions of sensual austerity and moral leadership in their respective philosophies crossed historical and cultural boundaries in a way that suggests a common—perhaps universal—ideal in this regard. In examining sensual austerity and moral leadership, we reference a wide and common definition of morality. The term ‘moral’ is such common parlance that providing a formal definition here is almost superfluous. However, to clarify its meaning for our purposes in this study, morality (hereafter used interchangeably with the term ‘ethics’) refers to both the branch of philosophy specializing in reasoned ethical evaluations and formal theories, and the everyday concern with questions of right and wrong that constitute what is commonly called ‘conscience’ or ‘character.’ Indeed, Aristotle, using this latter approach to define the nature of morality in his landmark Nicomachean Ethics, describes it as “a state of character,” and says more specifically that, “the virtue of man also will be the state of character which makes a man good and makes him do his work well.”4 Dewey, several millennia later and in a post-Enlightenment milieu, used the former approach in his own milestone Ethics, writing that “ethics is the science that deals with conduct in so far as this is considered right or wrong, good or bad,” or “a systemic account of our judgements about conduct.”5 In his classic History of Western Morals, Brinton writes that morality is “the statements men make about what their conduct, or the

1 INTRODUCTION 

3

conduct of others, ought to be.”6 Our exemplars certainly used all of these approaches in their theories and in their professional careers. In the first section of this chapter, we briefly explore Plato’s concept of the philosopher king and its relevance to the link between sensual austerity and moral leadership, and in the subsequent two sections we deal with Confucius’s sage-king and Gandhi’s brahmachari-leader to lay out the groundwork for later chapters. The final section summarizes the main arguments of the chapter.

Plato’s Philosopher King Insofar as Whitehead’s famous declaration regarding Plato’s influence on western thought holds true,7 the role of asceticism in his political thought remains significant. However, perhaps because asceticism’s relevance to politics has also been largely neglected in western thought, its importance in Plato’s political philosophy has often gone unexplored. While his conception of society and the state is well established and his attitude toward sensuality and asceticism is (albeit more controversially) widely acknowledged, his views on how these two phenomena are related remain much less clear. Although there has always been a rough consensus in the literature regarding how his metaphysics grounds his political philosophy, the precise nature of this relationship in terms of sensuality, asceticism, and celibacy in the political order has, hitherto, received only cursory attention. The logic that leads from Plato’s metaphysical hierarchy to his political hierarchy seems relatively clear, notwithstanding the problems it has posed in western philosophy. Its connection to his corresponding hierarchy of the soul, values, and desires seems to make the status of sensual experience, and thus the issue of asceticism, relatively clear as well. What Plato says in the Dialogs about the nature of the soul, the state, sensuality, sexuality, and asceticism provides at least indirect evidence for his views on the relevance of sensual austerity for a virtuous soul and a just political community. In the Republic’s ‘divided line’ illustration8 and elsewhere over the progressive development of his thought through the later Dialogs, Plato describes a descending order of reality and Truth corresponding to a descending order of society, psychology, and values: “Take these four affections arising in the soul…intellection in relation to the highest one, and thought in relation to the second; to the third assign trust, and to the last imagination. Arrange them in proportion and believe that as the

4 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

segments to which they correspond participate in truth, so they participate in clarity.”9 Truth emanates from The Good in descending order from the immaterial and ideal Forms, through their material manifestations, to the imitations of these in language and the arts—with the ultimate form of The Good presiding over them all—illustrated in the Divided Line, Allegory of the Cave10 and elsewhere. This hierarchy of virtues runs from wisdom that corresponds to knowledge of the Forms, to courage which corresponds to ambition for success in the material world, to discipline appropriate for controlling materialistic and physical desires. The consequent hierarchy of the soul and its psychology throughout the Republic, Pheado, and the Phaedrus involves the rational logistikon (corresponding to wisdom) reigning over the spirited thymoeides (corresponding to courage) reigning, in turn, over the appetitive epithymetikon (corresponding to desire) and its discipline. In the perfectly ordered soul therefore, wisdom likewise reigns over ambition or courage, which in turn reigns over desire (including sensual desires). The hierarchy of political communities set forth in the Republic entails a descending order of merit from Aristocracy to Timocracy to Oligarchy to Democracy to Tyranny. The highest or best community (the Aristocracy) in this hierarchy mirrors the ideal soul in which each aspect of one’s character retains its proper place in the psyche— the rational-wise part over the ambitious-courageous part and the ambitious-­courageous part over the desirous-sensuous part.11 These psychosocial hierarchies are all also predicated on the even more fundamental metaphysical primacy of ideas over materiality, mind over body, reason over emotion, and abstract cognition over concrete sensuality. Truth is ultimately unified in The Good, expressed more abstractly in the ideal Forms, which are in turn expressed less authentically in material entities like animal bodies and, importantly, in sensual emotions, pleasures and pains derived from these material bodies. The aspect of the human soul closest to absolute Truth and the Forms is therefore the rational, nonmaterial mind, whose motivation is wisdom and which performs the function capable of accessing these higher forms via mathematics and dialectic. So, the soul’s lower aspects, like spiritedness and appetitiveness, are attached to the material body via ambition and sensual desire, and must be controlled, guided, and sometimes constrained by reason and wisdom in a way that directs their potentials toward communion with the Forms and The Good—which is the ultimate goal of all human endeavor.12 The Aristocratic state is designed to transcend the flaws of lesser states and achieve collective social-political communion with The Good by

1 INTRODUCTION 

5

fostering the same dynamics that operate in a healthy soul. Souls who have accomplished this communion—the philosophers—are the rational/wise aspects of a society that direct the spirited/ambitious elements to control the appetitive/desirous masses. Wise governance by philosopher-rulers is thus essential to a healthy society, and the state of the philosopher-ruler’s soul is essential to wise governance. A just community is one in which each part plays its proper role: the desirous part, consisting of appetitive souls (the merchants, craftsmen, and laborers) creating material wealth and sensual pleasures; the spirited part, consisting of ambitious souls (the soldiers and administrative officials) controlling the appetitive masses, enforcing laws, and defending the state; the rational part, consisting of wise souls (philosophers) making laws and ruling the state.13 Thus, those at the highest level of the political order (the philosophers) must embody its most rational virtues and eschew its lesser (spirited) and least (sensual) desires. To accomplish this, philosopher-rulers must focus exclusively on comprehending The Good: developing and exercising the rational part of the soul. Throughout the Republic, Plato prescribes an educational and political program necessary for producing such rulers. While the lowest class is permitted—even encouraged—to indulge in a lifestyle of sensual pleasure and wealth production, it also remains excluded for this reason from participation in political governance. The Auxiliaries and Guardians (officials, soldiers, and, most importantly, philosopher-­ rulers) are subjected to a rigid selection and training process designed to ensure that they will be inured to a life of sensual abstinence and intellectual rigor. The entire community is taught the Myth of the Metals to reinforce the division of labor required for this. The philosopher-ruler’s training regime involves self-denial, moral integrity, and love of wisdom to the exclusion of all-else. In their formative years they are shielded from, and taught to scorn salacious literature, nonmartial music, and poetry. Through a life-long educational program from early childhood to age fifty, they are taught the humanities, physical fitness, martial skills, higher mathematics, and dialectic, while avoiding sensual indulgence. As adults they renounce family, material possessions, and wealth—living their lives in communal barracks and forsaking every worldly pursuit except the attainment of wisdom. Their sexual lives, though not celibate in the sense of complete sexual abstinence, are virtually celibate by being restricted to occasions designated exclusively for procreation. The proper hierarchy of the ruler’s soul therefore involves control over the sensual faculties, which always threaten to lead the philosopher away

6 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

from reason to passion, from love of wisdom to sensual pleasure, and from commitment to social justice to dysfunction and chaos. Moreover, Plato suggests in many places (particularly in dialogs like the Phaedo, Phaedrus, and the Republic) that these lower aspects of both soul and society are not just irrelevant to their health but are positively inimical to it. “And indeed, the soul reasons best when none of these senses troubles it, neither hearing nor sight, nor pain nor pleasure, but when it is most by itself, taking leave of the body and as far as possible having no contact or association with it in its search for reality,” the Phaedo states, “and it is then that the soul of the philosopher most disdains the body, and flees from it and seeks to be by itself.”14 This kind of stark and pervasive metaphysical dualism underwriting Plato’s conception of the political community would certainly seem to indicate that sensual austerity is integral to capable leadership in a just community. After having been educated in music, the arts, public affairs, warfare, and, finally, mathematics and dialectic, the philosopher will be sufficiently focused on the rational apprehension of the Forms—and correspondingly disinterested in sensual pleasures or pains—to undertake the duty of wise leadership. However, the precise nature and extent of this ascetic lifestyle is less obvious and has invited considerable scholarly speculation. Coleen Zoller,15 for example, has suggested that interpretations of Platonic dualism in the literature can be effectively categorized in terms of either ‘austere dualism’ or (following Alison Jagger) ‘normative dualism.’ ‘Austere dualism’ involves “the interpretation of Plato that construes him as a strict metaphysical dualist whose contention that the physical world is not real leads him to renounce all things physical, especially the human body and its needs and the related desires in the soul’s appetites.”16 This popular reading has been championed by a host of political thinkers from the ancient neo-Platonists through Nietzsche, preeminent figures like Bertrand Russell, Benjamin Jowett, and Leo Strauss, and an impressive list of current Plato scholars. “To the empiricist,” Bertrand Russell counsels, “the body is what brings us into touch with external reality, but to Plato it is doubly evil, as a distorting medium, causing us to see as through a glass darkly, and as a source of lusts which distract us from the pursuit of knowledge and the vision of truth.”17 More recently, feminist writers have also viewed Plato’s dualism in the same way—portraying Platonism in this connection as the origin of the imperialism of the patriarchal mind over the feminine body in western thought and culture. Genevieve Lloyd, for

1 INTRODUCTION 

7

instance, claims that “in the Phaedo, Plato has Socrates …present the intellectual life as a purging of the rational soul from the follies of the body…. During life, Plato concluded, the god-like rational soul should rule over the slave-like mortal body.”18 Writing from this ascetic vantage point, Travis Butler has developed a distinction similar to Zoller’s—at least in terms of current perspectives on the Phaedo—between what he terms an ‘ascetic’ reading on one hand (which holds that: “The philosopher must behaviorally avoid bodily activities such as eating, drinking, sex, and the pursuit of externals to the extent that he can”), and the currently popular ‘evaluative’ reading on the other hand (which holds that: “The philosopher must purify himself from bodily activities and their associated pleasures not by avoiding them to any great extent but by maintaining beliefs and attitudes that reflect their lack of value”).19 While the former is a more extreme view, both are ascetic ethics that denigrate sensual pleasure—including sexuality—in order to venerate the ‘higher’ functions of the soul. Returning to Zoller’s categories, “normative dualism” (in contra-­ distinction to “austere dualism”) “ranks Form over thing and soul over flesh…without denigrating the human body or nature itself…asceticism is a practice that is not predicated on disdain for the body.”20 Although a relative ‘minority report’ in the literature, she claims, the normative view has been gaining more popularity in recent years, expressed in the work of Allan Bloom, Raphael Woolf, and David Roochnik, among others. In fact, discussing the Symposium in Love and Friendship, Allan Bloom describes Plato’s Socrates as, among western thinkers, “the most erotic of philosophers, period.”21 While stopping short of Bloom, Zoller nonetheless also advocates on behalf of the normative interpretation. She opens her discussion with a pointed question, “Who is Plato’s Socrates? This book will remind us that he is a philosopher deeply engaged in worldly matters, who uses his body to enjoy eating…and drinking…to sleep peacefully….to have sexual intercourse, to create a family…. Is this down-to-earth life consistent with his asceticism”?22 She goes on to argue that most ‘austere’ interpretations of Plato’s asceticism are derived from a narrow selection of texts—principally the Phaedo and the Phaedrus—combined with a similarly narrow reading of the Republic, as well as inordinate deference by modern scholars to ancient, medieval, and early modern Platonism, all of which hold the ‘austere’ view. These interpretations, Zoller claims, share a bias toward the extreme asceticism valorized by the classical-Christian metaphysical legacy that influenced them.23 Thus Zoller’s ‘normative’

8 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

account of Plato’s asceticism is far less severe than its ‘austere’ alternatives and appears to present a much different attitude toward the practice of sensual austerity than they do. It seems fair to conclude, however, that though Zoller’s reading makes an interesting case for a much more moderate form of asceticism than the traditional austere one, the most reasonable reading remains closer to the austere dualism and ascetic lifestyle of the traditional interpretations discussed earlier. The weight and importance of Plato’s commentary on the epistemic limitations of sense perception, the metaphysical significance of the Forms and The Good, the immaterial nature of the soul, and the debilitating effects of sensual pleasure and pain on the philosopher-ruler’s moral character all indicate that (for the philosopher) a sensually austere lifestyle is essential and that, except for procreation, sexual preoccupations should be actively avoided. Though Plato indicates that sexuality for procreation is necessary, and is not forbidden in other limited circumstances, he also insists that its effects are too psychologically enervating to be allowed a prominent role in the life of political rulers. Although he concedes that “When the women and men are beyond the age of procreation, we will, of course, leave them free to have intercourse with whomever they wish,”24 the soul of the philosopher-ruler has nonetheless transcended the desires and needs of the body via vigorous abstinence and discipline: the philosopher’s soul “must be seen such as it is in Truth, not maimed by community with body and other evils, as we now see it.”25 Butler illustrates the importance of ascetism in his discussion of the ‘riveting argument’ from the Phaedo. Here Plato, via Socrates, says: “Because every pleasure and every pain provides, as it were, another nail to rivet the soul to the body and to weld them together. It makes the soul corporeal, so that it believes that truth is what the body says it is. …Because of this, it can have no part in the company of the divine, the pure and uniform.”26 Noting the debate between advocates of the respective ‘ascetic’ and ‘evaluative’ interpretations of what is required for perfection of the philosopher’s soul, Butler argues that Plato’s illustration of the soul as ‘riveted’ to the body’s limitations by sensual desires demonstrates how the ‘ascetic’ interpretation must be correct. Since sensual desires are “laws of nature, not effects that can be resisted by the force of the philosopher’s will,” the philosopher “must behaviorally abstain from the activities that lead to these feelings rather than just manfully attempt to resist the effects after engaging in these activities.”27 The philosopher-ruler must therefore actively constrain his desires via disciplined abstinence, as the ‘ascetic’

1 INTRODUCTION 

9

interpretation states, rather than simply focusing on wisdom and assuming that other, sensual, desires will gradually fade away via disinterest, as the ‘evaluative’ interpretation states. Using this same logic (and dialog), Ebray (2017) concurs: “there is an active struggle between body and soul repeatedly described in the Phaedo, in which each is vying to rule the other…Most people’s souls do not struggle against their bodies because their souls have become accomplices of their bodies, bewitched by them…Philosophers actively resist this….”28 Thus, while Plato’s precise prescription regarding sensual austerity for philosopher-rulers leaves ample room for liberal interpretation, as we elaborate further in Chap. 2, it certainly is not unreasonable to read Plato as an advocate of self-control for political leaders. How exactly this principle should be implemented in a healthy state may be somewhat ambiguous in his work, but the importance of rational contemplation focused on wisdom—accomplished via strict control of ambition and sensuality—puts substantial emphasis on sensual austerity as an essential part of the process. Indeed, this idea connects many diverse themes in the Republic related to the structure of a healthy political community as well.

Confucius’s Sage-King While acknowledging there are many ‘Confucianisms’29 and multiple dimensions of Confucian philosophy, we are here particularly concerned with Confucius’s social-political ideas, especially as represented in his Analects, on the topic of sensual austerity and leadership. While Plato was primarily an academic philosopher and prolific writer, with occasional forays into royal advising, Confucius remained a high official, and then a wandering monk, rather than an academic philosopher and writer. Often referred to as The Master, Confucius has been China’s preeminent political philosopher for millennia. Confucius did not often address issues of sex, sexual restraint, and celibacy specifically—focusing instead on good conduct, governance, standards of ethics, filial piety, and community values. However, these ideas nonetheless have important implications for political leadership. A hallmark of Confucian thought—and Asian thought generally—is its emphasis on practice over theory. Confucius’s lack of direct attention to sex, sensuality, and self-restraint in the ruler’s character may be attributable to his belief that these concerns are a natural consequence of moral rectitude. Like Plato, he argued that the ruler’s character

10 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

and moral commitment are essential to his effectiveness and require exceptional self-sacrifice and self-denial. However, a key difference between Plato and Confucius was that, while Plato prescribed a communal life divorced from family ties for philosopher kings, Confucius recommended a life of filial piety—emphasizing the role of family values and paternal authority. For scholar-officials attempting to implement Confucian political philosophy, this goal was realized via Confucius’s idealized society where the paternal king was both ruler and sage. The character of this rule involved the “necessity of self-effacing and deferential kingship”30 as “a Confucian sage-king’s virtue can embrace the whole world, at least in theory, but it is rooted in the humaneness of person-­to-person interaction….”31 The king is an individual of compassion, leading an abstemious life while thinking about the welfare of his subjects all the time. Though Confucius’s Analects did not explicitly talk about sensual austerity in the context of politics, his emphasis on the moral duty of the ruler suggests that  such austerity is connected to politics. Though Confucius never prescribed celibacy per se, an emphasis on the virtuous life of kings, and on abstinence from idle pleasure, is characteristic of his political philosophy. As the Analects suggests, a major reason why he left his role of advisor in the Lu state was because of its ruler’s excesses in this regard. Later neo-Confucian philosophers of the Ming Dynasty also challenged the authority of political rulers on the basis of these Confucian virtues.32 This concern was articulated by Wang Yangming who wrote, “Our time seems to understand the way of sages well enough, and yet when I look around I see no sages.”33 Neo-Confucians idealized Confucius as the exemplar of moral purity and physical discipline from an earlier, more virtuous, era—despite his failure as an advisor and the failure of his higher values to mitigate decadence of his time.34 In the Analects, Confucius states:35 There are three things men find enjoyment in which are advantageous, and three things they find enjoyment in which are injurious. To find enjoyment in the discriminating study of ceremonies and music; to find enjoyment in speaking of the goodness of others; to find enjoyment in having many worthy friends:—these are advantageous. To find enjoyment in extravagant pleasures; to find enjoyment in idleness and sauntering; to find enjoyment in the pleasures of feasting:—these are injurious.

1 INTRODUCTION 

11

While Confucius advocates discriminating use of music and ritual, a particularly important part of traditional Chinese society, and encourages respecting others and cultivating worthy friends, he discourages excessive self-indulgence, or what he terms “extravagant pleasures, idleness, sauntering, and feasting” as deleterious to public administration and to those conducting it. The effective ruler understands and abides by the Confucian distinction between two kinds of enjoyments—one which is advantageous and the other which is injurious. Anticipating Benjamin Franklin’s aphorisms regarding the virtue of personal temperance, he said: “the firm, the enduring, the simple, and the modest are near to virtue.”36 For Confucius, as for Plato, political rule is a skill reserved for society’s most morally self-disciplined and well educated. Confucius placed special emphasis on moral rectitude as a practice and an achievement of character. His advice to rulers stressed the importance of pragmatic actions as much as adherence to principles or theories of human nature. Much like Plato, who emphasized education in moral philosophy, Confucius emphasized self-cultivation and adherence to rules of propriety for capable rulers. When asked for “whether there was a single sentence which could make a country prosperous,” Confucius replied: “There is a saying, however, which people have—‘To be a prince is difficult; to be a minister is not easy.’ If a ruler knows this—the difficulty of being a prince—may there not be expected from this one sentence the prosperity of his country?”37 In her study of romantic love in Chinese culture, Lynn Pan elaborates on the ramifications of this Confucian restraint: “any pursuit of love,” she notes, “had also to contend with the sexual prudery that the Chinese say—much as the English say of the Victorians or of Western missionaries—had come of Confucian moralizing. Not that sex as such interested the Sage, since politics—that is, a proper state of affairs between the ruler and the ruled—was what really concerned him.”38 The necessity of subordinating sensual energies to ‘higher’ purposes is essential to the Confucian psychology of leadership. Ritual propriety is an internalization of the education that prescribes this psychology and is key to the moral development that leaders require to rule virtuously. The educated man (and ruler) values ritual tradition, familial relationships and the subordination of physical desire to moral excellence. Pan observes,39 Confucius prized self-control—it seldom led men astray, he said—and if he comes across as rather proper, more intellectual than appetitive, that does seem to be how he really was. Anyone who heard him say, “Hard is it to deal

12 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

with him, who will stuff himself with food the whole day, without applying his mind to anything” and put him down for a sober-sides would not, one imagines, be too far wrong.

Further, she claims, “His legacy has a lot to answer for, his twentieth-­ century debunkers claim, not least the squeamishness with regard to sex that he and his followers had handed on. Did Confucius not famously say of certain airs in the Book of Songs (the Chinese classic poetry) that he disliked their music and their lyrics for their licentiousness?”40 In this regard Confucian ethics are characteristic of his era, in which “sex seemed to have been even more of a matter of state than in other civilizations. Sexual promiscuity seemed to have been political licentiousness by another name. It was almost as if you could only be a libertine if you were a conspirator or fomenter of rebellion. It was a Chinese historian’s reflex to blame disorder in the country on the emperor’s excessive attachment to his harem.”41 Sensual desires require restraint via ritual practice and moral propriety. Pan elaborates, …in the ancient frame of mind a reckless love affair is not just a reckless love affair but an indication of how far the government of the day had gone off course. A deserted woman is not just a deserted woman but a metaphor for the misunderstood and unappreciated courtier or official. Her plaint is not just a plaint about her husband’s or lover’s neglect but a government official’s plea for a return to good government. Indeed, read a relationship between the sexes as anything but a relationship between the sexes and you would be thought to be doing right by Confucius. Politics being the Sage’s true calling, it was political meaning and metaphor that frame of mind a reckless love affair is not just a reckless love affair but Confucian scholars found under every bed: sex needn’t be sex if it could be symbol.42

Paul Goldin has observed that, although often under-acknowledged, ancient Chinese scholars paid considerable attention to the importance of sexuality in politics and society.43 Confucian literature is replete with metaphors and symbols equating political leadership with traditional concepts of sexual morality—physical license, lust and emotional excess associated with political disorder, and physical austerity, restraint, and emotional discipline associated with political order. This Confucian approach was the imperial ideology of the Ch’in and Han dynasties, he argues, in which “sexuality was now conceived as the most telling indication of one’s political intentions.” Consequently, unregulated or illicit sexual activity was

1 INTRODUCTION 

13

associated with, or construed as symptomatic of, unregulated or illicit political activity.44 For Confucius, a virtuous ruler would not ‘seek to gratify his appetite,’ and is ‘earnest in what he is doing, and careful in his speech,’ and ‘frequents the company of men of principle that he may be rectified.’ The sage-king’s moral rectitude can be compared to ‘the north polar star,’ which keeps its place while all the stars turn toward it. The moral comportment of the ruler thus serves as an ideal model for the political community. The nature of moral rule has its origins in the virtuous character of its ruler (defined by his austerity, restraint, and gentlemanly reserve) rather than through legal formalities. This kind of civic virtue, predicated on the ‘sense of shame’ integral to sensual and emotional restraint, is the cause, rather than the consequence, of a healthy state. Virtue is ethically prior to law, and effective legal systems are the result of virtuous rule. Following the rules of propriety modeled by the virtuous ruler, citizens ‘will have the sense of shame’, and ‘moreover will become good’. This connection between the ruler’s moral rectitude (involving sensual austerity) and a healthy political community recalls Plato’s conception of virtuous leadership as well. Thus, although he does not mandate an explicit ethic of sexual austerity for rulers, the Confucian tradition does prescribe abstemious behavior for rulers in their capacity as political leaders. The ruler should ‘not eat much….’ If he is greedy, his subjects will be greedy. If he is extravagant, his subjects will be extravagant. If he is licentious, his subjects will be licentious. If he is corrupt his subjects will be corrupt, and even the formal legal mechanisms will prove inadequate to checkmate moral degeneration. Confucius says in the Analects, “If the people be led by laws, and uniformity sought to be given them by punishments, they will try to avoid the punishment, but have no sense of shame.”45 Further he says, “If a minister make his own conduct correct, what difficulty will he have in assisting in government? If he cannot rectify himself, what has he to do with rectifying others?”46 Hence, in the Confucian world, the ruler remains virtuous through sensual austerity and this, by example, becomes the foundation for a healthy political order. We have elaborated this Confucian worldview and his prescriptions for a moral social order in Chap. 3.

14 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

Gandhi’s Brahmachari-Leader There is significant literature47 on Gandhi’s sexuality and how his ideas on sexuality and self-restraint shaped his worldview. However, there is little focus there on Gandhian ideas regarding asceticism and political leadership, which is our focus in this study. Gandhi felt that sexuality and desire were intricately connected to public life and politics, and that self-control translated directly into power of various kinds, both public and private. Gandhi’s popular appeal among India’s masses may be attributed, at least in part, to the degree to which he was able to embody a powerful ideal of sensual austerity that linked his sociopolitical projects to pervasive Hindu notions of austerity and renunciation.48 In Gandhi’s moral world, the personal and the political collapse into an ontological whole. He argued, “I do not believe that life is divided into separate air-tight compartments. On the contrary it is an undivided and indivisible whole; and, therefore, what is or may be good for one must be good for all. Whatever activity fails to stand that unmistakable test is an activity that must be abjured by all who have the public weal at heart.”49 Further, he wrote, “My life is one indivisible whole, and all my activities run into one another; and they all have their rise in my insatiable love of mankind.”50 Gandhi’s conception of politics is linked to the idea of brahmacharya (crudely translated as renunciation via celibacy), rooted in the Indian philosophical-cultural tradition. A compound word of two Sanskrit words—brahma (God, divine, the ultimate reality) and achara (conduct, practice)—brahmacharya literally means bringing God to the conduct of daily life. A key philosophical and religious element in the religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, it emphasizes both physical abstinence and abstinence from any form of violence—whether in thought or action. Among the twentieth-century thinkers and political leaders, Gandhi distinguished himself as a celibate politician. Known as ‘a saint among politicians, and a politician among saints,’ he emphasized and practiced celibacy as a way to rise above selfish interests and dedicate life completely to public service. In his autobiography he writes about his struggle with sex and his efforts to transcend sexual desire.51 David Madelbaum notes that Gandhi’s vow of celibacy helped him commit himself to public service.52 Gandhi insisted that public leaders must rise above sensual self-­ indulgence or personal profit and quoted Confucius, “In a well-ordered State, progress is not measured in terms of wealth. The purity of the people and their leaders alone constitute the true wealth of the nation.”53 He

1 INTRODUCTION 

15

applied the same standard to his social theory, “Civilization is that mode of conduct which points to man the path of duty. Performance of duty and observance of morality are convertible terms. To observe morality is to attain mastery over our mind and passions.”54 During an interview in 1936, American educator and activist Margaret Sanger, asked, “Mr. Gandhi, do you not see a great difference between sex love and sex lust? Isn’t it sex lust and not sex love which you oppose?” Gandhi replied, “Yes, it is. But when both want to satisfy animal passion without having to suffer the consequences of their act, it is not love. It is lust. But if love is pure it will transcend animal passion and will regulate itself. We have not had enough education of the passions. When a husband says, “Let us not have children but have relations,” what is that but animal passion? If they do not want to have any more children they should simply refuse to unite.”55 Gandhi rejected the idea that sex can be an expression of love. He argued that genuine love—even romantic love—transcends physical desire and passion: it is an expression instead of spiritual equanimity and concentration on higher Truth or God. Moreover, sensual austerity for Gandhi was not an abstract ideal, but a practical tool in the fight against injustice and oppression. For satyagraha (adherence to, or love for, truth), Gandhi would argue, self-control is an essential condition. This love for truth propels the individual not only to fight injustice and oppression, but also creates conditions that transform both the oppressive other and the self. Gandhi’s Satyagraha is also linked to his ideal of swaraj (literally meaning self-control or power over self). Arguing that material resources and power by themselves are relative, and power is crude without a moral compass, he focused on the moral dimensions of means used to realize goals. For him, power is not “power-over-­ others, by military power (sticks), economic power (carrots), cultural power (imposed identity), or political power (because it is so decided), which pits one arsenal of power against the other for balance, competition, or ultimately: victory.”56 Gandhi’s power, in contrast, is the power-over-­ self, necessary for individuals, their leaders, and organizations to self-­ regulate their actions. A satyagrahi (an individual practicing satyagraha), Gandhi claimed, must have self-control to fight injustice and oppression through nonviolence, as Gandhi himself practiced during his fight against British rule in India. Nonviolence is not the weapon of a coward or weakling, but a weapon of the courageous. In an interview with the American journalist, Drew Pearson, in 1924, Gandhi argued, “By non-violence I do not mean

16 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

cowardice…who discovered the law of nonviolence were greater geniuses…Having themselves known the use of arms, they realized their uselessness and taught a weary world that its salvation lay not through violence, but through non-violence. Therefore, I respectfully invite Americans to study carefully the Indian National Movement and they will therein find an effective substitute for war.”57 For Gandhi, truth, nonviolence, and self-control are all interlinked in his worldview of an ‘indivisible whole.’ Richard Gregg calls this nonviolent struggle ‘moral jiu-jitsu,’ in which the satyagrahi has ‘superior position, poise and power’ for many reasons, which he elaborated: “First, he has taken the moral initiative. His conduct is new, unexpected, and unpredictable to the person habituated to violence. Second, he is not surprised. He knows, by reasoning or by intuition and faith, what is really taking place in such a struggle, and how to control the process. Third, his self-control and lack of anger conserve his energy. Moreover, he is not in as suggestible a condition as his assailant.”58 Gregg articulates the Gandhian view of society in which self-­control is a key virtue:59 We have more control over our own characters than we have over the external forms of society. So we must begin with ourselves, knowing that to the extent that we can win self-control and strength in the qualities needed for this struggle, we will be able to begin to modify society. Indeed, that part of society in our own neighborhood will begin to change as soon as we start. The responsibility thus rests squarely on ourselves and our work begins there. We must change the character of our own lives. This means for each of us a new and morally better way of life, to be developed gradually yet continuously, just as any new habit is learned. The disciplines described above are ways by which people in groups can acquire the habit of non-­ violence so strongly that they will be able to prove its power, endure any opposition and attack, and create a finer social order.

Gandhi’s ideal state, Ramrajya (kingdom of Ram, the ideal king in the Hindu epic, Ramayana), is built on this moral conception of society. It has significant similarities with Plato’s Republic and Confucius’s ideal state, in placing a morality of self-restraint at the center of political life and leadership. He wrote, “I must say that independence of my dream means Ramarajya i.e., the Kingdom of God on earth.”60 He defines Ramrajya as “Divine Raj, the Kingdom of God,” which means “sovereignty of the people based on pure moral authority.”61 The Ramrajya’s leaders would lead by example, providing a well-spring of justice via their commitment

1 INTRODUCTION 

17

to brahmacharya. This conception of ideal state informed Gandhi’s own commitment to public service and satyagraha in India and South Africa. We have further expounded on this Gandhian philosophy on ideal state and the ideal ruler in Chap. 4.

Conclusion As this overview demonstrates, although Plato, Confucius, and Gandhi represent divergent philosophical-cultural traditions, they share several similar ideas on political leadership and the virtue of sensual austerity. Perhaps the most important of these is the character of moral leadership which is embodied neither in ideology nor technique, but rather in living expression. For all of them as well, moral leadership involves a life of sensual austerity in the service of the state. Whether in the role of a Platonic philosopher king, a Confucian sage-politician, or a Gandhian brahmachari-­ leader, a frugal existence that transcends concerns related to food, sensual gratification, money, or idle pleasure, is imperative for the kind of moral excellence required to bring about just rule in a healthy state. In each case, there is an inextricable connection between the ruler’s personal virtue via an abstemious life on one hand and effective political leadership on the other. Notwithstanding this common imperative, of course, the practical details of their respective approaches vary. In several respects, Gandhi and Confucius are more similar to each other than either is to Plato. Plato clearly considers the passions, via romantic and familial love, an impediment to virtuous rule, and denies family life to the ruling classes. Plato’s philosopher king does not know who his own children are. On the other hand, Confucius emphasizes the importance of family life—prescribing this institution as a vehicle for sensual restraint and self-discipline. Family relationships model the social virtues that sustain the political order. While Plato saw family as a moral distraction at best and a subversive political force at worst, Confucius and Gandhi envisioned family life as an incubator for personal and political morality—this difference perhaps stemming, in turn, from Plato’s philosophy and life as an academic philosopher with limited practical political experience, in contra-distinction to Confucius and Gandhi’s respective philosophies and lives emphasizing practical politics and activism. Though Plato’s, Confucius’s, and Gandhi’s ideas clearly emerged in and through vastly different cultural milieus, they share very similar views

18 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

on sensual austerity in relation to political rule. Their common ideas, we argue, are relevant across history and cultures. Ancient ideas often have enduring value and contemporary applications. Gandhi is a case in point: though he speaks from a unique historical and philosophical vantage point, he perpetuates the universal notion that, when it comes to self-control and political order, a ruler must conquer her desires. Gandhi wrote, “ethics (of nonviolence and passive resistance) in governments and communities of men are plain and unmistakable. I have referred to Socrates and Plato, to Christ and to modern morality. Going further back to antiquity we find Confucius indicating in his moral code the dividing line between active disobedience and passive resistance in simple and homely words: ‘At first my way with men was to hear their words and give them credit for their conduct. Now my way is to hear their words and look at their conduct…To see what is right and not to do is want of courage.’”62 In Chap. 5, we elaborate the parallels and variations in the ideas of these thinkers in the context of sensual austerity and moral leadership. We believe that a cogent, compelling, and elegant argument can be made for a foundational cross-cultural connection between sensual austerity as a measure of moral character and effective political leadership that is grounded in the classical roots of contemporary political thought, and we call for further research on this long-neglected phenomenon. Abstemiousness as a requirement for political leadership is currently a pariah subject—sometimes deliberately dismissed and most often casually ignored. However, in this study we contend that this neglect is not for lack of an extensive and substantial historical legacy. Although it is a complex and important phenomenon, it has received scant scholarly attention. The three thinkers considered here are exemplars of this phenomenon. Indeed, the persistence during our own era of public concern over sexual morality in things like elections for public office, feminist political and social theory, and gender relations in professional life, suggests that it remains as relevant and important as ever. Hence, while exploring the ideas of these three moral exemplars from cross-cultural traditions in the next chapters, we make a case that the subject calls for further exploration and deeper reflection in contemporary social-political theory and politics.

1 INTRODUCTION 

19

Notes 1. Aristotle, Politics, translated by Benjamin Jowett (Kitchener: Batoche Books, 1999), 6. The full sentence reads thus: “But he who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god: he is no part of a state.” 2. Herbert Deane, “Classical and Christian Political Thought,” Political Theory 1, 4 (1973), 415–425. Deane in this article elaborates how the classical political thought viewed individual participation in the affairs of the state as a noble duty and how this approach was undermined in the later Christian thinking with thinkers like St. Augustine emphasizing dualism in his conceptions of city on earth and city of god, in which politics was accorded a lower place. 3. George H. Sabine, “What is a Political Theory?,” The Journal of Politics 1, 1 (1939), 5. 4. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics in Introduction to Aristotle, R.  McKeon Trans. (Chicago :University Press 1973), 376. 5. John Dewey, Ethics (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1932), 3. 6. Crane Briton, History of Western Morals (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1959), 5. 7. A.N. Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York: Free Press, 1978), 39. 8. Plato, The Republic, ed. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1968), 190–192. 9. Ibid., 39. 10. Ibid., 189–199. 11. Ibid., 221–250. 12. Ibid., 127–220. 13. Ibid., 193–276) 14. Plato, Phaedo, ed. David Gallop (Oxford: University Press, 1975), 10. 15. Coleen Zoller, Plato and the Body: Reconsidering Socratic Asceticism (Albany: SUNY Press, 2018). 16. Ibid., 6. 17. Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1945), 137. 18. Genevieve Lloyd, The Man of Reason: Male and Female in Western Philosophy (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1984), 6. 19. Travis Butler, “A Riveting Argument in Favor of Asceticism in the Phaedo,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 29, 2 (2012), 106. 20. Zoller, Plato and the Body, 8. 21. Allen Bloom, Love and Friendship (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993), 431. 22. Zoller, Plato and the Body, 2.

20 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

23. Ibid., 19. 24. Plato, The Republic, 140. 25. Ibid., 294–295. 26. Plato, Phaedo, 33 27. Butler, “The Riveting Argument”, 108. 28. David Ebray, “The Asceticism of the Phaedo: Pleasure, Purification and the Soul’s Proper Activity” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 99, 1 (2017), 9–10. 29. Roger Ames and Peter Hershock, eds., Confucianisms for a Changing World Cultural Order (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2018). 30. Wonsuk Chang, “Euro-Japanese Universalism, Korean Confucianism, and Aesthetic Communities,” in Ames and Hershock, Confucianisms for a Changing World Cultural Order, 228. 31. Sor-hoon Tan, “Rethinking Confucianism’s Relationship to Global Capitalism: Some Philosophical Reflections for a Confucian Critique of Global Capitalism,” in Ames and Hershock, Confucianisms for a Changing World Cultural Order, 20. 32. Dominic Sachsenmaier, Global Entanglements of a Man Who Never Traveled (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018), 79. 33. Quoted in, ibid., 81. 34. Ibid., 79. 35. James Legge, The Chinese Classics, vol. 1 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960), 311–312. 36. Ibid., 274. 37. Ibid., 268–269. 38. Lynn Pan, When True Love Came to China (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2015), 14. 39. Ibid., 15. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid., 16. 42. Ibid., 18. 43. Paul R. Goldin, The Culture of Sex in Ancient China (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002), 1. 44. Ibid., 2–3. 45. Legge, The Chinese Classics, vol. 1, 146. 46. Legge, The Chinese Classics, vol. 1, 268. 47. For example, see Joseph Alter, “Gandhi’s Body, Gandhi’s Truth: Nonviolence and the Biomoral Imperative of Public Health,” The Journal of Asian Studies 55, 2 (1996), 301–322; Farah Godrej, “Nonviolence and Gandhi’s Truth: A Method for Moral and Political Arbitration,” The Review of Politics 68, 2 (2006), 287–317; Vinay Lal, “Nakedness, Nonviolence, and Brahmacharya: Gandhi’s Experiments in Celibate

1 INTRODUCTION 

21

Sexuality,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 9, 1/2 (2000), 105–136; Veena Howard, “Rethinking Gandhi’s Celibacy: Ascetic Power and Women’s Empowerment,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 81, 1 (2013), 130–161. 48. Lloyd Rudolph and Susanne Rudolph, Postmodern Gandhi and Other Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967). 49. M. K. Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 57 (New Delhi: The Publications Division, Government of India, 2015), 147. (The collected works of Gandhi runs into one hundred volumes. Hereafter, in each reference to these works, the number of the volume has been given in Italics before the page numbers.) 50. Ibid., 204. 51. M. K. Gandhi, An Autobiography Or The Story of my experiments with truth (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 2009). 52. David Mandelbaum, “The Study of Life History: Gandhi,” Current Anthropology 14, 3 (1973), 177–206. 53. Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 80, 431. 54. M. K. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj (Ahmedabad, Navajivan Publishing House, 1938), 53. Also available at: https://www.mkgandhi.org/hindswaraj/ hindswaraj.htm. 55. Margaret Sanger, “Gandhi and Mrs. Sanger Debate Birth Control,” November 1936, Available at: http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/ webedition/app/documents/show.php?sangerDoc=320521.xml. 56. Johan Galtung, “Two Worlds: Gandhi and the Modern World,” in Debidatta A.  Mahapatra and Yashwant Pathak, eds., Gandhi and the Modern World (New York: Lexington, 2018), 2. 57. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 23, 197. 58. Richard B.  Gregg, The Power of Nonviolence (Canton, Maine: Greenleaf Books, 1960), 46–47. 59. Ibid., 173. 60. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 84, 80. 61. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 64, 192. 62. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 8, 497–498.

CHAPTER 2

The Philosopher King: Body, Mind, and Eros

Alfred North Whitehead’s somewhat overenthusiastic endorsement notwithstanding, Plato’s contribution to the ‘western canon’ and, indeed, to western civilization in almost every respect, can hardly be overemphasized. His influence has emerged, reemerged, and manifested itself in ever-­ evolving cultural forms throughout western history. In his History of Western Philosophy Bertrand Russell claimed that “Plato and Aristotle were the most influential of all philosophers, ancient, medieval, and modern, and of the two, it was Plato who had the greater effect upon subsequent ages.”1 Laurence Cooper has recently added that “If it’s possible to regard the Western philosophic tradition as a series of footnotes to Plato, then it’s at least as plausible to regard the history of political philosophy as a series of footnotes to the Republic and no more so than where political philosophy looks at the soul.”2 In recent decades, Plato’s influential disciples like Leo Strauss, Allan Bloom, and their successors have also become influential popularizers of his political idealism.3 One important message that Plato has for the contemporary west, according to Allan Bloom, is his contempt for the kind of unrestrained sensuality fueling (often unconsciously) the social, moral, and aesthetic spirit of our contemporary age. Lamenting the general decline of ‘high culture’ in the dangerously egalitarian intellectual milieu of post-­modernity, Bloom subjects every social institution (from marriage to music to education) to a scathing Platonic critique. Popular music in particular he derides as “by its nature…all that is today most resistant to philosophy” because © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. A. Mahapatra, R. Grego, Sensual Austerity and Moral Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89151-0_2

23

24 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

of its raw appeal to sensuality. Since “Plato’s teaching about music is that rhythm and dance, accompanied by melody, are the most barbarous expression of the soul,” then certainly “nothing profound, intelligent, noble, sublime or even decent can be found in such a tableaux.”4 Indeed, so insidious and contrary to the Platonic life of reason is its sensuous appeal, that contemporary rock-and-roll amounts to “a nonstop, prepackaged masturbation fantasy,” hopelessly corrupting the uncultivated spirit of American youth. This kind of assessment Bloom warns us, “may seem exaggerated, but only because some would prefer to see it as such,”5… and since ‘some,’ in Plato’s elitist estimation, really means the vast majority of citizens dwelling in the ‘cave’ of popular culture, this vision of music and of the current cultural ethos generally, from Bloom’s lofty Platonic moral heights, serves as a grim condemnation of American values and institutions.6 Bloom’s application of Plato is not only entertaining but also instructive for the topic in question here: he recognizes and examines the importance of sensual restraint in Plato’s thought, and its current significance, in ways that Plato would probably endorse. However, his Platonic critique also never really addresses its relation to political life—and especially its relevance to political leadership—to the extent that Plato would have wanted. Bloom’s mentor, Leo Strauss, in many places notes the relationship between sense-experience, the supersensory intellect, and the cultivation of the soul required for the philosopher king in the Republic: “the just man is the man in whom each part of the soul does its work well. Since the highest part of the soul is reason…only the philosopher can be truly just” or fit for political rule.7 However, what may be particularly salient about Strauss and others in this connection is their emphasis: While they stress the metaphysical-epistemic basis for Plato’s political theory and how it configures his attitude toward the physical and sensual, the more intimate psychosocial dynamics (sensual love, sexuality, and sensual pleasure) involved in eros’ practical relationship with moral development for political leadership specifically, remains largely unexplored in the literature—at least to the extent that its significance seems to require. Here again, we seek to illustrate the importance of this connection. Specifically, we call for further examination of Plato’s concern with sensuality as it pertains to political leadership. Plato’s utopian political community, social order, educational training, and prescription for moral leadership are all contingent upon a focused regimen for the soul—a regimen intended precisely to cultivate the soul’s highest potentials. This is

2  THE PHILOSOPHER KING: BODY, MIND, AND EROS 

25

achieved by identifying those qualities and virtues (reason-wisdom, spiritedness-­ courage, and sensuousness-appetitiveness) necessary for a well-ordered soul and learning to develop those dominant traits in each soul that are required for that soul’s function in the social-political order. Developing the kind of soul required for the role of political rule is possibly the most rare and difficult human accomplishment there is. Such a soul is developed by fostering a capacity for reason and wisdom that remains uncorrupted or weakened by the distractions of the body and of the passions—and of the needs arising from them. The most powerful and prominent of these distractions is eros. Although it is also the most powerful vehicle for attaining wisdom, eros must nonetheless be suppressed, restrained, or channeled in the soul and life of the philosopher king. It must be purified of its physical and sensual attachments in order to focus the philosopher’s—and hence ruler’s—attention on a kind of wisdom that transcends the material realm. Thus, the role that sensual austerity plays in the moral development of a community’s best souls is an essential one. We argue that acknowledging this role is as important to understanding Plato’s prescription for political rule as any other aspect of his political philosophy that scholars have traditionally emphasized. In the first section of the chapter, we examine the historical sources of Plato’s ideas, and in the second section we explore political order as envisaged by Plato in his Republic. In the third section we focus on the link between sensual austerity and moral leadership in Plato’s philosophy, and in the fourth section we present an outline of how Plato’s ideas on this connection influenced the course of the Western philosophy in later centuries. In the concluding section, we summarize the main arguments of the chapter.

Historical Sources of Plato’s Ideas While there are many interpretive nuances in the vast literature on cultural influences that shaped Plato’s thought, there is at least a general consensus on what these influences probably were. His ideas represent the culmination of philosophical, religious, and political themes, events, and practices that configured the wider Hellenic ethos from which they emerged. These influences are evident in the attitudes toward sensuality, abstinence, morality, and politics found in the Republic and elsewhere. The intellectual sources of his ideas—metaphysical and political—are well known. Heraclitus, while not an explicit presence in his work, is noted by Aristotle8 and others as an influence on Plato’s metaphysical purview. His

26 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

denigration of the sensory, transitory material world is inspired by his sense of ‘Heraclitean flux’ and its ontological and ethical implications. Parmenides’s influence is acknowledged explicitly (unsurprisingly, in the Parmenides9), and Plato’s repudiation of Heraclitean metaphysics in favor of a unified, eternal, immutable realm of pure ideas also mirrors Parmenides’s ontology. Plato transforms Parmenidean Being by bifurcating it into Being and becoming, and then elevating Being above becoming to the realm of the Forms (and, ultimately, the Good). Pythagorean influences are evinced via the presence of Pythagorean devotees in several dialogs and by Plato’s well-known contact with Pythagorean communities in Sicily. Aristotle also mentions this,10 and recent research by Phillip Horky11 has examined its influence on Plato’s metaphysics in novel ways. Plato’s concept of supersensible, quasi-mathematical Forms underwriting material reality is largely a legacy of the Pythagorean tradition. Also, the mystical Orphic elements of Pythagorean doctrine enter Plato’s cosmology in the Timaeus and in his conception of eros in the Symposium and elsewhere. The belief in transmigration of souls, the immateriality of the soul, the ecstatic dimension of eros, and the notion of the body and physical world as a prison of ignorance and suffering that the soul must transcend via divine and esoteric knowledge, is very much an Orphic thread in Plato’s philosophy12—and certainly the influence of Socrates was so pervasive in Plato’s work, at least through the early and middle dialogs, that centuries of ongoing scholarship has been continuously (and inconclusively) reinterpreting its nature and scope. All these intellectual influences helped to configure Plato’s conception of the mind-body relation and its connection to the morality of political leadership. Plato’s social-political theory is also a reflection of his age. The historical events surrounding his career contributed to the perceptions, views, and biases that informed his conception of the utopian community and its moral foundations. His life and career fell squarely in the midst of pivotal political, intellectual, religious, and socioeconomic developments shaping the course of Greek civilization and western civilization generally. Socrates’s and Plato’s combined life spans (from approximately 470–340 BCE) encompassed almost the entire duration of the Classical-Hellenic era and its vicissitudes. They witnessed the end and aftermath of the Persian Wars, which established Athenian regional hegemony in the eastern Mediterranean, as well as the entire Peloponnesian War, which largely ended this hegemony. They both benefitted from, and suffered at the hands of, Athenian democracy—from Solon’s Laws through the age of

2  THE PHILOSOPHER KING: BODY, MIND, AND EROS 

27

Pericles. They were simultaneous beneficiaries and critics of Athens’ open society, which fostered Plato’s career and Academy, as well as Socrates’s trial and execution. They lived in an era of architectural feats like the Acropolis and Parthenon, the sculpture and statuary of Phideas and Polyclitus, and the accomplishments of literary titans like Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes. They also experienced (largely as beneficiaries) the inegalitarian consequences of Athenian social-political life: with a population by the fifth century BCE of around 300,000, only about 40,000 or so of Athens’s residents were citizens. Close to 100,000 were slaves and the rest were alien residents or women—all of whom lacked direct political representation, full citizen’s rights, or even what we would now call human rights. The fate of Athenian democracy, the effects of the Peloponnesian War, and, of course, the death of Socrates played an important role in this process. The corruption of Athenian political institutions, along with the perceived decline of Athenian society’s moral integrity at end of the war, undermined the status of its democratic foundations. The reign of the Thirty Tyrants after the war shed an even more unfavorable light on the despotic alternative to its democracy and, upon the restoration of democracy, Socrates’s fate highlighted the dysfunction of communities driven by a democratic political system’s flawed ethos—while also demonstrating the importance of ethics in political governance. War marked the end of an era that, although at least permitting a brief opportunity for thinkers like Socrates to flourish, also provided a case-study in the consequences of allowing an egalitarian political community to be ruled by public passions. Indeed, Durant’s classic popularization The Life of Greece may not have been inappropriately melodramatic in describing this process as “The suicide of Greece,” given that “Athens was exhausted in body and soul; only the depredation of character by prolonged war and desperate suffering could explain the ruthless treatment of Melos, the bitter sentence of Myteline, the execution of the Arginuseae generals and the sacrifice of Socrates on the altar of a dying faith.”13 These kinds of experiences, along with Plato’s own misadventures as a political adviser in the corrupt despotic court at Syracuse, set the stage for his deliberations in the Republic and elsewhere. His conception of social relations and the psychology of sexuality also reflected the prevailing beliefs and customs of his era. Despite its democratic and egalitarian ideals, Athenian society was nevertheless, for the vast majority of its population, hierarchical and oppressive—excluding women,

28 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

slaves, and metics from participation in political or public life on many levels. Metics and women were socially disadvantaged and slaves were completely dispossessed of rights and freedoms. Free woman served simultaneously as objects of domestic veneration, servitude, and sexual exploitation. Bruce Thornton notes that, while Homer’s Penelope (“for whom sexual passion is subordinate to qualities of character and shared values”14) was the archetypal wife in Hellenic culture, “In Greek culture, sexuality is considered a force of nature. Like all such forces it is powerful, volatile, amoral, and destructive; it must be controlled by the orders of the mind and institutions of culture—lest it sweep them away.”15 The sexual accessibility of sex-workers like the hetaira and pornai, as well as sexual exploitation of slaves generally by married Greek men, made sexuality a common source of domestic mistrust and secrecy—and made the female body, for Athenian men, simultaneously a source of psychological dependence, insecurity, and betrayal. This persistent nagging menace, which is reflected in Plato’s concern about free citizens having sex with slaves in the Laws and Aristophanes depiction in the Lysistrata of the female population’s anguish over slave women sleeping with free men, is evidence of the perceived danger that this dynamic posed in Athenian society at the time16 and established the cultural context for attitudes about the danger of unrestrained sensual appetites in dialogs like the Republic and Phaedo. Sexuality in Athenian daily life was in many respects a source of marital infidelity, personal betrayal, and moral danger. This social psychology configured the cultural context of Plato’s ideas about eros, the physical world, morality, and political order.

Foundations of Plato’s Political Order in the Republic Despite the profusion of diverse commentary on the relationship between Plato’s metaphysical and political hierarchies, there does seem to be a consensus on the logical connection between them. This connection is, in large part, what also underwrites his insistence upon a reciprocal psychological hierarchy of character traits in the individual and functional hierarchy of social-political roles in the state. His moral psychology and political order are designed to mirror both the metaphysical order of reality and the human condition as part of this reality. The successful political community is dependent upon the proper functioning of its constituent members,

2  THE PHILOSOPHER KING: BODY, MIND, AND EROS 

29

which depends in turn upon the healthy moral psychology of its citizens and rulers, which is itself contingent on a correct understanding of the metaphysical order that grounds this psychology. The relegation of sensuality to its subordinate role in the political order mirrors its proper role in the ontological and psychic order. The reason why sensuality, as Thornton noted, “must be controlled—lest it sweep away” sanity and society, is because “sexuality is considered a force of nature” that, like other “natural” forces (including eros itself) must be properly cultivated in order to promote, rather than mitigate, positive human potentials. “How far can the mind control the body…Must we not at any rate admit that there is in human nature a higher and lower principle?”, goes Jowett’s classic interpretation of Plato, “the true leader of men must be above the motives of ambition, and…national character is of greater value than material comfort and prosperity.”17 The philosopher-ruler realizes this and guides the community and its citizens to achieve it. In the Republic18 and elsewhere, Plato elaborates the metaphysical basis upon which the psychic, moral, and political order is predicated. The ‘divided line’ describes a hierarchy of reality and truth in a way that corresponds to the psychology, ethics, and government that are derived from them. He writes, “take these four affections arising in the soul…intellection in relation to the highest one, and thought in relation to the second; to the third assign trust, and to the last imagination. Arrange them in proportion and believe that as the segments to which they correspond participate in truth, so they participate in clarity.”19 The Good, described at the close of Book VI, representing the unifying and ultimate ‘Form of Forms’ stands both at the top of Plato’s hierarchy and beneath it as its animating foundation. It serves as the source of all Forms while not reducible to any. It is the pure unified ground of possibility for all reality and knowledge, and thus transcends all conceivable existents and ideas while remaining that which is most essential to them. Hence, the famous ‘sun analogy’: Therefore say not only being known is present in the things known as a consequence of the Good, but also existence and being are in them besides as a result of it, although the Good isn’t being but  is  still beyond being, exceeding it in dignity and power.20

From this primordial source—or perhaps in and through it—the Forms emanate. While their precise nature is the subject of endless interpretation and intractable debates, of course, it might still be safe to describe the Forms as abstract logical, quasi-mathematical, universal ideals and, as such,

30 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

potentialities for the material particulars, which, in turn, emanate from them—or perhaps ‘participate in’ them (hence the Phaedo’s explanation, for instance, of the form ‘Equality’ as the source of particulars that are equal,21 or the form ‘Beauty’ as the source of beautiful things and experiences22). The Forms also underwrite Plato’s dualism between the respective immaterial-ideal-universal and material-concrete-particular realms, which, in turn, provides the ontological basis for his ethics and politics. Abstract Forms grounding the sensible world are closer to the ultimate Truth (the Good) than are the sensible particulars themselves. The immaterial soul or mind, participating in these Forms, is superior to the physical world and body. His moral psychology is thus determined by his metaphysics as well: the wise aspect of the soul is mental, corresponds to knowledge of the Forms, and is its best and highest dimension. The courageous aspect is both mental and physical, corresponds to ambition for success in the material world, and is lower in its aspirations than wisdom. The appetitive aspect is physically based, corresponds to desire for material things and is therefore lower still. The healthiest person is one who, via wisdom, directs his ambitions toward increasing knowledge of the immaterial Good—restraining the material-sensual appetites and distractions of the body to accomplish this. The superior soul’s capacity for rational contemplation logistikon (corresponding to wisdom) in this way guides its spirited or passionate capacities thymoeides (corresponding to courage), which, in turn, guides its sensual capacities epithymetikon (corresponding to the material appetites). “The healthy soul,” as Bloom writes, “is the standard for judgement of regimes…the healthy regime is one that allows for healthy souls.”23 Within this normative framework, Plato’s hierarchy of political systems follows logically: the state ruled by philosopher kings is an aristocracy of virtue mirroring the true metaphysical hierarchy as the wisest come to know it. The Timocracy is, even at best, a step away from utopia and will ultimately suffer, like the spirited individuals who rule it, from unrestrained courage and ambition. The oligarchy, dominated by appetitive souls who are only capable of directing their ambitions toward material pleasures and wealth, inevitably succumb to the weaknesses of these appetites. Democratic states lack even the discipline of oligarchies and, like the individuals who thrive in them, exist at the whim of their appetites. Democracy then finally dissolves into a tyranny in which populist demagogues control souls who are enslaved to their appetites—as Plato knew well from personal experience. Plato’s ideal political community is a civic antidote to this progressive devolution. It is also the requisite cultural context for both individual and

2  THE PHILOSOPHER KING: BODY, MIND, AND EROS 

31

social eudaemonia to arise and flourish. Since the philosophical life is humanity’s highest possible good, establishing a community designed to engender the philosophical life is humanity’s most important collective goal. Philosophy is only possible in the just community and a just community is only possible via rule by philosophers. In them,24 He…sets his own house in good order and rules himself; he arranges himself and becomes his own friend, and harmonizes the three parts, exactly like three notes on a harmonic scale, lowest, highest and middle. And if there are some other parts in between, he binds them together and becomes one from many, moderate and harmonized. Then, and only then, he acts in some way—either concerning the acquisition of money, or the care of the body, or something political, or concerning private contracts. In all these actions he believes and names a just and fine action one that preserves and helps to produce this condition, and wisdom the knowledge that supervises this action.

In this way the just community, properly attuned to the ultimate Good, permits each kind of soul to flourish according to its dominant function. The rare few who have attained higher knowledge of the Forms are suitable for political leadership. Philosopher kings foster the condition of justice necessary for a well-ordered, healthy society. The relative few who have mastered courage and the ambitions that it yields, execute the just directives promulgated by the philosophers. This guardian class together maintains the just political community. The majority, who are driven by material and sensual desire, generate the community’s wealth and material pleasures under the governance of the guardians. The first rank consists of the policymakers and leaders-legislators. The second rank includes the soldiers and administrators. The last is comprised of merchants, artisans, laborers, etc.25 For philosophers to govern wisely, therefore, their own souls must be governed by wisdom—they must cultivate the rational part of the soul and subordinate the spirited and appetitive parts to its will. Throughout the Republic, Plato prescribes an educational and political program necessary for producing such rulers. While the lowest class is permitted, even encouraged, to indulge in a lifestyle of sensual pleasure and wealth production, it also remains excluded for this reason from participation in political governance. The Auxiliaries and Guardians (officials, soldiers, and, most importantly, philosopher-rulers) are subjected to a rigid selection and training

32 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

process designed to ensure that they will be inured to an ascetic life of sensual abstinence and intellectual rigor. The entire community is taught the Myth of the Metals to reinforce the division of labor required for this. The philosopher-ruler’s training regime involves self-denial, moral integrity, and love of wisdom to the exclusion of all-else. In their formative years they are shielded from, and taught to scorn, salacious literature, non-­ martial music, and poetry. Through a life-long educational program from early childhood to age fifty, they are taught the humanities, physical fitness, martial skills, higher mathematics, and dialectic, while avoiding sensual indulgence. As adults they renounce family, material possessions, and wealth—living their lives in communal barracks and forsaking every worldly pursuit except the attainment of wisdom. Their sexual lives, though not celibate in the sense of complete sexual abstinence, are virtually celibate by being restricted to occasions designated exclusively for procreation. Indeed, after a lifetime of this conditioning, it is difficult to persuade philosophers to even take any interest in governing the state, as their attention is so entirely consumed by the pursuit of wisdom, to the exclusion of worldly desires.

The Morality of Sensual Austerity and Political Rule This consensus view of the philosopher-ruler as necessarily impervious or even averse to any physical or worldly pleasure, and who must finally be forced to participate in the pursuit of social and political service, is fiercely contested by some scholars who contend that this depiction is far too simplistic. For instance, in Plato and the Body Coleen Zoller makes the case that the nature of the philosopher-ruler’s love of justice is far more holistic than this austere view contends. “When philosophers are involved in the political matters of their communities, as Plato says they should be, despite their healthy aversion, are they making a personal sacrifice of their own happiness?”, she asks. “It ought to surprise us that those who allegedly care most about justice have to be compelled to offer their talents to their cities and fellow citizens.”26 Although “at first glance, this appears to suggest that the philosopher is exclusively dedicated to the study of the Forms, never taking on civic leadership,” the mature “philosopher who truly understands the Form of Justice will also try to repair the world by transforming it as much as possible into something that participates in the

2  THE PHILOSOPHER KING: BODY, MIND, AND EROS 

33

Form of Justice.”27 Therefore “Plato’s philosopher-leaders have a sense that their community could be better than it is; they recognize the potential in themselves, in their fellow citizens and in their civic institutions to imitate Forms such as the Good Beauty and Justice, in particular.”28 Jocelyn Weiss also makes an interesting distinction along these lines between what she sees as ‘two paradigms’ in the Republic: one in its earlier books that portrays the philosopher as interested and engaged in worldly, sensual, and civic affairs, and another in its later books that portrays the philosopher as ascetic, monastic, and averse to civic life. Both of these philosophical paradigms and their corresponding types of philosopher, she argues, can contribute to the kind of political leadership that Plato advocated.29 Recently, Hege Johnson’s careful examination of how Socrates leads students to a deeper understanding of the Forms (an understanding necessary for political leadership), illustrates how erotic education via ‘seduction’ in various ways (including physical seduction) is essential to this process. Lysis, Charmides, and Alcibiades are all taught, through their erotic attraction to Socrates, about both eros itself and the central role it plays in a life devoted to wisdom.30 However, notwithstanding these important kinds of qualifications, Plato’s final word on the ideal political order does appear to be that philosopher-­rulers are, by temperament and training, disinclined to participate in the active life of the city and require some compulsion (having spent a lifetime transcending all the values and desires that it represents) to reenter its affairs. Socrates concludes: And when they are fifty years old, those who have been preserved throughout and who are in every way best at everything, both in deed and in knowledge, must at last be led to the end. …Once they see the good itself, they must be compelled, each in his turn, to use it as a pattern for ordering the city, private men, and themselves, for the rest of their lives. For the most part, each spends his time in philosophy, but when his turn comes, he drudges in politics and rules for the city’s sake, not as though he were doing a thing that is fine, but one that is necessary.31

For philosophers motivated by wisdom, focused on the quest for Truth, and absorbed in knowledge of Forms, the worldly task of political rule will always remain too tainted by spiritedness, and the city too tainted by appetitiveness, to be appealing. Public service in this capacity must therefore be a compulsory obligation (similar perhaps to a military draft or jury duty)

34 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

that the philosopher selflessly contributes to the community that enabled her success. This counterpoint to Zoller and Weiss is important, because it highlights how Plato’s concepts of the mind-body relation, his exaltation of the immaterial Forms and (relative) denigration of the material world, his hierarchical psychology of the soul, and his valorization of philosophical transcendence over civic engagement, all militate against the philosopher-­ ruler’s having too much interest in sexual fulfillment or sensual pleasure. The devotion to wisdom and knowledge of the immaterial Forms demands so much time and energy that sensual pursuits would seem to be an unacceptable distraction. Moreover, Plato argues in many places (particularly in dialogs like the Phaedo, Phaedrus, and the Republic) that sensuality and all it entails are positively inimical to the attainment of wisdom and communion with the Good. As his Orphic-Pythagorean predecessors claimed, the material world (including the body and its desires) is (or at least can be) an impediment to the attainment of wisdom because it diminishes the soul’s higher potentials and obscures its vision of the immaterial Forms. “And indeed, the soul reasons best when none of these senses troubles it, neither hearing nor sight, nor pain nor pleasure, but when it is most by itself, taking leave of the body and as far as possible having no contact or association with it in its search for reality,” the Phaedo states, “and it is then that the soul of the philosopher most disdains the body, and flees from it and seeks to be by itself.”32 This stark ontological and psychological dichotomy would certainly seem to indicate that asceticism is integral to capable leadership in a just community. Education in music, the arts, public affairs, warfare, and, finally, mathematics and dialectic demands a gradual streamlining of attention and energy less and less on sensual or emotional pursuits, and more and more on abstract or intellectual ones. As the philosopher cultivates and improves his soul, he becomes less a creature of the material world and more a denizen of the realm of the Forms. Intensive, if not exclusive, focus on rational apprehension of the Forms and corresponding disinterest in sensual pleasures or pains become necessary to undertake the duty of wise leadership. In his landmark Sources of the Self, Charles Taylor reflects that in western intellectual-cultural history, “Plato’s work should probably be seen as a contribution to a long-developing process whereby an ethic of reason and reflection gains dominance over one of action and glory,”33 which would account for the reign of philosophers and wisdom over warriors and ambition. Likewise, his “distinction between higher and

2  THE PHILOSOPHER KING: BODY, MIND, AND EROS 

35

lower parts of the soul…which means reason over desires”34 would account for the rule of mind over body and hence the guardian class over the merchant class. According to Taylor, Plato’s dichotomy between the mental and the physical, “interiority and exteriority,” is ultimately responsible for the division between the personal self and public self in western thought, which established the basis for modern self-identity, personal liberty, and privacy rights, upon which contemporary liberal democracy is predicated.35 Laurence Cooper has drawn a subtle and important distinction between types of desire and their corresponding sources of psychological motivation that may qualify Taylor’s claims about this conflict between reason and ambition substantially. Taylor’s dichotomy places the reasoning part of the soul in opposition to both its spirited dimension and its appetitive dimension. While there are certainly apt grounds in the Republic and elsewhere for this claim (the ‘charioteer’ analogy in the Republic being one good example36), Cooper explains that the relationship between spiritedness and reason is more nuanced than this. Spiritedness, as Rousseau and Freud later highlight in various ways, is, itself, a morally ‘neutral’ psychic force: it can be directed toward rational-philosophical goals as well as base material appetites. Indeed, if all objects of desire are on some level manifestations of the Forms and all desires themselves are on some level aspects of eros, then spiritedness must always somehow be directed toward the ultimate Good to which the philosopher-ruler aspires. Thus, Cooper mitigates Taylor’s position. “According to Socrates in the Republic, as in the Symposium, eros finds full satisfaction only in philosophy….What thymos (spiritedness) is said to want, by contrast, is victory and honor,” Cooper states, agreeing with Taylor. However, he goes on to add: “But what is the greatest victory and what is the greatest honor? If thymos not only arises from but also points toward a return to eros, as I am suggesting, then the greatest honor and victory must somehow entail eide (wisdom), or the Good, or philosophy. Which indeed they do.”37 Cooper’s observations in this vein are important and have significant implications for Plato’s larger conception of metaphysics, the soul, and moral psychology in relation to political leadership. It suggests, as will be considered later, that the relationship between the immaterial and material dimensions of reality—and hence between mind and body—may be more complex than a simplistic reading of Plato in this connection does justice to. However, what is important here, and what interpreters like Taylor point out, is that Plato’s

36 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

ontology of immaterial Forms and mind-body dualism necessitates the disciplined asceticism of political rulers. The nature and extent of Plato’s mind-body dichotomy and the ascetic lifestyle that this demands of the philosopher king, has elicited considerable scholarly debate from the classical era to the present—generating innovative strategies for reconciling them in a coherent way. Coleen Zoller, for instance, has categorized readings of Platonic dualism in terms of an ‘austere’ interpretation, with a long tradition in the literature, or a ‘normative’ interpretation, with a growing constituency in recent scholarship. The austere reading of mind-body Platonism sounds compatible with Cartesian substance dualism in positing “the interpretation of Plato that construes him as a strict metaphysical dualist whose contention that the physical world is not real leads him to renounce all things physical, especially the human body and its needs, and the related desires in the soul’s appetites.”38 This intellectual legacy runs from the ancient-medieval neo-­ Platonists through Nietzsche and leading twentieth-century philosophical lights like Bertrand Russell, Benjamin Jowett, and Leo Strauss, and finally to a number of contemporary researchers. In his comprehensive History of the Concept of Mind, MacDonald traces Cartesian dualism to neo-Platonic and early Christian philosophy’s valorization of the spiritual realm over the physical world (and hence, the soul over the body)—a theme that, itself, came directly from Plato.39 Hearkening back to Plato’s Forms, depreciation of the body, and the phrase “Let no one ignorant of geometry enter” allegedly carved over the doors of the Academy, second-century neo-­ Platonist Plotinus writes, “the geometrician, in his analysis, shows that a single proposition includes all the…propositions that can be developed from it. It is our feebleness that leads to doubt on these matters; the body obscures the truth, but there all stands out clear and separate.”40 Nietzsche had contempt for Plato’s perceived denigration of both the body’s appetites and the spirit’s passions, as well as for the egalitarian Judeo-Christian and democratic ideologies subsequently stemming from these,41 while Russell’s History of Western Philosophy claims that for Plato “the body…is doubly evil, as a distorting medium, causing us to see a glass darkly and as a source of lusts which distract us from the pursuit of knowledge.”42 Many current feminist thinkers have also seen Plato in a decidedly ‘austere dualist’ light and have concluded that his dichotomy between the physical-­ appetitive and the abstract-rational has been enlisted by modernity’s misogynist culture in the service of a repressive patriarchal agenda—associating ‘the feminine’ with ‘the body,’ which requires domination by

2  THE PHILOSOPHER KING: BODY, MIND, AND EROS 

37

masculine reason. Genevieve Lloyd claims that “In the Phaedo, Plato has Socrates …present the intellectual life as a purging of the rational soul from the follies of the body….During life, Plato concluded, the god-like rational soul should rule over the slave-like mortal body.”43 Zoller cautions that “austere dualist thinkers have encouraged human beings to renounce nature and treat the physical with disdain, they license the disregard, disrespect and devastation of whoever is associated with the body. I am in agreement with those who contend that women as well as nonwestern, non-white people are oppressed insofar as they are subsumed into nature.”44 In Zoller’s estimation, however, the more reasonable reading of Plato involves ‘normative dualism’ which, in contra-distinction to ‘austere dualism,’ “ranks Form over thing and soul over flesh…without denigrating the human body or nature itself….asceticism is a practice that is not predicated on distain for the body.”45 This reading, she claims, is more true to Plato’s conception of sensual austerity than are the those based on a more rigid mind-body dualism. In recent years this has been advocated, to varying extents, by thinkers like Allan Bloom, Raphael Woolf, and David Roochnik. Bloom goes so far as to designate Socrates of the Symposium as “the most erotic of philosophers, period,”46 in the west. Zoller states that Socrates in Plato’s dialogs emerges as a much more moderate and temperate dualist than many of his ‘austere’ interlocutors conclude. “Who is Plato’s Socrates”?, she asks, and responds that “this book will remind us that he is a philosopher deeply engaged in worldly matters, who uses his body to enjoy eating … and drinking … to sleep peacefully … to have sexual intercourse, to create a family …Is this down-to-earth life consistent with his asceticism?”47 Her answer turns out to be ‘yes,’ provided we view this asceticism in a normative dualist rather than an austere dualist way. Normative dualism acknowledges the mind-body relationship as involving separate-but-­ interdependent aspects of the soul, rather than two alien, or even hostile, elements of the soul embroiled in perpetual conflict. The rational-­ immaterial aspect does indeed play a different role in the soul than its embodied appetitive aspects, and the rational-immaterial aspect also holds an authoritative position in this relationship—at least in a well-ordered soul. However, healthy rational minds cannot function without healthy brains and bodies sustaining them, at least on the earthly plane, and well-­ functioning souls cannot become wise without integrating the sensual appetites of the body with the spirited and rational aspects of the mind. Zoller adds that the austere conception of Platonic mind-body dualism

38 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

she rejects has been largely based on a narrow selection of dialogs (including especially the Phaedo and Phaedrus) that are most easily susceptible to an austere dualist interpretation, combined with a selective reading of the Republic that overemphasizes its disparagement of the body, sensuality, and appetitiveness. In addition, the long western intellectual legacy venerating ancient and medieval readings of Plato that have a neo-Platonic, Gnostic, or Christian gloss tends to share their disdain for the sensual.48 Zoller criticizes John Cooper49 along these lines for his overly austere portrayal of Plato’s philosopher-ruler forsaking all sensual attachments to focus solely on the Forms. “Plotinus looks at this issue much like Cooper appears to, demanding constant engagement in abstract contemplation,” she writes, “But Socrates is not Plotinus…His personal life absolutely stems from his rational lifestyle, but he illustrates that a rational life need not be exclusively contemplative. He not only includes erotic experiences of pleasure as part of his rational existence…but also the political endeavors of a gadfly.”50 The normative interpretation of Plato’s prescription for a philosopher-ruler’s asceticism thus appears to be far less demanding than the austere one. The austere dualist counterpoint to this, of course, is that an accurate, comprehensive assessment of Plato’s thought leads to a more severe depiction of asceticism in this connection. In this view, the overall magnitude of Plato’s commentary on the epistemic limitations of sense perception, the metaphysical significance of the incorporeal Forms and the Good, the immaterial nature of the soul’s all-important rational dimension, and the debilitating effects of sensual desire on the philosopher-ruler’s character and professional competence, all indicate that (for the philosopher) an ascetic lifestyle is essential and, except for procreation and material sustenance, sexual and other sensual preoccupations should be actively avoided. Certainly, Plato does condone an entire educational program of worldly and sensual activity for the philosopher—including music, sports, martial skills, food, festivals, and, of course, an active civic role in the affairs of the city. He also limits, rather that completely proscribing, sexual activity (especially for the guardian class before and after their most productive and mature years), stating that, “when the women and men are beyond the age of procreation, we will, of course leave them free to have intercourse with whomever they wish.”51 Still, Plato is quite adamant that the rigorous, lifelong education and cultivation of the philosopher-ruler’s soul is precisely to ensure that its sensual desires are strictly subordinate to, if not completely eclipsed by, its rational potentials. The philosopher’s soul

2  THE PHILOSOPHER KING: BODY, MIND, AND EROS 

39

“must be seen such as it is in Truth, not maimed by community with body and other evils, as we now see it.”52 Among the more recent thinkers viewing Plato from this austere vantage-­ point, Travis Butler has developed a distinction similar to Zoller’s—especially with respect to the Phaedo—between what he terms an ‘ascetic’ perspective (similar to Zoller’s ‘austere’ perspective) and what he terms an ‘evaluative’ perspective (similar to Zoller’s ‘normative’ one). The ascetic view holds that “the philosopher must behaviorally avoid bodily activities such as eating, drinking, sex, and the pursuit of externals to the extent that he can,” while the ‘evaluative’ view on the other hand holds that “the philosopher must purify himself from bodily activities and their associated pleasures not by avoiding them to any great extent but by maintaining beliefs and attitudes that reflect their lack of value.”53 While the former is a more extreme view, both are ascetic ethics that denigrate sensual pleasure—including sexuality, intoxication, fine foods, wealth, etc.—in order to venerate the ‘higher’ functions of the soul. Butler applies this distinction, and the relative importance of the ‘ascetic’ interpretation, in his identification of a ‘riveting argument’ in the Phaedo. Explaining the path to wisdom, Socrates states, “because every pleasure and every pain provides, as it were, another nail to rivet the soul to the body and to weld them together. It makes the soul corporeal, so that it believes that truth is what the body says it is. …Because of this, it [the body] can have no part in the company of the divine, the pure and uniform.”54 Butler concedes that the ‘evaluative’ interpretation of this claim has its merits. As the Phaedo’s argument unfolds, it presents the soul’s dilemma in terms of a deficiency in wisdom, rather than a surfeit of appetitive desire—just as the evaluative perspective entails. The body and its desires are less an actual impediment to the attainment of wisdom, than they are a mere counterproductive distraction from it. Also, the Phaedo does not specifically promote strict asceticism to ensure the soul’s escape from corporeal confinement so much as simply promoting the avoidance of overindulging its material desires.55 However, notwithstanding these critical nuances, its overall argument lends itself much more to an ascetic, than to an evaluative, interpretation. Since sensual desires are “laws of nature, not effects that can be resisted by the force of the philosopher’s will,” the philosopher “must behaviorally abstain from the activities that lead to these feelings rather than just manfully attempt to resist the effects after engaging in these activities.”56 Hence, the philosopher-ruler must actively constrain his desires via

40 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

disciplined abstinence, as the ‘ascetic’ interpretation states, rather than simply focusing on wisdom and assuming that other, sensual, desires will gradually fade away via disinterest, as the ‘evaluative’ interpretation states. Elsewhere, Butler elucidates this notion further by examining how, in the Phaedo,57 desires with their source in processes or conditions of the body—are characterized by three features: motivational pull, assertoric force, and intensity. Desires with these features target the soul’s rational functions with distinctive forms of imprisonment. They target the soul’s capacity to rule with servility; and they target the soul’s capacity for knowledge with confinement in the visible world…. these views about the effects of bodily desire on the soul then dramatically affect the conception of philosophy defended in the dialogue. Specifically, they lead to the inclusion in that conception of an ascetic avoidance requirement—the requirement that the philosopher avoid all bodily desires and pleasures as far as possible.

In this way, the soul can be seen as imprisoned by the body and remains ‘riveted’ to it via the impulse of three powerful psychic forces: ‘motivational pull’ directs the body’s intentions on physical, rather than intellectual, pursuits. Being guided by appetites, the body is compelled to satisfy them. ‘Assertoric force’ presents these appetites and their objects as a constant presence influencing the way in which perceptions and evaluations are processed, and the ‘intensity’ of the assertoric force and motivational pull make them very powerful in fostering the appetites that keep the soul enthralled to the body. David Ebrey has recently made a similar argument. Noting the kind of evaluative interpretation of Plato’s asceticism that Butler argues against, Ebrey supports Butler’s view: “there is an active struggle between body and soul repeatedly described in the Phaedo, in which each is vying to rule the other….Most people’s souls do not struggle against their bodies because their souls have become accomplices of their bodies, bewitched by them….Philosophers actively resist this….”58 Ebrey explains that Pythagorean and Orphic influences on Plato’s thinking are evident in his view of the body as an impediment to non-appetitive aspirations. Training the soul to focus on spirited aspirations requires, at the very least, acquiring the ability to discipline and guide the appetites toward this end. Training the soul to focus on wisdom and reason rather than spiritedness

2  THE PHILOSOPHER KING: BODY, MIND, AND EROS 

41

or appetitiveness is more difficult still and requires an even greater adversarial struggle in order to break their spell. So, the difference between the ‘austere-ascetic’ and ‘normative-­ evaluative’ approaches to the problem of sensuality for philosopher-rulers as defined and outlined by Zoller and Butler may be subtle, but it is significant. At stake is whether the physical realm, the appetitive aspect of the soul, and the sensual desires associated with it (including civic and political life) should be regarded as adversaries of the mental realm, the rational aspect of the soul, and the quest for the Good that accompanies it (as the austere-ascetic approach holds), or whether the physical-appetitive-­ sensual, depending on the spirit in which it is cultivated, is merely a benign precursor to realization of the mental-rational (as the normative-evaluative approach holds). The approach one chooses makes a tremendous difference in the character of political life and leadership. For the austere ascetic, a healthy political community is an elitist hierarchy of society’s most rational minds: those few capable of overcoming the delusions of passion and sensual desire, leading the relatively less enlightened toward the realization of the Good. For the normative-evaluative, a healthy political community would still be hierarchical but, because of its less definitive distinction between the mind-body relation and less prohibitive attitude toward the spirited and appetitive dimensions of the soul, might well be more egalitarian, flexible, and pragmatic in its conception and pursuit of the Good—and its leadership would embody more of these characteristics as well. One possible way to reconcile the disparity between these approaches might be to reappraise the dualist metaphysics and philosophy of mind underwriting it, as understood in terms of eros. Central to the entire scope of Plato’s philosophy, the concept of eros has been analyzed, interpreted, and reinterpreted continuously without resolution for millennia, and has generated unceasing debate in the present era. In its most general sense however, eros might be understood as the ground or primordial essence of human aspiration—the telos driving the course of the cosmos and human nature. Laurence Cooper describes it very capably in comparative perspective59 I do not suppose that many readers need to be convinced of the importance of eros to Plato’s thought, and this importance cannot be truly established in any case except through investigating eros and determining what it is and what it wants. …. eros is not only the most powerful force in the psyche but

42 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

the soul of all desire and therefore, directly or indirectly, the motor of all human endeavor. Platonic eros is comparable in its reach and its power to Nietzsche’s will to power and Rousseau’s desire for being. It is both a desire and a metadesire: a desire in that one can speak intelligibly of its object and aim, a metadesire in that it admits of many manifestations in the form of narrow disparate desires. Eros proves to be the soul of the soul, the animating nerve of human life.

Eros is therefore the truest expression of the cosmic mind, the all-­ pervasive unity, the eternal source and substance of human being and, in Plato’s own words, ‘beyond Being.’ It is the dynamic expression of Being or the Good, which, beyond the very limits of all possibility and impossibility, nonetheless makes all things possible and brings them to concrete fruition via the Forms and the corporeal instantiations of the Forms. The metaphysical implications of this are important because they strongly suggest an ‘absolute idealist’ ontology and theory of mind, rather than the strict ‘mind-body dualist’ ontology and theory of mind that is usually attributed to Plato. Moreover, as Cooper suggests without labeling it as such, this kind of absolute idealism also encompasses the dualistic elements of Plato’s divided line and moral psychology:60 Socrates’ account in the Republic suggests that whatever the specific object(s) of eros, the character of its seeking is acquisitive and expansionist. Eros seeks wholeness not through constriction, mastery or homogenization but through the possession or incorporation of more and more objects of desire (or else through the more and more complete possession or incorporation of the same object of desire). Eros seeks wholeness not through elimination or control of desire but through the satisfaction of desire, and such satisfaction always entails the acquisition of an object of desire.

Thus, eros ultimately seeks the unbounded unity of the Good through the diversity of Forms, ideas, and entities through which it projects itself and through which it also seeks consummation with itself. In this way the mind-body dichotomy, divided line, and the ascetic-austere/normative-­ evaluative differences are all aspects of the Good expressed in diverse aspects of eros, and are all therefore simultaneously legitimate. Mind and body may be at odds in many ways, and the goals of reason-spiritedness-­ appetitiveness may conflict with one another, but all of these approaches to moral leadership may be true to relative degrees in relative ways. All are ultimately encompassed by the impetus of eros seeking consummation

2  THE PHILOSOPHER KING: BODY, MIND, AND EROS 

43

with itself in the Good—or perhaps more accurately: the Good seeking the realization of itself through eros. An interesting perspective on this idea by Robin Parry also suggests that an effective way to reconcile Plato’s sometimes contradictory-­seeming visions of sensuality is to view both the Forms and the process of transcendence required to attain them as an epistemological dynamic rather than as a metaphysical condition. Parry argues that many passages in the Symposium and the Republic portray wisdom, and the philosopher who exemplifies it, as embodied and worldly. Furthermore, the Timaeus presents a monistic, idealistic metaphysics, rather than a dualistic metaphysics. If, as suggested earlier, the ontological basis for all existence (including the physical world, the body, the soul, and the Forms) is the ultimate Form of the Good, which is the unified source and substance of them all, this then solves the mind-body problem and any difficulty with their interrelation. What separates mind and body is not a hierarchical division between metaphysical realms, because ultimately there is no such metaphysical division. The hierarchy of reality and of the soul refers instead to different levels of knowledge or awareness. The body, desires, and mind, and the psychological aspects of appetite, ambition, and wisdom, are not different metaphysical entities, but are instead differing epistemic degrees or ways of comprehending the Good. Mental existence is also coextensive with material existence, since both are aspects of the Good. They are simply different ways of describing or experiencing knowledge of reality and the human condition. A person, therefore, whose knowledge is limited to material entities, and whose soul is dominated by appetites, is still one with the Good and her knowledge is ‘true.’ Her knowledge is simply more limited than the person who has expanded her knowledge and awareness to accommodate a more complete, integrated vision of reality. Wisdom and knowledge of the Forms is an expanded or higher knowledge of the Good that encompasses and transcends—rather than refutes—knowledge of the material world. “The Craftsman’s design plan” for humanity in the Timaeus, Parry writes,61 is that the soul should be ordered hierarchically with the appetites submitted to spirit and spirit submitted to the intellect. Justice in an individual, according to the Republic, simply is the right ordering of the soul. And, according to the Timaeus, when the soul is rightly ordered in this way the lower parts of the soul play an important role in contributing to the purposes of the

44 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

intellect. The mortal soul, the parts that arise from embodiment, are not simply restrained, but actually positively contribute to the good human life. The disorder of the soul can create havoc—a key theme in the Republic. But this should not mislead us into thinking that Plato considered the lower parts of the soul, the parts linked with embodiment, to be bad, only that they are bad when they are not playing the right role in human life. There is a mode of rationality that penetrates to the very lowest parts of the soul, which can cooperate with reason, and hence Platonic rationality is an embodied rationality.

In another important examination of “The Religion of the Early Greek Philosophers,” Gerard Naddaf describes how, unlike contemporary materialist interpretations of philosophical “naturalism,” the Milesians, Socrates, and Plato (particularly in the Timaeus) all conceived of naturalism in a much more metaphysically idealistic way. Key to this worldview is a depiction of the material-physical world in what would, in the current lexicon, be called ‘teleological’ and ‘panpsychist.’ The cosmos for these thinkers was ultimately monist and mental: “Nous or mind, which is also manifest in the order of nature, is the final arbiter for all. In conjunction, what all these ontologies have in common is the conviction that the seeds of human consciousness, cognition, and value were inherent in the originative principle. They have a theory of everything that seems akin to what Thomas Nagel calls ‘natural teleology,’ but without the atheism.”62 Similar to Parry’s Craftsman Design Plan, Nagel’s concept (to which Naddaf refers earlier), of organizing-generative principles or ‘purposes’ in nature (most recently articulated in Nagel’s landmark Mind and Cosmos63), and contemporary panpsychist conceptions of an irreducible mental or proto-­ mental substrate underlying nature’s design, ‘Nous’ was conceived in pre-­ Socratic philosophy and reconceived through Plato as the fundamental animating source of the cosmic order. Since this fundamental cosmic order is all-pervasive, it also conditions the human psyche. And since it is mental and rational, the psychic order derived from it generates and unifies its own constituent elements like passion and sensual appetite. Consequently, the ‘natural’ material and political order that mirrors the psychic order is also unified in this way. Construed in this holistic, panpsychist, or idealist manner, the philosopher’s attainment of wisdom becomes more relative, malleable, and pragmatic than the way in which it is often conceived within the schema predicated on a rigid metaphysical dualism. Since everything

2  THE PHILOSOPHER KING: BODY, MIND, AND EROS 

45

participates—or perhaps more accurately, is—the Good, and the Good is that for which the philosophical soul properly strives, then there is no aspect of reality that the philosopher needs to categorically reject or transcend. On the contrary, the philosopher’s proper goal is simply to expand his awareness or knowledge to accommodate more and more of reality— putting his prior level of knowledge into perspective, rather than completely repudiating it. Thus, the philosopher’s asceticism is valid, since he realizes that there is much more to reality than only the material world and its appetites, and he therefore renounces the strictly appetitive life in favor of a more expansive one. This process also involves overcoming physical-­ sensual compulsions or delusions that obstruct the expansion of his knowledge. However, it does not require the complete renunciation of the body and its appetites, as these are the foundation—albeit a relatively superficial one—on which the attainment of wisdom is predicated (the ‘hierarchy of needs’ from Abraham Maslow’s humanistic psychology perhaps comes to mind in this connection). If this is the case, appetites and worldly ambition play a more important role in the healthy development of the philosopher’s soul, and of the political community, than strict mind-body dualism and an overly rigid hierarchy of the soul can countenance, but the restraint and control of sensuality is still necessary for attaining a level of knowledge required for the philosopher to competently lead his community. So, while Plato’s precise prescription regarding asceticism for philosopher-­rulers leaves ample room for liberal interpretation, it certainly is not unreasonable to read Plato as an advocate of appetitive self-control and even asceticism for political leaders. Despite the fact that, as Cooper states, “With the discovery that thymos belongs to eros, the Republic’s apparent dualism resolves into a monism, albeit a tiered and variegated monism…In this above all, the Republic readies us to explore the nature and political implications of eros…,”64 it remains the case that, “Desire and longing—what the Greek world called eros—don’t fare too well in Plato’s political dialogues. In the Republic and the Gorgias, the dialogues in which the relationship between eros and politics is most extensively addressed, eros is presented as “a tyrannical passion that leads to political tyranny and almost always leads to civic destruction and injustice.”65 Despite much more sympathetic portrayals of eros-as-sensual-desire in the Symposium and elsewhere, the qualifications of Zoller’s ‘normative’ reading, and what the holistic implications of metaphysical idealism may suggest, the psychic, social, and political danger presented by eros—as well as the need to restrain it via sensual self-control—remains of paramount

46 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

importance for Plato’s philosopher king. How exactly this principle should be implemented in a healthy state may be somewhat ambiguous in his work, but the importance of rational contemplation focused on wisdom, accomplished via strict control of passions and sensuality, puts substantial emphasis on some degree of asceticism as an essential part of the process. Indeed, this idea connects many diverse themes in the Republic related to the structure of a healthy political community as well.

Influence on Subsequent Political Philosophy Plato’s valorization of sensual restraint, or even abstinence, has remerged throughout the history of political thought in multifarious forms across a variety of traditions and within many theoretical frameworks. His influence on classical and medieval thought in this connection has been scrupulously examined and thus warrants at least passing mention here. His dichotomy—both metaphysical and moral—between the absolute Good (or the Forms) and the contingent material world, evolved into the Christian dichotomy between God and the fallen earthly realm, and this provided the ideological basis for an institutionalized division between clerical administration and congregant discipleship in the church political community. St. Augustine’s political philosophy is probably the most prominent example of the Christianized Platonic influence in medieval thought (Aquinas and Scholasticism reflecting many similar ideas along these lines but in an Aristotelian vein) and was articulated most saliently in the City of God.66 For Augustine, as for Plato, the moral psychology of the soul consists in a hierarchy whereby divinely ordained reason (now guaranteed by God rather than the Good) rules the misdirected passions and sinful desires of the body, and, just as for Plato, political justice consists in the abstract immaterial laws (in place of the Forms) emanating from the City of God and serving as the guide for the Earthly City. This Augustinian strain of Platonic thought has enjoyed an enduring intellectual lineage of its own, from theologian and political philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr (expressed in works like The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness,67 which reflect his own Platonic metaphysical-moral dualism) to contemporary political theorists like Jean Elshtain.68 Other similarly influential Neo-Platonists like Plotinus interpreted Plato’s metaphysics and moral psychology in a dualistic vein. Gregory Shaw notes that, despite his explicitly anti-Gnostic ontology, Plotinus (using an analogy very much like Plato’s in the Pheado) “maintains that matter—as the furthest departure

2  THE PHILOSOPHER KING: BODY, MIND, AND EROS 

47

from the Good—is evil…to be deified, the soul must escape from the evil of matter and withdraw to its unfallen essence.”69 Interestingly, Kathy Gaca’s important and influential The Making of Fornication: Eros, Ethics, and Political Reform in Greek Philosophy and Early Christianity70 qualifies substantially the notion (popularized via Foucault and his legacy) that the Christian intellectual tradition simply inherited Platonic-Greek thought along these lines wholesale. Though influenced by Platonism, Pythagoreanism and Stoicism, she explains, early Christian thinkers transformed Platonic values substantially in light of far more influential Biblical sources—particularly the Septuagint. Although Plato’s mistrust of sensual eros was duly noted, the Biblically based concept of fornication (extramarital sex or physical relations with gentiles) played a similar but much more prominent role in their social and political philosophy. Early Christian definitions of fornication provided a functional standard of conduct that served as the primary guiding ethical directive according to which they reimagined Plato’s ethics and moral psychology for a Biblically based political order. Regardless of whether its origins were more an expression of (to borrow Mathew Arnold’s famous terms) ‘Hebraism’ than ‘Hellenism,’ however, the repression of sensual desire still exerted an extremely important influence on subsequent Medieval political theory. Besides his obvious influence on neo-Platonic and Christian philosophers in late antiquity and the Middle Ages, Plato’s influence on Enlightenment political thought has also been widely examined, although his ideas about sensual austerity in this connection have received less scrutiny. Though many Plato scholars and historians like Leo Strauss and others have often tended to view modernity’s metaphysical and moral naturalism, as well as political liberalism, as a definitive break with the Platonic tradition in these respects, there is still ample reason to see both as part of a continuous legacy. Daniel Walker Howe’s important Making of the American Self,71 for instance, explores how Plato’s moral psychology entered the formative modern American intellectual ethos both through ‘faculty psychology’ of the Scottish Enlightenment and through ‘Cambridge Platonism’ of the prior century. The first was exemplified by the ‘common sense’ school of thinkers like Thomas Reid and, to a large extent, John Locke. Faculty psychology mirrored Plato’s tripartite division of the soul in positing rational, emotional, and instinctual psychological faculties in descending order of moral significance—the highest being rational and lowest being instinctual.

48 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

For philosophers like Reid and Locke (unlike contemporaries such as Hume, who located moral sympathy in the emotions) moral rectitude involves the rational faculty exercising control over subversive emotions and instincts. Howe highlights the influence of faculty psychology and its moral implications on political ideas of Thomas Jefferson, among others, who “sought to democratize it’s ideal of the development of human potential”72 in an egalitarian meritocracy governed by society’s most morally excellent citizens. While, as Howe notes, the extent to which Jefferson followed faculty psychology in locating morality in reason (vs. emotion or passion) has been disputed in the literature,73 it does seem essential to his political theory, as it enabled Jefferson, like Plato, to contend that those who have mastered the appetites and passions through rational, moral self-­ restraint are most suitable for leadership. Though Jefferson and framers of the U.S.  Constitution were obviously more egalitarian in temperament than Plato, their belief in this kind of ‘natural aristocracy’ permitted them to “democratize his ideal of the development of the human potential.”74 In this way it also shaped the formulation of penal codes, education, and important themes in The Federalist Papers. As Plato would surely agree (albeit in a much less democratic spirit):75 Throughout The Federalist there runs an explicit analogy between the human mind and the body politic. Just as the mind has faculties of reason (knowing wisdom and virtue), prudence (knowing, self-interest) and the passions, so does society contain a small natural aristocracy of wisdom and virtue, a larger group of prudent men capable of understanding their enlightened self-interest, and the turbulent masses who are motivated by passion and immediate advantage.

More directly, Plato’s moral and political philosophy influenced American ideas via the ‘Cambridge Platonist’ impact on transcendentalism during the nineteenth century. Through their reading and training in the classics, New England Unitarian-Transcendentalist intellectuals encountered both Plato and neo-Platonism via their Cambridge Platonist interpreters in the early seventeenth century and, from these sources, derived the moral and political inspiration that led directly to works like Emerson’s essays and Thoreau’s Walden. Though Transcendentalism’s Romantic zeitgeist valued the passions and pathos (not to mention poetry) of the soul’s thymotic faculty more than Plato would have been comfortable with, the Platonic influence on its ethical temperament was evinced by

2  THE PHILOSOPHER KING: BODY, MIND, AND EROS 

49

“the impulse to subject matter to mind in the world at large,” which “was accompanied by the injunction to subject passion to reason in the world within. The analogy between mind-over-matter and reason-over-­ passion…had originated with Plato and his followers.”76 In Rousseau’s Platonic Enlightenment77 David Lay Williams also explores Platonism’s influence on Jean Jacques Rousseau’s moral psychology and political theory within the context of Enlightenment philosophy generally. Plato’s influence via Rousseau and his contemporaries provided an important counterpoint to the often prevailing materialism that Enlightenment era philosophy and science engendered, and it sanctioned an ethics of transcendence (including the rational transcendence of sensual passions necessary to govern a just community) in opposition to the kind of naturalistic ethics often found in Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment social and political thought. “That Rousseau was a Platonist should not be surprising in context,” Williams writes and, despite the interpretation by Leo Strauss and others of Rousseau as a (relatively) modern materialist and political positivist, “rather it is by all rights to be expected. The Platonic milieu included many of the central figures of modern philosophy Descartes, Malebranche, Leibniz, all of whom were familiar to Rousseau.”78 As Williams explains, Enlightenment Platonism was largely a response to the stark new materialism expounded by many progenitors of the scientific revolution, particularly Thomas Hobbes. Then, very much as in contemporary metaphysics and philosophy of mind, “The two camps represent opposite views on fundamental metaphysical issues. The materialists deny the existence of substance; the Platonists embrace it. The materialists assert that human behavior is predetermined by matter in motion; the Platonists embrace the doctrine of free will. The materialists find the notion of an immaterial God dubious; the Platonists are open to it.”79 In addition, the Platonists, unlike the materialists, distrusted the corrupting epistemic and moral influence of sensory desires and empirical knowledge, embracing instead the abstract dictates of pure reason in matters of knowledge and ethics. Enlightenment Platonists also mostly subscribed to some form of transcendent immaterial source or ultimate arbiter of reality, truth, and value—from Spinoza’s “God,” to Leibnitz’s “principle of sufficient reason,” to Kant’s “starry sky above and moral law within.” Rousseau also embraced, in his own way, most of these principles, although his modernist egalitarian temperament made him less amenable to hierarchies in metaphysics or politics than his classical predecessor. His conception of the Platonic Good was less rational and more visceral, less

50 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

categorical and more pragmatic, less abstract and more embodied, than that of Plato. According to Laurence Cooper, just as Plato conceived of a highest Good from which all existence emanates and to which it flows back via eros, Rousseau similarly “holds that there is one good, arising from one desire, that outranks all others and indeed comprehends them, in the sense that these other goods are good only to the extent that they participate in or contribute to the primary good. In this, Rousseau’s good is comparable to Plato’s good, and his understanding of the desire for this good is comparable to Plato’s eros.”80 However, thinking within the social context and intellectual framework of modernity, Rousseau’s vision is cast in a new light: “his determination to examine phenomena in strictly empirical and phenomenological ways, arguably would lead him to eschew Plato’s more ‘metaphysical’ language even if he believed in something like Plato’s Good and Platonic eros.”81 Largely because of this, Rousseau’s conception of sensuality in relation to moral psychology and politics becomes much more complex and vaguely defined than Plato’s, and there is little scholarly consensus on what Rousseau’s notion of healthy sensuality or an ordered soul might be—let alone how these configure political leadership. Even in Emile his views about sensuality (sexuality and romantic love in particular) shift back and forth from negative to positive: sex and romantic love simultaneously as the cause of psychosocial alienation and as the inspiration for political integration. As Joel Schwartz notes, sexuality (like eros perhaps?) is invariably an enemy of reason in significant ways, since it entails a psychology of instinctive domination, even while it evokes an urge to common purpose. He argues, “Rousseau praises sexual differentiation because it can make a nonexploitive society possible, but he also blames it because it makes society unavoidable.”82 As best illustrated in Emile,83 and explained in the second Discourse and elsewhere, interpersonal sexual-romantic relationships mirror the larger social-political community that they engender. This is a far more egalitarian vision of the political community than Plato could have countenanced, even while maintaining Plato’s concern with sensual austerity. For Plato, the moral excellence necessary for political leadership of the community develops internally to the soul of outstanding individuals, cultivated via the deliberate deprivation of sensual or romantic passion that would otherwise undermine the individual’s devotion to reason and to the community. For Rousseau in contra-distinction, such excellence is a dynamic force arising in and through the intimate relationship between

2  THE PHILOSOPHER KING: BODY, MIND, AND EROS 

51

romantically bound men and women. As Emile and Sophie demonstrate, the state of human psychology prior to bourgeois sexual identity is largely a-moral and a-political, since the moral-political dimensions of experience are not ‘natural.’ In the state of nature, sensuality (and sexuality specifically) is an unselfconsciously spontaneous dimension of life—which thereby remains egalitarian, unsocial, and nonpolitical. With the emergence of self-consciousness, acquisitiveness, and pride in the human psyche, however, sexual self-identity developed and gradually led to bourgeois commercial culture. With the advent of ‘civilization’ in this sense, romantic-sensual love and marriage became necessary for the development of moral character in the citizen. Since it is the common citizen, rather than the philosopher king, who rules the egalitarian modern state, the development of this moral character is essential to healthy political rule. As a psychological surrogate for society and politics in Emile, Sophie introduces Emile to the unnatural and immoral temptations of ‘amour-­ propre’ via sensual attraction and pride but, because of this, must also paradoxically serve as his guide to moral redemption from this condition via control and sublimation of these very desires. She evokes his sexual awakening and self-centered desire for her, but also thereby inspires his unselfish devotion to her. By instigating both Emile’s ‘fall’ and ‘redemption’ in this way, Sophie simultaneously evokes his capacity for anti-social self-interest and his means for overcoming this self-interest. In her intellectual history of Evil in Modern Thought, Susan Neiman explains that for Rousseau, “Freedom, reason and sexuality were the source of the errors that brought evil into creation. Properly managed, just those capabilities can be molded to form human beings far more noble than anything possible in the state of nature.”84 This, she continues, also provides the basis for a sustainable political order in ways that contemporary political thinkers had not conceived:85 If properly managed, sexual desire could be the link between self-interest and morality other thinkers had sought in vain. What links members of civil society? Hobbes’ instrumentalist social contract provided too little; Enlightenment claims that we’re all naturally social presume too much. …There is one act, however, to which your interest is identical with the interest of the other. This is erotic love. If done as it should be, conflict between human desires is dissolved just then.

52 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

Neiman concludes, however, that Rousseau’s vision is far more problematic, on many levels, than this sanguine assessment acknowledges. Rousseau seemed to have realized this himself, and certainly never explicitly developed a connection between Emile and The Social Contract sufficient to explain how a political order can be founded on and guided by the (sensual-­erotic) source of unreason and self-interest so apparently inimical to it. One clue as to how this ambiguity might be resolved can be gleaned from comparing Rousseau’s ideas to Immanuel Kant’s more definitive and well-established views along these lines. Kant’s conception of sensuality in relation to morality and responsible political rule is, like the rest of his thought, a successor in many respects to the Platonic tradition  and to Rousseau’s conception of the “general will.” Like Plato, Rousseau and Kant both view sensuality (particularly sexuality and romantic love) as problematic for the kind of morality that political rule requires. This becomes, in a sense, even more problematic for Rousseau and Kant because of their egalitarian and democratic political ethics. Both Rousseau’s and Kant’s respective conceptions of liberal republican communities were founded upon a civic ethos of sexual austerity configured in many ways by the requirements of bourgeois propriety. Varying degrees of sexual abstinence are a necessary foundation for the values (and relationships) on which both commercial culture and the republican political order is predicated. The connection between Rousseau and Kant on this theme—particularly with respect to marriage and the social contract—has a well-established pedigree in the relevant literature. Ryan Patrick Hanley, for instance, has noted that, “scholars have long known that Kant’s views on gender were shaped by engagement with Rousseau’s Emile and Julie. So too scholars have long known that Kant’s debts to Rousseau also extend to his reading of the two Discourses and Social Contract.”86 He suggests further that Rousseau’s influence on Kant in this regard extends to Kant’s conception of the “sexual contract” and its place in the social contract. For Rousseau, the surrender of each individual’s sexual will to one another in the marriage contract prepares each for surrendering autonomy to the General Will in the social contract. For Kant, abdication of individual sexual autonomy to the collective marriage contract reconciles sexuality with the second categorical imperative and moral law upon which the just state is predicated. For both, the restriction of sexual desire to marriage is necessary for the development of character and values required for enlightened citizenship.

2  THE PHILOSOPHER KING: BODY, MIND, AND EROS 

53

For both Rousseau and Kant, as for Plato, a just political community depends on the development of a private moral character embodying the public virtues necessary to sustain it. For Plato, selfless (and largely nonphysical) love of wisdom in the character of the philosopher engenders the kind of wisdom made manifest in the just state. For Rousseau, the simultaneous fulfillment and transcendence of ‘amour-propre’ via a love relationship that entails surrender to an identity beyond individual sexual desire engenders renunciation of that person’s will in entirety to the collective will in the social contract. If we connect Emile to the Social Contract we find that imagination transforms sexual desire into the idealized romantic union that ultimately transcends sexuality, and this kind of self-­ transcendence is essential to social continuity. John Warner notes that “Rousseau simultaneously flatters and elevates our romantic hopes. His romance shows us how the desire for love arouses the desire to be lovable and hence the desire to be virtuous.”87 And this process (ultimately futile as Julie later suggests that it may prove to be) at least partially conditions individuals to transcend the sexual desire that undermines their commitment to the General Will in a just state. As the wise tutor in Rousseau’s Emile says, “In aspiring to the status of husband or father, have you meditated enough upon its duties? When you become the head of a family you are going to become a member of the state, and do you know what it is to be a member of the state? Do you know what government, laws and fatherland are?”88 For Kant, sexual desire is inherently antithetical to the second categorical imperative, since the sex act involves the use of another person and their body as a means to one’s own pleasure. The conformity of sexual desire to the marriage contract, however, puts this immoral motive in the service of a moral principle. It is therefore the only way to salvage sexual freedom in service of moral law. “For the natural use that one sex makes of the other’s sexual organs is enjoyment, for which one gives itself up to the other,” Kant explains. He further writes, “In this act a human being makes himself into a thing, which conflicts with the right of humanity in his own person. There is only one condition under which this is possible…. it is not only admissible for the sexes to surrender to and accept each other for enjoyment under the condition of marriage, but it is possible for them to do so only under this condition.”89 Through this moral institution, he argues, the a-moral hypothetical imperative of sensual desire is transformed in such a way that it provides the foundation for a moral community.

54 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

The egalitarian basis for Rousseau’s and for Kant’s political communities may mitigate somewhat the extent of sexual restraint (and sensual restraint more generally) required by Plato for proper governance. After all, if political governance is delegated to the entire civic constituency rather than—as for Plato—a small privileged ruling hierarchy, then all citizens are required to realize the kind of moral excellence that such governance necessitates. This means that the sexual abstinence required for moral excellence, while important and necessary, must be conceived and practiced in a manner that accommodates the needs of the entire social spectrum of a large, complex, commercial community, rather than just an exclusive, cloistered, elite minority as Plato originally imagined. This kind of austerity necessary for a liberal democracy would need to be less strictly circumscribed than the kind that Plato recommended for philosopher kings. While Plato requires that sexuality be subordinate to state authority and exclude the possibility of marriage or family in the service of the Good, Rousseau and Kant require that sexuality be subordinate to the social contract via the marriage-family contract in the service of the General Will/Moral Law. Still, sexual austerity, while not involving the strictest kind of celibacy, is nonetheless essential to both individual moral autonomy and the political order for Rousseau and Kant in much the same way as it is for Plato. For Rousseau and for Kant, the virtuous citizen rather than just the virtuous Platonic ruler is the cornerstone of the virtuous republic, and this egalitarian foundation sanctions the recognition of limited sexual union in marriage. Nonetheless, the citizen-ruler via the social contract, just like the philosopher-king via the utopian aristocracy, must learn self-realization through self-denial and sensual restraint, in order to be fit for rule. Drawing these same kinds of connections between Plato and late modern thinkers like Freud might seem to be perhaps too great a philosophical stretch, for obvious reasons. Freud is a metaphysical materialist who rejects (in important ways) so many of Plato’s fundamental tenets: metaphysical idealism, mind-body dualism, moral realism, or any transcendent teleological cosmic moral law or purpose. However, whatever Freud’s metaphysics of mind/consciousness may have ultimately been, his moral psychology and its political ramifications—especially with respect to the sensual drives and the moral menace they present—echo that of Plato in some important respects. Indeed, unlike his Enlightenment predecessors, whose distrust of sensuality was more ambiguous than Plato’s, Freud was perhaps even more emphatic than Plato about the inherently dangerous

2  THE PHILOSOPHER KING: BODY, MIND, AND EROS 

55

nature of sensuality, as well as psychosocial perils of allowing sensual urges to remain unrestrained. For Plato, the suppression or control of sensuality is simply a means to realizing higher human potentials. For Freud, the sensual drives are so omnipresent and pervasive that their suppression and sublimation is the very realization of higher human potentials. Where Plato thought that social-political progress requires expanding and liberating our psychic potentialities, Freud thought that such progress demands restricting and limiting these potentialities. Lacking any ontological dimension beyond the material world, the Freudian ‘soul’ is reduced to the biologically based mind, and the highest level of human potential is just the most refined expression of its instinctive drives. In terms of the current mind-body debate in consciousness studies, it remains unclear exactly what Freud’s views in this connection were. The consensus reading seems to be that he was clearly a ‘physicalist,’ believing that mind and mental life are ultimately reducible in some fundamental way to biochemical-neurological brain states.90 However, his ‘mentalistic’-sounding psychology also suggests that he may have held somewhat more flexible ‘epiphenomenal’ or ‘emergentists’ views that, while still essentially physicalist, contend that mental life—though dependent upon and emerging from physical brain states—is somehow a more complex phenomenon than simple biochemistry. In either case, Freud emerges as a physicalist who believed that every conscious phenomenon reduces to or emerges from a biochemical substrate. His goal was a “psychology which will be a natural science; its aim, that is, is to represent psychical processes as quantitatively determined states of specifiable material particles and so make them plain and void of contradictions,”91 and in this monistic respect his objective was much the same as Plato. He sought to accomplish this, however, by inverting the Platonic hierarchy of the soul: where Plato gave its mental and rational aspects metaphysical precedence and priority over its material and passionate aspects (the latter existing as vague emanations of the former), Freud did precisely the opposite: giving ontological priority to the material-sensate world and conceiving of mental life and reason as ethereal epiphenomena of their material-sensual substrate. The Freudian (in)version of Plato’s tripartite hierarchy becomes a nebulous codependence between the body’s chaotic emotional urges (Id), psychologically conditioned guilt-fear to discipline and redirect these urges (Superego), and a thin social persona maintained via the precarious balance between them (Ego).

56 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

However, the most important similarity between Plato and Freud for present purposes lies in the role that sensual urges play in moral-political psychodynamics. Cultural life and political institutions are built from these psychic raw materials and are reflections of the unstable relationship they share. For Freud as for Plato, the exemplar of moral excellence and civic stature in this milieu is the person who learns to best subordinate his sensual desires to socially approved projects and goals. The political leader (which in liberal democratic societies can be the citizen as well as the legislator or executive) may be animated by passions of the Id, but must still be strictly guided by the moral discipline of the Superego. In democratic, egalitarian, bourgeois western societies governed by the general population, this demands a high degree of mental discipline from their citizens. “Sublimation of instinct” (meaning: repression or redirection of ‘sensual appetites’), he writes in Civilization and its Discontents,92 is an especially conspicuous feature of cultural development; it is what makes it possible for higher psychical activities, scientific, artistic or ideological, to play such an important role in civilized life….it is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon the renunciation of instinct, how much it presupposes precisely the non-satisfaction (by suppression, repression or some other means?) of powerful instincts.

Like Rousseau, Freud was doubtful that this problematic psychosocial-­ political equipoise can be effectively maintained, despite the unifying-­ harmonizing pull of eros on the psyche, because the unifying-life-affirming erotic instinct is as capricious as any other and almost always also manifests its very opposite—aggressive hostility—in human relations.93 Nonetheless, along with Plato and his successors, Freud also draws an important connection between political leadership and sensual austerity. Moving from late modernity to postmodernity, Foucault (in his History of Sexuality94 and elsewhere) deliberately rejected Platonism and attempted to follow Freud’s (and Nietzsche’s) project to its logical culmination. If the modernist political order of Enlightenment thinkers was predicated upon a clearly discernable, autonomous, volitional moral agent or ‘citizen,’ the postmodern order conceived by thinkers like Foucault seeks to reconceive the possibility of political communities without even these. Best and Kellner explain that “Against modern theories that posit a pregiven, unified subject or an unchanging human essence that precedes all social operations, Foucault calls for the destruction of the subject and sees

2  THE PHILOSOPHER KING: BODY, MIND, AND EROS 

57

this as key political tactic.”95 Or as Foucault puts it, “One has to dispense with the constituent subject, and get rid of the subject itself, that’s to say, arrive at a an analysis which can account for its constitution within a historical framework.”96 Dissolving self-identity and moral psychology into a dynamic of ceaselessly competing and transforming power-relations, he reconceived sexuality and politics as mediums for these relations, and personal agency and society, in turn, as forums in and through which these mediums are expressed. Following Nietzsche, Foucault redefines the nature and purpose of political leadership in terms of instrumental power, rather than wisdom and moral authority prized by classical-modern thinkers in this connection. Again, Best and Kellner continue, “Against modern theories that see knowledge as neutral and objective (positivism) or emancipatory (Marxism), Foucault emphasizes that knowledge is indissociable from regimes of power.”97 Still, despite Foucault’s rejection of classical-modern conceptions of rationality and moral psychology in this way, the old Platonic concern with sensual austerity and political leadership nonetheless remains prominent here, as the dynamics of power appear to demand the perpetual exercise of social control over sexual behavior through the conventions of language, law, and cultural mores, and hence the control of sexual behavior in the political realm. Though it has now been deconstructed into a contextually fabricated locus of power-relations, the postmodern body and its desires is still the site at which this political power is exercised. Sources of authority, Best and Kellner write, “since the end of the sixteenth century have rigorously inscribed the body within discourses of sexuality…The production of the sexual body allows it to be inscribed within a network of normalizing powers where a whole regime of knowledge-pleasure is defined and controlled.”98 Albeit in a radically different sense than Plato, postmodernity via Foucault sees sensual austerity as key to political authority. Foucault attempts to invert the Platonic metaphysical hierarchy by collapsing his echelon of objective values into relational social forces; reconceiving both metaphysical and moral norms as consensus constructs emerging from, rather than configuring, a radically dynamic and egalitarian cultural matrix: “Foucault conducts an ‘ascending’ rather than ‘descending’ analysis, which sees power as circulating throughout a decentered field of institutional networks and is only subsequently taken up by the state.”99 However, this process itself still emerges from the social-political construction-­ subordination of the body and sensual desire. While the nature (and

58 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

indeed, the possibility) of both ‘morality’ and ‘leadership’ in the execution of political authority may have been transformed radically here, Foucault, much like Plato, sees the subordination and control of sensuality as central to the construction and application of moral leadership nevertheless. A much more direct connection can be made between Plato’s ideas along these lines and his contemporary neo-Conservative successors. Figures like Leo Strauss, Allan Bloom, Francis Fukuyama, and others have applied his moral psychology and political theory to current affairs and recent world events. Allan Bloom has commented on social institutions in this vein, as noted ealier, and Fukuyama’s work follows Plato’s ideas on the relation between the hierarchy of the soul and political leadership in post-­ Cold War national policy and international relations. In his landmark The End of History and the Last Man, and in subsequent work, Fukuyama presents the dilemma of modern states as originating in the Platonic problem of governance via the soul’s proper hierarchy. For Fukuyama the instability of contemporary national and geopolitics stems from the failure of reason (and those policies and institutions that embody the force of reason) to govern the appetitive-sensual and (especially) the spirited-ambitious dimensions of human aspiration, as these are expressed in public affairs. Indeed, with his mentor Allan Bloom, Fukuyama recognizes thymos as the most ‘political’ erotic dimension of the soul, mediating between rationality and sensuality in a way that tempers and restrains desire with the wisdom necessary to establish a just community. Fukuyama writes, “Plato argued that while thymos was the basis of the virtues, in itself it was neither good nor bad, but had to be trained so that it would serve the common good. Thymos, in other words, had to be ruled by reason, and made and ally of desire. The just city was one in which all three parts of the soul were satisfied and brought into balance under the guidance of reason.”100 Following Thomas Jefferson as well, he also reimagines Plato’s just-state in contemporary terms: “By this standard, when compared to the historical alternatives available to us, it would seem that liberal democracy gives fullest scope to all three parts.”101 While he never draws the connection explicitly, Fukuyama seems to think that success or failure of liberal democracy as the embodiment of the Platonic ideal rests in its ability to sustain a healthy relationship between the three aspects of government corresponding to the hierarchy of the soul: strong national identity/leadership, just laws through which to implement this state leadership, and accountability of the state and its laws to its constituency. While Fukuyama pays relatively scant attention to sensual-appetitive desire vs. spiritedness in this analysis,

2  THE PHILOSOPHER KING: BODY, MIND, AND EROS 

59

his conception of the soul and its political ramifications appears to support the Platonic framework in this respect as well.

Conclusion Beginning and concluding the discussion in this chapter with some of Plato’s most devoted current neo-conservative interlocuters may help to highlight how important the theme of sensual austerity, that he largely inaugurated, remains to the entire western political tradition. It illustrates how his legacy marks the beginning of a tradition that links political leadership to sensual austerity and how—though it has invited some tangential attention in the literature—has not received the kind of examination that its significance warrants. Emerging in the milieu of Athenian democracy, and forged in an intellectual crucible of diverse and adversarial ontological theories and cultures, Plato’s political philosophy was derived from a comprehensive and often tumultuous variety of worldviews. In dialogue with representatives of the entire panoply of contemporaneous thought from Atomist, Heraclitean and Parmenidean texts to Orphic mystics and Pythagorean devotees, and testing his theories against the living examples of political regimes from Athens to Persia to Sparta and Syracuse, Plato processed, utilized, and synthesized a tremendous range of diverse and often contradictory ideas. Recognizing the undeniable reality of both Heraclitean flux and the limits of corporeal embodiment, while also appreciating the metaphysical implications of transcendence via Parmenidean Being and Pythagorean mathematics, Plato’s concept of the human condition incorporates their entire range of physical and mentalistic implications. His theory of the soul consequently posits a mind-body dualism, or possibly a kind of absolute Idealism or neutral monism that, while encompassing both mind and body, gives the mental realm of ideas and reason metaphysical priority over the physical body and its sensual modes of knowledge and pleasure. This metaphysics leads logically to the ethical valuation of abstract principles, derived from knowledge of the Forms, over utilitarian calculation based on sensory data. These ethics in turn engender a social-political order based on rational leadership guiding, controlling, and sometimes repressing, both ambition and sensual desire. The soul of the philosopher-ruler must engender the political order that she fosters. She must either deliberately avoid sensual pleasures altogether (if the ‘austere’/‘ascetic’ reading is correct) or focus attention more on reason

60 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

and wisdom so that sensual concerns become increasingly unimportant (if the ‘normative’/‘evaluative’ reading is correct). In either case, a life devoted to sensual austerity or celibacy is required for political leadership. The nature of this Platonic schema has been transformed continually to meet the demands of changing historical circumstances. As the classical world gave way to medieval-Christian culture, the civic republican order and commercial, cosmopolitan socioeconomic system that underwrote Plato’s thought gave way to the more parochial, feudal, Christian order of the Middle Ages. From this vantage point, Plato’s distrust of sensuality was amplified by the Church, and sensual austerity was considered even more essential to political leadership—especially within the Church itself. With the dawn of modernity, a new worldview inspired by events like the scientific revolution, the commercial/industrial revolution, the Protestant Reformation, and the rise of an economic middle class inaugurated an egalitarian, democratic, capitalist spirit that lauded the virtues of manual labor and material acquisition over the classical-medieval virtues of aristocratic leisure and contemplative austerity. Platonic principles were reconfigured in terms of Enlightenment ideals. Adam Seligman has summarized this process succinctly as the gradual rejection of Platonic-­ Christian “revealed truth of a transcendent Being in favor of ‘self-evident truths’, thought to be as amenable to reason as the principles of Euclidean geometry.”102 Platonic dualism, now reinterpreted as Cartesian dualism, still valorized mind over matter and viewed sensual austerity as essential to moral responsibility, but located moral agency (exercised through bourgeois institutions like marriage and the social contract) in the psychosocial identity of an increasingly politically enfranchised ‘common man.’ Thus, Seligman states further:103 What emerged together with this modern idea of the individual was, however, a new idea of the ethical or moral no longer rooted in a transcendent or other-worldly sphere but in the immanent this-worldly workings of reason. The result of this process was an individual-as-constructed-by-reason with which there emerged, or rather, re-emerged, the problem of society, of how to represent the ties and relations between morally autonomous and agentic individuals.

The psyche of the private citizen, as opposed to the soul of the philosopher king, became the inner forum for developing civic leadership. Sensual restraint was democratized.

2  THE PHILOSOPHER KING: BODY, MIND, AND EROS 

61

Bringing this trend to its logical culmination, late (and post) modernity has witnessed the radical inversion of Plato’s dualistic-idealistic ontology and, with it, his hierarchy of the soul. While retaining the Enlightenment’s political egalitarianism and (in some ways) premodernity’s psychic hierarchy, Freud and others turned Plato’s ontology on its head: valorizing the material over the mental—replacing the soul with the brain and rational contemplation with biologically based cognition as humanity’s supreme intellectual achievement. Still, Plato’s mistrust of sensual desires, and insistence on their strict control by reason, translated effectively into Freud’s fear of the Id’s urges and the need to suppress it via the Superego and rational self-control. Just as for Plato, Freud’s political community is predicated on a hierarchy of sensual subordination to reason. Even current evolutionary psychology emphasizes the importance of restraining instinctive sensual drives via rational survival strategies in order to maintain a functional social-political community. Finally, the inextricable link between sensual austerity and political leadership has remained prominent from anti-Platonists like Foucault to neo-Platonists like Strauss, Bloom, and Fukuyama. While the neo-Conservatives attempt to preserve Plato’s metaphysical, moral, and political hierarchy, and postmodernists like Foucault seek to eradicate or even invert it, they both conceive political leadership, political administration, and social order (understood via moral authority for the neo-Conservatives and as instrumental power for the postmodernists), at least in part, as intricately related to controlling sensuality and its expressions. In this way, the concept of sensual austerity as an essential aspect of political community and political leadership has evolved considerably but remained fairly consistent—and prominent—throughout the course of western political thought. This connection has also, however, been largely neglected (at least explicitly) in the current literature—either unexamined or explored only tangentially—with a few exceptions like those mentioned earlier. This situation calls for further attention in contemporary scholarship.

Notes 1. Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (New York: Simon&Schuster, 1945), 104. 2. Laurence Cooper, Eros in Plato, Rousseau, and Nietzsche (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007), 15.

62 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

3. Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon &Schuster, 1987). Also see, Ann Norton, Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004). 4. Allen Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, 71–74. 5. Ibid., 75. 6. Ann Norton, Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire, 68–81. 7. Leo Strauss, “Plato”, in Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, eds., History of Political Philosophy (Chicago: University Press, 1987), 59. 8. Aristotle, Metaphysics, ed. Richard Mckeon (Chicago: University Press, 1973), 292. 9. Plato, Parmenides, ed. Albert Whitaker (Newbury: Focus Publishing, 1996). 10. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 292. 11. Phillip Horkey, Plato and Pythagoreanism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 12. Radcliffe Edmonds, Myths of the Underworld Journey (Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 2004). 13. Will Durant, The Life of Greece (New York: MJF Books, 1939), 455. 14. Bruce Thornton, Greek Ways (New York: MJF Books, 2000), 54. 15. Ibid., 16–17. 16. Ibid., 66. 17. Benjamin Jowett, The Works of Plato (New York: Tudor Publishing), 71–75. 18. Plato, the Republic, ed. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1968). 19. Ibid., 190–192. 20. Ibid., 189. 21. Plato, Phaedo, ed. David Gallop (Oxford: University Press, 1975), 65. 22. Ibid., 86. 23. Plato, the Republic, 414. 24. Ibid., 123. 25. Ibid., 193–276. 26. Colleen Zoller, Plato and the Body: Reconsidering Socratic Asceticism (Albany: SUNY Press), 130–131. 27. Colleen Zoller, Plato and the Body: Reconsidering Socratic Asceticism (Albany: SUNY Press), 141. 28. Ibid., 140–141. 29. Jocelyn Weiss, Philosophers in the Republic: Plato’s Two Paradigms (Ithaca: Cornell University Press). 30. Hege, Johnson, “Eros and Education: Socratic Seduction in Three Important Dialogues”. PHD Diss. (Stockholm University, 2016). 31. Plato, the Republic, 263. 32. Plato, Phaedo, ed. David Gallop (Oxford: University Press, 1975), 10.

2  THE PHILOSOPHER KING: BODY, MIND, AND EROS 

63

33. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,1989), 117. 34. Ibid., 121. 35. Ibid., 115–126. 36. Plato, the Republic, 212. 37. Laurence  Cooper, Eros in Plato, Rousseau and Nietzsche: The Politics of Infinity (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008), 44. 38. Zoller, Plato and the Body, 6. 39. Paul Macdonald, History of the Concept of Mind (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, 2003), 283. 40. Plotinus, Fourth Ennead, ed. Daniel Kolak (New York: Pearson, 2006), 283. 41. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (London: Penguin Books, 1990), 113–114. 42. Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, 137. 43. Genevieve Lloyd, The Man of Reason: Male and Female in Western Philosophy (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1984), 6. 44. Zoller, Plato and the Body, 10. 45. Ibid., 8. 46. Allen Bloom, Love and Friendship (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993), 431. 47. Zoller, Plato and the Body, 2. 48. Ibid., 19. 49. John Cooper, “Socrates and Philosophy as a Way of Life”, ed. Dominic Scott, Maieusis: Essays on Ancient Philosophy in Honor of Myles Burnyeat (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 20–43. 50. Zoller, Plato and the Body, 135. 51. Plato, The Republic, 140. 52. Ibid., 294–295. 53. Travis Butler, “A Riveting Argument in Favor of Asceticism in the Phaedo,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 29, 2 (2012), 106. 54. Plato, Phaedo, 33. 55. Butler, “A Riveting Argument in Favor of Asceticism in the Phaedo,” 106–107. 56. Ibid., 108. 57. David Butler, “Bodily Desire and Imprisonment in the Phaedo”, History of Philosophy and Logical Analysis 20, 1 (2017), 82–102. 58. David Ebray, “The Asceticism of the Phaedo: Pleasure, Purification and the Soul’s Proper Activity” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 99, 1 (2017), 9–10. 59. Laurence Cooper, Eros in Plato, Rousseau and Nietzsche: The Politics of Infinity, 30.

64 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

60. Ibid., 26–27. 61. Robin Parry, “Plato and the Body” https://www.academia. edu/8152734/Plato_and_the_Body_RAP_. 62. Gerard Naddaf, “Revisiting the Religion of the Early Greek Philosophers, and Socrates’s Contribution to the Controversy.” Ápeiron. Estudios De Filosofía, Monográfico «Presocráticos» (2019). 63. Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Matreialist Neo-Drawinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly Wrong (Oxford: University Press, 2012). 64. Laurence Cooper, Eros in Plato, Rousseau and Nietzsche, 49. 65. Ibid., 53 66. St. Augustine, The City of God trans. Marcus Dods (New York: Modern Library, 1950). 67. Reihold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (New York: Charles Scribner, 1960). 68. Jean Elshstain, Augustine and the Limits of Politics (Notre Dame: University Press, 1996). 69. Gregory Shaw, “Platonic Siddhas: Supernatural Philosophers of NeoPlatonism”, in Edward F. Kelly, Adam Crabtree and Paul Marshall, Beyond Physicalism, Beyond Physicalism (Lantham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015), 275–314. 70. Kathy L.  Gaca, The Making of Fornication: Eros, Ethics, and Political Reform in Greek Philosophy and Early Christianity (Berkley: University of California Press, 2003). 71. Daniel Walker Howe, The Making of the American Self (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). 72. Ibid., 73. 73. Ibid., 66–69. 74. Ibid., 73. 75. Ibid., 88–89. 76. Ibid., 195–196. 77. David Lay Williams, Rousseau’s Platonic Enlightenment (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007). 78. Ibid., 51. 79. Ibid., 28. 80. Laurence Cooper, Eros in Plato, Rousseau and Nietzsche, 136. 81. Laurence Cooper, Eros in Plato, Rousseau and Nietzsche, 137. 82. Joel Schwartz, The Sexual Politics of Jean Jacques Rousseau (Chicago: University Press, 1984), 6. 83. Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emile, trans. Allen Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1979), 348.

2  THE PHILOSOPHER KING: BODY, MIND, AND EROS 

65

84. Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought (Princeton: University Press, 2002), 50. 85. Ibid., 52. 86. Ryan Patrick Hanley, “Kant’s Sexual Contract”, Journal of Politics 76, 4 (2014), 914. 87. John Warner, Rousseau and the Problem of Human Relations (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2016), 104. 88. Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emile, 348. 89. Immanuel Kant, The Cambridge Edition Works of Immanuel Kant, eds, Guyer and Wood (Cambridge: University Press, 1995–2014), 427. 90. Jerrold Seigel, The Idea of the Self (Cambridge: University Press, 2004), 654. 91. Sigmund Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachy (New York: Macmillan, 1964). 92. Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, trans. James Strachy (New York: Norton and Co., 1969), 44. 93. Ibid., 64–80. 94. Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, trans, Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978). 95. Steven Best and Douglas Kellner, Postmodern Theory: Critical Interpretations (New York: Guillford Press, 1991), 51. 96. Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980) 117. 97. Best and Kellner, Postmodern Theory…, 50. 98. Ibid., 47. 99. Ibid., 52. 100. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (London: Penguin Books, 2012), 337. 101. Ibid. 102. Adam Seligman, Modernity’s Wager: Authority, the Self, and Transcendence (Princeton: University Press, 2000), 12. 103. Ibid., 116.

CHAPTER 3

Moral Social Order and the Ideal Ruler, the Sage-King

As thinkers and philosophers are the product of their times, and as times of conflict and crisis help them think about how to address the exigent, but perennial, philosophical issues that these times present, we can appreciate the career of Confucius, who was concerned about the corruption and moral degeneration of his own time. Confucius lamented the decline of old values practiced by the sage-kings of the earlier times and worked, through his ideas and example, to revive those old values. He believed in age-old traditions and standards that both citizens and rulers need to follow for civilization to flourish. For Confucians and Neo-Confucians, Confucius remained a moral authority, a sage-king without the royal regalia, and an authentic transmitter of great values from the past. As with many Asian thinkers and their ideas, the introduction of Confucian philosophy to the West occurred long after his lifetime: especially after Jesuit missionaries went to China in the late Ming Period and learned classical Chinese and Mandarin to propagate Christianity, while at the same time absorbing Chinese philosophy and culture. It was these Jesuit thinkers, as Meynard points out, who, beginning with Matteo Ricci, who first started studying the Four Books (classic texts on Confucianism) in the 1590s, and later translated  the Confucian Sinarum Philosophus in 1687 (edited by Belgian Jesuit, Phillipe Couplet, and sponsored by French king, Louis XIV), popularized Confucian philosophy in the West.1 The Latin publication included the Great Learning, Golden Mean, and Analects. The English translation of Confucian classics came much later with the first translation © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. A. Mahapatra, R. Grego, Sensual Austerity and Moral Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89151-0_3

67

68 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

of Analects compiled by James Legge only in late nineteenth century. Neo-Confucians, consisting mostly of scholars and rulers from China (and some from Japan and Korea), also transmitted his work through later generations and beyond China. We are not focusing here on any comparison-contrast between various Confucian schools of thought, its Buddhist/Taoist/Mohist influences, Confucianism’s relative popularity during the Han period and disfavor during the Tang era, or its various reinterpretations and political uses during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Our goal in this chapter is not to present the ‘historical Confucius’ or history of Confucianism (as relevant to our concerns as these may be), since we are primarily interested in examining his ideas relevant to the main argument of the book: how the ideas of sensual austerity, moral leadership, and good governance are interrelated, and how the Confucian ideal of sage-king appropriately addresses this relationship. Of immediate concern is how Confucius and Confucian thought developed this theme, and how Confucius and subsequent thinkers attempted to implement it in political life. In this connection, we reference the Analects as translated by Legge, and the limited secondary literature available. In the first section of the chapter, we focus briefly on the life and time of Confucius and how Confucianism(s) evolved from the ancient to modern period. In the second section we consider the Confucian worldview, and in the third section we elaborate on the Confucian idea of moral self-cultivation and its link to moral leadership and good governance. Then we explain how, in the Confucian worldview, legal principles play a secondary role to moral principles in building a harmonious society. In the next section, we focus on the Confucian ruler or political leader as moral exemplar. In the final section we elaborate on the relationship between sensual austerity and moral leadership, and how the Confucian leader as moral exemplar represents the ideal archetype of this relationship.

Life and Time of Confucius and Evolution of Confucianism(s) Confucius served in many important government offices during his active political career. He was governor of the capital city at the time of Duke Ding of Lu. He was then promoted to the position of Minister of Public Works and was finally promoted to Minister of Justice, which is equivalent to the current position of prime minister. He was a popular official and was

3  MORAL SOCIAL ORDER AND THE IDEAL RULER, THE SAGE-KING 

69

considered a role model or standard bearer of moral rule. Sun Bo explicates the works of Neo-Confucian scholar Xu Fancheng on Confucius,2 In the year 500 BC, Confucius followed Duke Ding of Lu to meet Duke Jing of Qi at Jiagu for the alliance of the two states. Before the meeting, the obsequious Qi minister, Li Ju, said to Duke Jing: “Confucius knows the rites but he is not courageous. If we send the people of Lai to capture the Duke of Lu by force, we would certainly fulfill our ambition (of absorbing the state of Lu into Qi).” Duke Jing approved the plan. At the beginning of the meeting, after the exchange of greetings, Duke Ding and Duke Jing ascended the three-tier altar where they exchanged ritualistic bows and wine as political equals. At this moment, the coastal Lai people who were summoned by Duke Jing as entertainers appeared, armed with swords and spears. They waved their banners and gathered at the front of the altar. Upon seeing this, Confucius quickly went up to the altar and stopped at the second tier. He waved his sleeves and shouted, “Our two princes have met for peace, what business has barbarian music here! Command the officials (to remove them)!” The officials commanded the entertainers to leave, but they did not follow the order to disperse. Confucius stared at Duke Jing and Yan Ying. Duke Jing was embarrassed and guilty, so he asked the entertainers to step down. At the end of the meeting, the agreement reached by both sides favoured the state of Lu.

This passage illustrates how political acumen and moral courage helped avoid conflict and possible war between kingdoms of Lu and Qi. Confucius’s rising to the second tier of the altar displayed his moral command of the situation, and his order to stop the festivities (which were actually a plan in disguise to engage in conflict and violence) displayed his pragmatic aptitude for diplomacy. Confucius made many political reforms in the kingdom of Lu and, upon assessing the corruption and moral degeneration of its society, he advocated “the augmentation of ducal power” and “the abolishment of the three capitals” (fiefs of the three powerful families in the state of Lu). However, many of his ideas and reform plans were unsuccessful. He became disenchanted because of his failures (as well as the Duke’s extravagances) and, in 497 BC at the age of 55, he undertook the life of an itinerant scholar. After 14 years he retired and lived life as a public teacher.3 Among the three representative thinkers on morality and leadership we are focusing on in this study, Confucius most profoundly influenced the course of politics, society, and foreign policy in his country. Plato’s

70 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

influence remained confined mostly to the domains of intellectual analysis and speculation, and his ideas were often considered unrealistically utopian even when, like Confucius, he made attempts to shape and guide the state. Gandhi’s influence remained confined mostly to the ideology associated with social justice and nonviolent protest movements. However, no thinker was as completely embraced by a culture, or as thoroughly, as Confucius was throughout the history of Chinese civilization. Through this history Confucian philosophy underwent numerous vicissitudes, reaching its apogee during the Han period, losing some status during the Tang Dynasty, and playing an ultimately dominant role in relation to Buddhist and Taoist cultural influence during the Song Dynasty (Neo-­ Confucians from the ancient to modern periods alternately borrowing from and suppressing their rivals). Experiencing its nadir during the Mao period, its conservative and ritualistic elements were considered irreconcilable with the socialist ideas of progress, equality, and development. However, it was revived with renewed energy and dynamism after the end of the Cold War. Despite his ‘museumization’4 during the communist and cultural revolution of Mao’s China, Confucian ideals were later revived by Chinese policymakers and became central to Chinese policy in the twenty-­ first-­century world. China’s cultivation of Confucian ideas like the sage-­ king, morality and leadership, frugality, self-control, filial piety, ritual propriety, order and stability, hierarchical social order, and loyalty, have provided a moral framework for its entire political culture. In this sense, the life of Confucius was not just that of an ordinary being, but rather the origin of a vital ideal that continues to animate the civilization that fostered it, even as it continues to change and recreate itself through the evolving legacy of its cultural origins. This is one reason why the new forms of Confucian veneration, which have also witnessed yet another revival in twenty-first-century China, essentially recall ancient values. In The Grand Historians Records, the ancient Han-era historian Sima Qian (146–86 BC) helped set this precedent by extolling Confucius’s sacred mission to “make the affairs of the true king comprehensible.”5 Han Scholar, Zhao Lu, also followed this line of thinking by representing Confucius as the supreme sage and exponent of eternal principles of justice for future generations of rulers. He writes,6 in the apocryphal texts and in Western Han texts generally, when Confucius is described with the epithets the ‘uncrowned king’ and the dark sage, he has several characteristics: 1. he is chosen by Heaven as a potential candidate to

3  MORAL SOCIAL ORDER AND THE IDEAL RULER, THE SAGE-KING 

71

replace the Zhou dynasty, and is of divine origin; 2. based on the Five Phases generative succession, his life did not come at the right point of Five Phases cycling in order to succeed the Zhou; 3. instead, he is in charge of forming standards for the Zhou’s actual successor; 4. he hides his messages in the Annals; and 5. through teaching and spreading the Annals, he completes the way of the uncrowned king.

The veneration of Confucius was not confined to ruling elites of society but also practiced by the masses; so much so, in fact, that Confucian veneration was part of formal education. Celebrating the sage-king as a school rite was considered a ceremony of ‘departure from ignorance.’ Referring to the famous Chinese scholar Guo Moruo (1892–1978), Ya-pei writes that Guo “followed the local idiom in Sichuan and referred to the worship of Confucius on the first day of school as the rite of ‘departure from ignorance’ … Although the phrase referred to children’s education in general, to Guo and his fellow villagers the sacrificial rite exclusively to Confucius served as a transformational exercise in cultural literacy.”7 In that sense, Confucius veneration in Chinese civilization was not just a customary ritual practice, but also a lesson in personal development and seminar in moral education and values—one that applied to rulers as well as subjects. This philosophical legacy has persisted through successive dynasties and has remained foundational across the social, political, and spiritual spectrum until the present day. Post-Cold War China has effectively combined communist party structure with Confucian tradition and philosophy to emerge as a major geopolitical power. China’s emphasis on ‘harmonious and peaceful rise’ derives directly from Confucian ideas about harmony, order, stability, and hierarchy. The recently revived concept of a ‘Middle Kingdom,’ with China at the center of the world, or a kind of sun around which planets revolve, is related to the traditional Confucian hierarchy in which filial piety and ritual propriety play major roles. These notions have been lauded by policymakers as much as scholars and public intellectuals, and in that sense Confucius’s ideas have not been confined to the realm of academic speculation, as have Plato’s in many respects. Instead, Ya-pei notes,8 The turn of the twentieth century witnessed a drastic change in the meaning of Confucius worship. The change was concomitant with the emergent notion of China as a nation and ensuing concern over the construction of the national community. This new conception of China entailed a rethink-

72 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

ing of statecraft and political symbolism, as the projection of a close relationship between the ruler and the ruled rose to become one of the fundamental sources of political legitimacy.

The creation of Confucius Institutes in China and worldwide, increasing use of Confucian terminologies such as ‘harmonious rise,’ and the revival of Confucian rituals—including ritual worship of Confucius—reveal the powerful influence of Confucius in Chinese society and polity in recent years, not only in the realm of academics but also in the actions of people and leaders. Confucius has factored heavily into the tenets of modern Chinese nationalism and, as Ya-pei observes, one line of historical observation along these lines makes the case that “the classics, as well as the ethics that supposedly were derived from them, were the unitary and unifying core of not only the Confucian tradition but also the Chinese nation.”9 The Xinzheng reforms in the beginning of the twentieth century before the onset of Maoist communism, Ya-pei explains, promoted Confucius-­ reverence to regenerate public morale and defend national heritage, and these reforms “transformed Confucius from an exponent of truth to a symbol of the nation.”10 Another historical observation notes that despite the disparagement of Confucius and even burning of Confucian effigies during the Mao Era, Mao never really underestimated the values of Confucius or, for that matter, Confucian history and culture. He had instead a much more specific, narrow mistrust of the tradition called ancestor sanctification, and of class hierarchy associated with Chinese feudalism. Chien-min writes, “Mao’s saying that ‘correct thought is the key to correct action’ is compared to neo-Confucianism; Mao’s strategy of ‘politics takes command’ is traced to Sun Yat-sen, Tseng Kuo-fan, Wang An-shih and even Mencius. Put all these arguments together, and it seems as if Mao had inherited the very essence of Chinese culture from Confucius to Chiang Kai-shek.”11 Deshingkar reasons, “By maintaining a public silence over Confucius, Mao is leaving the door open to a selective acceptance of the Chinese past.”12 The link between Mao’s philosophy and Confucian philosophy supports what Suisheng Zhao terms “Chinese/Confucius learning fever”13 in the 1990s—an eagerness to delve deeply into Confucian ideals not only for realizing foreign policy goals but to revive a nationalist and patriotic culture. Feng Chen points out that this is illustrative of an ongoing and continuous belief in Chinese intellectual circles through

3  MORAL SOCIAL ORDER AND THE IDEAL RULER, THE SAGE-KING 

73

history that Confucianism can help stop the moral degeneration of Chinese society.14 Even though through much of the twentieth century, particularly after the Maoist communist revolution, Confucian values were not emphasized officially but there are many instances in which leaders acknowledged and followed, albeit discreetly, ancient Confucian values. Lin Biao, a one-time top communist party leader and a colleague of Mao, was heavily influenced by Confucian values, and Noumoff’s study elaborates how Lin’s reform ideas were shaped by Confucian values in policies designed to: “(a) restrain oneself and restore the rites; (b) the wise arc by nature in higher positions; (c) those who work with their minds rule those who work with their hands; (d) doctrine of the golden mean; (e) some men are born with knowledge; (f) study well and become an official; (h) educate children in Confucian values; (h) pursue virtue and propriety (referred to as the 8-point criticism of Lin Biao).”15 These ideas evinced the influence of Confucius and reveal how, despite often promoting the ideas of social justice and communism as ‘anti-Confucian,’ communist leadership was still deeply influenced by the Confucian values and was trying to make some sort of rapprochement between the Confucian values and socialist or communist values. This endeavor became more prominent and visible toward the late 1970s when China adopted a market economy while simultaneously following a socialist political system. For Confucians and Neo-Confucians throughout Chinese history, Confucius remained a moral authority, a sage-king without the royal regalia, and an authentic transmitter of great principles from the past. Wai-Yee Li writes,16 Han scholars who describe Confucius as the ‘new sage-king’ endow him with legislative authority by turning him into a figure above and beyond history. Ssu-ma Ch’ien (also written as Sima Qian, considered the grand historian of China) provides another perspective and attributes to Confucius some of the basic tasks of the historian-remembrance, the continuity of tradition, the definition of culture, the refusal to allow greatness to pass into oblivion.

Zhao Lu points out that there is a tradition in China in which rulers compare themselves with sage-kings and would also sometimes compare themselves with Confucius. Although he was never anything approaching a king (and, indeed, his career in politics was hardly marked by fame,

74 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

fortune, or success) the moral attraction of Confucius to rulers was certainly irresistible. Zhao Lu describes how some emperors, like Emperor Ming of the Eastern Han dynasty (200–220 AD), compared themselves with Confucius and even successfully implemented Confucian moral-­ political principles. Zhao Lu points out that Emperor Ming17 appealed to a certain image of Confucius to legitimize his rule, and the intellectual background that prompted his choice…Emperor Ming, by comparing himself to Confucius and his officials to Zixia, one of Confucius’ major disciples, he subtly claimed that he grasped the Way of sagely rulership and Heaven’s Mandate (as originally prophesied by Confucius), defending himself against a contemporaneous concern that there was not currently a sage on the Han throne, but accepting the principle that only sages could bring about a so-called Great Peace (taiping), which may be understood as meaning an ideal state of governance.

Emperor Ming thought, Zhou Lu adds, that he was truly following Confucian values: “by comparing himself to Confucius, he (emperor Ming) claimed that he ruled in two domains. As a moral authority, and transmitter of the Kingly Way in the world, he was a ruler in the sense that Confucius was—the ruler of a moral domain. However, unlike Confucius, he was also able to apply those teachings to a physical kingdom.”18 Julia Murray’s fascinating study of pictorial representations of Confucius during the Song and Yuan periods points out how such portraits provided popular moral instruction during these eras. Despite the negative connotations of idol worship they may occasionally evoke, images of Confucius as a sage, ethical icon, and paragon of wisdom, also encouraged secular reverence for his philosophy and example in citizens who displayed and admired them. Murray elaborates,19 For scholars and political figures, steeped in Confucian learning from an early age, Confucius was the wise teacher and moral exemplar. A portrait that conveyed his humane qualities could be inspirational, regardless of when the image was created or by whom, and it might be particularly effective to display in a school or office. Commissioning portraits of Confucius conveyed the patrons’ endorsement of the values that he stood for, and such images might be used to promote ideological orthodoxy or to encourage group identity.

3  MORAL SOCIAL ORDER AND THE IDEAL RULER, THE SAGE-KING 

75

The recent revival of Confucian images and ideas—including additions to academic curriculums and the establishment of Confucius Institutes— indicate a similar trend (despite their somewhat quasi-imperialist implications) that currently plays a vital role in shaping the discourse of political rule and leadership in China. This emphasis on wisdom and morality in political leadership, we contend, is something which might be usefully examined as a trait applicable to the historical development of political thought across cultures. Even his failures in the practical political realm did not diminish his importance as a teacher and sage. In fact, “failure also had enabled Confucius to become the charismatic figure who inspired legions of disciples and later followers to preserve and spread his teachings.”20 So, Confucianism is not only a political project but also a wider cultural project, influencing almost every aspect of modern Chinese society. We argue that while there is an abundant literature on Confucian intellectual influence in ancient-modern China, sources on his prescriptions for moral authority and moral leadership with respect to sensual austerity in politics remain scant. In this survey, we aim to highlight the importance of this absence. While acknowledging the complex nature and origins of Asiatic thought, we draw select strands from that thought, particularly by reference to Confucian thinking, to make a connection between moral leadership, sensual austerity, and political rule. We are not attempting to conduct a genealogy of Confucian thinking, which remains far too complex and tenuous to encompass in this focused study. There is a certainly vast scholarship on Confucius and perhaps no Asiatic thinker, except Buddha, has remained so omnipresent in the literature. We believe that Confucian studies are still evolving, (or rather there is no one Confucianism, but perhaps Confucianisms21), and various avatars of Confucianism sometimes confound contemporary Confucian scholarship. The deep messages and powerful anecdotes of Confucian thought need not be taken merely at face value but instead should be understood in terms of their subtle, hidden meanings. We explore this aspect of Confucian philosophy while examining the specific teachings that link ethics, moral character, sensual austerity, and political leadership. Thus, our emphasis is less on how Confucianism evolved in its historical context than it is on how ideas like self-control, moral leadership, and good governance are interrelated, and how the Confucian ideal of the sage-king appropriately depicts such an ideal. We also acknowledge that China has a complex and rich history, and

76 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

we have only explored it insofar as it is relevant to our exploration of Confucian political philosophy, morality, and leadership. Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism share with Platonism and neo-­ Platonism the status of a predominant cultural ethos that has configured the entire intellectual history of the very civilization that engendered it. Both traditions have also consequently shaped the scope of moral-political thought in these respective civilizations. We note how Confucian moral philosophy has fostered conceptions of political leadership, and the relevance of sensual austerity to leadership, that are similar to Plato’s in many ways. However, because Confucius was somewhat less inclined to draw the kind of direct and explicit connections between moral leadership and physical self-restraint than was Plato (largely—unlike Plato—because of his reluctance to engage in metaphysical speculation, his lack of a rigid mind-body distinction, and his relational—rather than individuated—concept of self-identity) we spend relatively more time examining the relation between Confucius’s general worldview, ethics, and political theory, before illustrating the connection he saw between these and the need for sensual austerity in political leaders.

The Confucian Worldview Insofar as a ‘Chinese worldview’ exists and is evident in its long intellectual legacy, the paradigm can be said to depict nature, state, and body as an integral part of one entity, or what Nathan Sivin calls a “single complex.”22 Sivin remarks:23 In the third century B.C., as the process of invention got under way, intellectuals bound the structure of heaven and earth, and that of the human body, to that of the state. This was not unprecedented in China, but now the links were made systematic and tight. In every instance their creators were preoccupied with political authority and its effective use. As a result, macrocosm and microcosms became a single manifold, a set of mutually resonant systems of which the emperor was indispensable mediator.

According to Liang Shuming (1893–1988) who played a major role in Rural Reconstruction Movement in the late Qing dynasty and early Republican eras of Chinese history, “Confucius celebrated living (shenghuo) as fundamentally right and good. His metaphysics centered on the ‘life of the cosmos’ (yuzhou zhi sheng and ‘the [Chinese written] character

3  MORAL SOCIAL ORDER AND THE IDEAL RULER, THE SAGE-KING 

77

sheng was the most important).’”24 Furthermore, he writes, “There is nothing in Confucius’s teachings but to follow nature’s order, to try the best to generate and develop lively and fluidly. He supposed that the cosmos always generated and developed forward, and that we would be in concord with a cosmos full of vitality and vegetation if we let all things live as they wish without artifice.”25 In the Confucian world, interconnectedness is a key principle, and within this relational continuum (between individual and the cosmos, or between the individual, earth, and heaven), family and rituals play a major role. Family is a sort of mini-universe, providing an education in morality and ethics through which the individual finds a sense of fulfilment as a son or daughter, father or mother, brother or sister, husband or wife. Family relations are also moral and social relations. The individual dies, but family and family values thrive, and individual accomplishments persist through future generations. Wang Gungwu makes a useful point by way of Confucian cosmology,26 The key is found … at the heart of the Chinese family system that Confucius and his disciples so strongly supported as the foundation of human order and harmony on earth and under heaven. Heaven and earth go on forever, and the third leg of the trinity, man, had to do his part to match that continuity, and this was to be done on this earth. Here, the spirit and ghosts of ancestors could link the present with the past, and what man did on earth in his lifetime, could contribute to shaping the future of his descendants. In this worldly lifetime on earth, man could engage in sacral actions through elaborate rituals, and some of the practices might have provided spiritually satisfying experiences to those who engaged in them.

The idea was that, as earth and heaven are connected, so the person and the state are connected. The individual was a microcosm of the state. If the citizen is moral, so is the state, and the emperor in this hierarchy represents the supreme moral standard for his community. Sivin continues, “That the state was an invention is scarcely a new insight. China differs from the Greek world primarily in that the state was so rarely reinvented. Neither of the two revolutions that began and ended the history of imperial China interrupted this sense of continuity.”27 The State has remained a strong entity in China from the ancient period to the present. For Confucius, there is nothing outside human society. “An ideal society must be built on the foundations of the human society. Confucius and Mencius,

78 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

humanists in the strict sense, had not given the world outside human society a place in their ideals of the good life.”28 In this process, the ruler plays a key role, becoming a pivot connecting the human realm with the moral cosmos. Just as for Plato and Gandhi, a distinctive feature of Confucian philosophy is how to restore or build an ideal society. However, the Confucian tradition takes a different tangent as (unlike Plato, who arguably never believed that the Republic could be achieved) it relies on the idea of a realizable utopian community that had been achieved in ancient times, but which has since declined due to the relative moral degeneration of contemporary rulers, institutions, and citizens. Concern over the degeneration of moral values in society, the disintegration of social order, weakening of filial ties, and moral degeneration of the individual played a central role in Confucian thinking. In the Confucian social order, relational social-­ family ties, or filial piety (li) and benevolence (ren) are key determinants of social life under the mandate of heaven (tian). As Wilson points out, “the organization of relatives into patrilineal descent systems is no less a social construction as the organization of the Confucian tradition into filiative lineages is an ideological construction; the principle of Heaven is invoked to legitimate both of these genealogical projects.”29 Insofar as the mandate of heaven was embodied by the ancient kings, this truth could be transmitted and applied to address the present degeneration of society. And its transmission, even though derived from the divine, is not a purely speculative philosophy or abstract ideal, but must be implemented via the concrete political and social fabric in which things are put in their proper order. As Confucius famously described in his Analects, “There is government, when the prince is prince, and the minister is minister; when the father is father, and the son is son,”30 implying that there is an orderly society, and all members in the society have their appointed place in this hierarchical social order when the king or the emperor at the top of the hierarchy rules by example via the mandate of heaven. This reflects in his person the morality and ethics of rule by his being an embodiment of truth, honesty, morality, so that the citizens follow his example without any fear, and by internalizing the values that the king represents. As Confucius describes in the Analects, “When rulers love to observe the rules of propriety, the people respond readily to the calls on them for service.”31 Chen Yong makes a useful distinction that there are really two classical Confucian traditions—great tradition and little tradition—the former

3  MORAL SOCIAL ORDER AND THE IDEAL RULER, THE SAGE-KING 

79

representing the grand vision of Confucius and his prescriptions for the states and rulers at the higher intellectual level, and the latter representing morality at the popular level. Recent decades have witnessed the revival of both these traditions. Chen notes, “historically, Confucianism not only assumed a role of civilizing the population and state ideology, something that can be called ‘great tradition,’ but also functioned as a ‘little tradition’ at the grassroots level, and this dimension is equally important as far as Chinese cultural tradition is concerned.”32 Confucian philosophy is largely a project of unifying these traditions in a comprehensive worldview. The Confucian scheme, as James Hsiung points out, envisions “a teleological order based on the Chinese belief in tian (also Tien, to mean loosely heaven), suggesting a universal order in nature derived from an ancient Chinese folklore regarding a semi-personalized deity responsible for the natural regularities (later extended to the regulation of social order).”33 The sage-king or the ideal ruler abides by this Confucian principle. To be a true Confucian gentleman or junzi, one must abide by the cardinal principle of heaven, or tian. Confucius says in the Analects, “To subdue one’s self and return to propriety, is perfect virtue. If a man can for one day subdue himself and return to propriety, all under heaven will ascribe perfect virtue to him. Is the practice of perfect virtue from a man himself, or is it from others?”34 Dong Jiang and Xiaohong Ma write, “morality and submission to the moral law, and following ritual propriety, and joined to the worship of supreme Being, constitute the religion of China as professed by the emperor and the men of literature,”35 implying that moral leadership is foundational to the Confucian state and political system.

Moral Self-Cultivation and Moral Leadership in a Harmonious Society It may well have been the turbulent Warring States era in which he lived that evoked Confucius’s interest in two fundamental questions: First, how should an individual behave in any society—or put more narrowly, in the dynamic and relational Confucian world, what ethical obligations exist between an individual and his family, his community, state, and society? Second (related to the first), how then should an ideal ruler relate to his government and community—what is necessary to establish a stable and prosperous society in which everyone gets roles as per socially prescribed norms, and performs those roles righteously?

80 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

In the first place, family serves as an incubator of moral values. It is through relationships with family members as a father, a son, a husband, a wife, a mother, a sibling and multitude of roles that the individual realizes  their own identity and moral worth. If the individual performs her social obligations within the family well, she will perform these social roles outside of the family well. As Ames describes it, “the underlying wisdom in this Confucian tradition is that family is the single human institution to which persons are most likely to give themselves utterly, and without remainder. To transform the world into a family, according to the Confucian sensibility, is to promote the model that will best accomplish the goal of getting the most out of your constitutive relations by applying the logic that when your neighbor does better, you do better.”36 The world mirrors family, the family is the world in miniature, and ultimately the whole world is a family. Additionally, various Neo-Confucians since the Han times often viewed the concept of what the west might call ‘human nature’ differently from one another, some of them considering human moral psychology inherently ‘good’ and others considering it inherently ‘bad’ (although all of them may be said to have a comparatively more fluid and dynamic understanding of both self-identity and moral psychology than that of much classical western philosophy). Thinkers like Mencius represented the more positive view and those like Xunzi the more negative. Murray states,37 early Chinese debates about whether the foundation for morality is generated internally or is imposed on people from without can also be traced through the controversy between Mengzi (also Mencius) and Xunzi regarding human nature. As is well known, for Mengzi the ultimate source of moral standards resides internally, in people’s innate and spontaneous moral impulses of their Heavenly-endowed hearts and natures, which he termed the “sprouts of the cardinal Confucian virtues”. Conversely, Xunzi located the source of moral standards externally, in the ‘acquired nature IS’ crafted through the ‘conscious exertion’ of past sages.

Murray points out that, in general, Han thinkers found a ‘syncretizing and mediating’ dynamic somewhere in between these two internal and external sources. He refers to Bian He’s jade analogy to illustrate logic by which Han thinkers integrated Mencius’s and Xunzi’s respective positions, “on the one hand, the exquisite natural qualities of his jade—its color, transparency, and texture—were inherent to the stone itself, notwithstanding

3  MORAL SOCIAL ORDER AND THE IDEAL RULER, THE SAGE-KING 

81

that prior to processing it, they were not yet apparent to undiscerning gemologists. Analogously, our Han thinkers viewed moral goodness as a latent endowment of people’s natures, at least for the great majority.”38 Thus, in Confucian tradition, moral character is, in some sense, a static personality trait prior to its expression as a dynamic process. However, to be actualized and become genuinely real, the internal moral character must be reflected outside, must be put into practice by way of the individual in relation to his family and world. This functional individual moral psychology must proceed in progressive steps to its ultimate completion as part of collective morality embedded in family values, social customs, rituals, traditions, and institutions (exemplified in the Confucian dictum that when a father is a father, son is a son, then there is no social problem). The evolution from individual to social therefore involves a relational symbiosis between the two. Moral principles are universal and are also embodied simultaneously both individually and socially in a single continuum—and because of this, the imposition or force or formal laws plays a secondary role. Confucius makes this point clear, “when a prince’s personal conduct is correct, his government is effective without the issuing of orders. If his personal conduct is not correct, he may issue orders, but they will not be followed.”39 Furthermore, he says, “if a minister makes his own conduct correct, what difficulty will he have in assisting in government? If he cannot rectify himself, what has he to do with rectifying others?”40 For Confucius, “If a man be without the virtues proper to humanity, what has he to do with the rites of propriety? If a man be without the virtues proper to humanity, what has he to do with music?”41 A life devoid of moral excellence, and the wisdom from which it is derived, is a pointless one. Ritual propriety is not only about outward activity, but also about confirming to the highest standards of morality and ethics. It is both outward and inward, and necessary for the establishment of a peaceful and harmonious society in which individuals and groups perform their roles as required by social norms and rules. However ritual propriety does not end with the outward performance of perfunctory activities. Mu-chou Poo notes, “it is important, however, to remember that Confucius’ concern about li did not end with an outward conformity to proper rituals. In fact, the essence of his teaching held that the highest stage of ethics or morality was beyond any ritual conduct.”42 A society in which only ritual propriety is emphasized—without the accompanying cultivation of virtue—is a society akin to a body without

82 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

soul. This notion is even more applicable to the political ruler, because it is the ruler to whom people look as exemplar, it is the ruler who rules by example, it is the ruler who is an embodiment of moral principles, and for whom principles and practices are part of the same spectrum. When the ruler follows moral principles as reflected in social customs and rituals, or li, then he is an embodiment of benevolence, or ren. A simplistic physical-­ instrumental interpretation of Confucian rituals as formal rites alone would defeat the Confucian purpose of morally governed society. Rituals are valuable primarily for the ideals and spirit of ren that they convey. While they provide a material means for the conservation of social order, the heart of rituals lies in ren. Roger Ames defines Confucian ren thus, “ren is one’s entire person: one’s cultivated cognitive, aesthetic, moral, and religious sensibilities as they are expressed in one’s ritualized roles and relationships. It is one’s ‘field of selves,’ the sum of significant relationships that constitute one as a resolutely social person.”43 Therefore, every relational field of human activity must have a unified locus of moral integrity, or shan, at its center. Every activity must pass this test of Confucian moral rectitude. For Confucius as for Plato, mere appearance deceives, and the culture of mere appearance, public perception, and ‘branding’—so important in the contemporary milieu—is inimical to the Confucian ren-ideal. In this context, James Hsiung draws a useful parallel between Confucian rulers and Plato’s philosopher kings, who require rigorous training and education to become moral exemplars—the goal of this status involving the “inherent Confucian belief that character purification lies in purging real or potential corrupting influences to preserve the original goodness in human nature.”44 Hsiung explains that, in order to accomplish this, “ever since Confucianism was adopted in 136 B.C. as the ‘national teaching’ under the aegis of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, the state in China acquired two unique functions…(a) the function of trying to ensure that the populace be properly educated and safeguarded from society’s corrupting influences; and (b) the function of participating in people’s livelihood.”45 To serve this function, “a keju system, or civil service system writ large, was put in place to enforce the state-overseen channels of social mobility, ensuring elite circulation in both government and society at large. This system, in fact, distantly inspired the future civil-­ service system (in the narrow sense) in governments in other countries…”46 After fulfilling its goal of mitigating the moral degeneration of society by self-cultivation and moral education, the morally ordered state

3  MORAL SOCIAL ORDER AND THE IDEAL RULER, THE SAGE-KING 

83

would promote policies so that welfare of the people is ensured. Hence, the idea of dual system of public and private partnership in economics ‘officially supervised, merchant managed’ (guandu shangban), Hsiung explains, has been an economic feature of China since Han times, though it was popularized as China entered the market economy in the late 1970s “so as to remove or minimize the pernicious influence of scarcity on the original benign human soul.”47 When the state fulfills this moral duty and its rulers are moral exemplars, we can say that the rulers are sage-kings and they are enjoying the ‘mandate of heaven.’ The Confucian ideals of sage-­ king and mandate of heaven have remained powerful inspirations for statecraft in China from the Han Dynasty through the twenty-first century. Confucianism can be viewed in many ways as a ‘top-down approach’ to political leadership, and Ames and Hershock argue in their book on ‘Confucianisms’ that social order and harmony can be established when rulers set a moral example while citizens follow this example. This program, they claim, is the essence of what is now broadly termed ‘New Confucianism.’48 Leaders in this system embody the moral ideals designed for citizens to emulate, and it tends to facilitate an authoritarian approach to political administration. Erica Brindley, in contrast, argues that the discourse on ‘private sphere (si) versus public sphere (gong)’ in early China suggests a much different conception of Confucianism has been shaping this political domain through China’s history. She illustrates how “their open dislike of the influence of private, individual, and personal realms in politics strongly suggests that the statecraft writers were reacting to and in dialog with those intellectuals who engaged discussion of subjectivity, the self, and its agencies.”49 The polarization between private sphere and public sphere, combined with this focus on public sphere, was “intended to limit the ruler’s power in important ways.”50 The prevailing view, she states, is that gong has fostered the rise of authoritarian states. However, she points out that this view fails to comport with how early Chinese thinking connects gong to a broader interpretation of the ‘universal Way.’ She argues, “rather than pointing first to imperial control, however, gong denotes a larger conceptual ideal concerned with what is universal, fair, objective, unified, and whole. In other words, the operative words for understanding gong in later Warring States contexts are not ‘imperial control,’ but ‘universal Way.’”51 This Confucian ideal therefore broadens the scope of public interest. Brindley argues,52

84 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

…it was also a method of keeping royal power in check…rather than stressing imperial (and often authoritarian) control—which was often, no doubt, a part of it—my analysis emphasizes the function of gong as a transcendent ideal, one applicable to what might be dubbed the cosmic or ‘universal state.’ My view stresses the need to understand this concept as an ideological solution to a wide variety of complicated political and cultural problems, and not merely to reduce it to the interests of the state.

Expanding upon Brindley’s argument, it would be reasonable to conclude that this broader notion of the public sphere concerns not only the limits of authoritarian power but, perhaps even more significantly, political rule in terms of larger values, moral canons, and subtle principles as exemplified by Confucian ideals. It involves moral leadership within a transcendent ethical framework beyond mere legal formalism or technocratic competence. In this sense again, the state is not only a political entity but also an ethical entity, and the ruler at the helm of government steers the state and its people along a moral trajectory that both are subject to.

Moral Principle and Legal Formalism For the Confucian tradition, therefore, one of the major purposes of law is moral instruction, rather than meting out punishment or administering rewards. Paul Goldin argues, “…the records that can be regarded as evidence of Confucianized law are always based, explicitly or implicitly, on two tenets: (i) the purpose of law is moral instruction; and (2) the textual foundation of law must be the Confucian canons (which hence override any conceivable statute or decree).”53 This conception of law, he explains, configured the administrative framework, jurisprudence, and court system of the state bureaucracy during the Han Dynasty. The guiding intent behind this Confucianized legal system de-emphasized penal codes and formal incentives, while placing more stress on regulating relationships between individuals through social-moral canons. While the formal law focused on citizen’s duties toward the state, enumerated those duties, and punished violators/rewarded those who complied, ‘Confucianized,’ law focused more on ensuring the integrity of family roles, social relations, and moral rectitude. The Confucian concern for order and harmony required a more subtle interpretation of justice than abstract rules could countenance. Opposed to the policy of “imposing order by enumerating each subject’s obligations to the state, and enforcing these obligations through

3  MORAL SOCIAL ORDER AND THE IDEAL RULER, THE SAGE-KING 

85

clearly prescribed rewards and punishments…for Confucians, effective law stipulates not just people’s obligations to the state, but more fundamentally their obligations to each other—which are themselves determined by the nature of their relationship.”54 Western commentators have long noted that the key to this legal philosophy may be best illustrated via the difference between the traditional Confucian concern with preserving harmonious relationships, and the contrasting western concern with preserving legal rights. The “traditional Chinese prejudice for the immediate and concrete,” Ames contends, “tends to preclude the acknowledgement of any concept of universal rights.”55 While Rosemont adds that, in contrast, “In modern western philosophy the concept of rights has dominated moral and political discourse for over two hundred years.”56 Both scholars attribute this contrast to a basic difference in each civilization’s conception of self-identity: the Chinese entailing a radically relational self-concept, the west promoting a highly individuated ego-self. The atomistic western individual (a product of ideas like Cartesian mind-body dualism, Scottish Enlightenment faculty psychology, and the social contract of Hobbes-Locke) becomes a locus of abstract rights designed to preserve individual autonomy. In contrast, the relational Chinese citizen, configured by the balance of opposites and conceived in terms of his roles in family-society, is a mediating link that conjoins diverse aspects in the pragmatic social matrix of which he is a relational part. The key element that preserves social cohesion in classical Chinese political thought—rather than legal rights and obligations—is therefore the morality or virtue that establishes a binding connection between the citizen and his family and social and legal relationships. In their study of the Analects within the historical context of legal practice during the Han period, Dong Jiang and Xiaohong Ma explore this close Confucian connection between law and morality: “moralism generally does not constitute a major part of the content of modern Western legal scholarship,” they observe, “but it must occupy the very center of any meaningful discussion of Chinese law. In short, there can be no real understanding of Chinese law without grasping its moral anchor and content.”57 The early Han period adopted Confucian moralism as the official link between these two, to promote law enforcement without the use of force. While law or legal terms are mentioned in the Confucian Analects, their defining quality, as the authors note, is their implementation without the need for physical coercion or punishment.

86 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

Dong Jiang and Xiaohong Ma state further that the concept of ‘rule of law’ as a western notion, and a kind of canonical virtue in the western democracies, emphasizes formal legal concepts and their instrumental application—but this idea would be alien to Confucius. “The Western theory of analytical jurisprudence which emerged in modern times,” they write, “differs from traditional Chinese jurisprudence in that the Chinese have persistently sought morally good law. When debating the essence of law, politicians, philosophers, and scholars of traditional China all accepted the ideal notion that the law, being integral and fundamental to society, should be in accord with the universally recognized social value of shan (moral goodness).”58 Noting that Yang Honglie’s History of Legal Thought in China points out how “although Confucius did not undermine the rule of law, he was not convinced by it,”59 they claim that Confucius believed a system of courts may not be necessary if there is moral rule and leadership. For example, the ‘Treatise on Penal Law’ in the Book of Jin starts with the Analects, “… in government if you depend on moral sentiment, and maintain order by encouraging education and good manners, the people will have a sense of shame for wrong-doing and, moreover, will emulate what is good.”60 Following this Confucian path, the legal scholar Wejen Chang argues that “Applying the law should be kept to a minimum. Instead, a higher norm should be considered first. And, where application of laws was inevitable, a judge should not just look at the letter of the law. Rather, he should be allowed room to interpret the relevant law, making it consonant with higher principles.”61 The famous Chicken Case of the Northern and Southern Song Dynasties is an exemplar of this ideal. Here, two individuals appear before the magistrate with a chicken and each accuses the other of stealing it. The magistrate, Fu Yan, then applies the Confucian canon of moral law in adjudicating the case. Reasoning that Confucian virtues of wisdom and integrity will be adequate to decide the verdict, he asks each what feed he gave to the chicken, to which one responds beans and the other grain. The magistrate then orders the chicken slaughtered, its gullet opened, and, finding grain there, he concludes that the one who said ‘beans’ lied. This moral transgression, the judge decides, is evidence of his guilt. The case is significant in Chinese legal history as it exemplifies the application of wisdom and integrity to adjudicate the case and, hence, the centrality of Confucian virtue to jurisprudence. In this spirit, rule of law is most fundamentally about wisdom, integrity, and ritual propriety. A legal system should not normally undermine the written law or formal legal principles,

3  MORAL SOCIAL ORDER AND THE IDEAL RULER, THE SAGE-KING 

87

but when there is a conflict between formal legal principles and practical virtue, it will uphold moral principles at the cost of legal principles. People respect a ruler not because they are the head of the state, or as a matter of mere formalism, but instead because the ruler is an exemplar of moral leadership. As Confucius makes it crystal clear in the Analects, “If a superior love propriety, the people will not dare not to be reverent. If he love righteousness, the people will not dare not to submit to his example. If he love good faith, the people will not dare not to be sincere.”62

Ruler as Moral Exemplar In the Confucian world, ritual propriety in the service of moral rectitude (which can be broadly interpreted as performing the social roles that one’s station in society properly demands) is paramount. A ruler’s morality becomes evident when she adheres to her social role by practicing rituals appropriate to her status, as elucidated by the Confucians and the Neo-­ Confucians. For example, the Song Confucian scholar, Hu Yuan, 993–1059, argued, “if those above practice filial piety and solemnity to the utmost (in performing the rites) in the ancestral temple, those below will observe it and be transformed accordingly with confidence and respect. Sages established the rites of ancestral sacrifices.”63 Other Song dynasty Confucian scholars, like Wang Anshi, 1021–1086, emphasized the unity of ritual propriety, moral leadership, and political authority.64 Given his prioritization of moral integrity over legal formalism, intention over ritual and practice over theory, the Confucian ruler leads by example. When the leader’s behavior instantiates moral principles, he does not have to preach them. Rather, his actions speak for themselves, as these transmit divine knowledge. When the sage-king legislates, his subjects follow his actions rather than just his words. In an illustrative passage from the Analects, Confucius claims, “I would prefer not speaking.”65 His student, Tsze-kung asked, “If you, Master, do not speak, what shall we, your disciples, have to record?,” to which Confucius replied, “Does Heaven speak? The four seasons pursue their courses, and all things are continually being produced, but does Heaven say anything?”66 What is occurring here, Puett explains, is that67 the issue posed is again that of transmission: Confucius proclaims his desire not to speak, but he also argues that his preference does not prevent transmission to later generations. The argument is couched in an analogy:

88 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

Heaven does not speak, yet it is from Heaven that the four seasons proceed and the hundred things are generated. What can be transmitted, in other words, is patterned behavior: true transmission, Confucius is claiming, is not through words but rather through replicating the patterns that were initially found in Heaven.

In the Confucian ontological scheme, an emperor and his subjects are conjoined in one cosmic body (junmin yiti), implying that, even despite the ritual propriety and hierarchy that denote personal and social distance between the emperor and his subjects, on an ideal and moral plane they remain united. They form the part of the same collective state-building agenda in which relations are governed by the goal of building a peaceful and stable society, in which the emperor or the ruler leads the way via personal conduct. In his study of the worship of Confucius and ritual planning in the Xinzheng reforms, from 1902–1911, Ya-pei Kuo finds that social status differentiation was of secondary importance and that emphasis was given to “uniformity and synchronization across the nation.”68 Both ritual and social status differentiation certainly played a role at this time, but the differences that these highlight were of degree rather than of absolute rank. Through their rituals, the emperor joined his people in a mutual homage to Confucius, the sage. During this period, occurring before the May 4th movement and before the advent of communist ideology in the People’s Republic, Ya-pei writes, “Discursively, official proclamations no longer invoked cosmological references, such as the Son of Heaven, in discussing ritual arrangements. The quiet renouncement of the emperorship’s cosmological rooting stripped the emperor’s ritual action of cosmic significance and prepared the ground for his merging into the collectivity of the nation.”69 Song Lian (1310–1381), neo-Confucian scholar and historian-­ politician during the Ming dynasty, claimed that any government’s legitimacy is measured in proportion to its level of public service, and any legitimate ruler must therefore govern with the goal of promoting his citizen’s general welfare. This conception of the relation between citizen, ruler, and state was based largely on the conception of human nature as inherently sociable and benevolent, which was central to Mencius. It was also emphasized by many later neo-Confucians like Song Lian and Wang Yangming during the Ming period. Langlois describes this line of thought as, “sageliness, or more precisely the possibility of human perfection” and, since it “resides in every person; one has only to find this inherent quality

3  MORAL SOCIAL ORDER AND THE IDEAL RULER, THE SAGE-KING 

89

and cultivate it. Such cultivation is the proper task of a human being.”70 Confucians emphasized that the ruler, who is at the top of the social hierarchy, is a moral exemplar whose primary task is therefore to keep the public welfare aligned with the virtues that inform and delimit his own power. As the epitome of virtue embodied in the state, his legislative edicts reflect his inner moral character which, in turn, reflects the ren or goodwill inherent in the cosmic order. His rule aligns with a virtuous social and moral order that also reflects ren. Thus, moral self-cultivation remains key to proper Confucian political stewardship, as applied to functional community relations. The ruler at the top of the social hierarchy must lead by example, and if a ruler instantiates a virtuous character people will follow his moral-guidance naturally, in accord with the ruler-subject relationship, and without the need for coercive persuasion. Confucius famously lays this out in the Analects, “If the people be led by laws, and uniformity sought to be given them by punishments, they will try to avoid the punishment, but have no sense of shame.”71 Furthermore, he says, if the people are led “by virtue, and uniformity sought to be given them by the rules of propriety, they will have the sense of shame, and moreover will become good.”72 The basic import, of course, is that if a ruler imposes law but does not possess a virtuous character, she can be marginally successful so long as the citizens follow the law from fear of punishment. However, both they and the ruler will lack the moral connection and conscient feeling necessary for each to be truly part of the state. On the other hand, when the ruler guides the subject with authentic wisdom by presenting herself as a moral exemplar, virtuous leader, and embodiment of social rules and rituals, then people will obey the law voluntarily and without any need for coercion, as they will manifest the virtuous spirit that the ruler-subject relation entails. Interestingly, Xu Fancheng, or Hu Hsu, who lived and studied in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in India for a significant time and who translated the works of the Indian philosopher into Chinese, also discussed the qualities of the Confucian sage-king, from which he derived principles applicable to contemporary rulers around the world. From a Confucian perspective, he writes, any sage in any place or age should possess three characteristics, “a noble moral character; profound knowledge, and a remarkable ability to put his ideals into practice.”73 The first characteristic comes directly from Mencius who argued for the innate benevolence of human nature, and of the sage as an embodiment of that nature. Beside moral character, the sage must have profound knowledge, which is a

90 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

legacy of the Confucian tradition of scholarship and education. In this way the ruler’s moral character originates in, and contributes to, personal wisdom and the intellectual sophistication required to legislate effectively. The last characteristic is also quite significant as it emphasizes how important the practical application of knowledge and moral character are to a healthy social-political community. Without practice, the Confucians would claim, the development of character and knowledge has no value— and this is even more important for the ruler, since it is the ruler who provides the wellspring of virtue in any healthy community. Fancheng also points out that sages are products of their history and of their own society’s needs, as they must both inherit and assimilate the great traditions of the past and then perpetuate those traditions. They are, in this Confucian sense, ‘divine workers’ in human history. Here Fancheng, who was also steeped deeply in Indian literature and Hindu scriptures, seemed to be influenced by the concept of leadership in the Bhagavad Gita, which describes the yogi as an instrument of God or a divine worker. We have not, in this work, drawn parallels between the Confucian sage-king and the Gita’s concept of yogi or divine worker, but this could be a useful subject for future research. Sun Bo highlights three characteristics of Fancheng’s perspectives on Confucius, “we can select three key terms for further consideration: human character, literary ability, and career. Human character concerns having a noble moral nature; literary ability concerns possession of valid knowledge; and career concerns having outstanding abilities.”74 Any individual who possesses these qualities can be called a sage. The Confucian idea of a junzi (gentleman) or daren (superior man) closely approximates this concept of the sage. Sageliness is reflected in character and action, or what Sun Bo calls the Confucian doctrine of ‘sageliness within and kingliness without’, and elaborates further that75 ‘kingliness without’ means adherence to ‘the ancestral sayings of Kings Yao and Shun and the charters of Kings Wen and Wu’. However, we see that canonical laws and institutions, as well as rituals, music, literature and behaviour of the past, all changed with time. Yet, the Way of ‘sageliness within’ remains eternal and immutable. We can ask: ‘What is sageliness?’ The answer is: ‘Sageliness is the spirit of the mind–heart (xin)’. This mind–heart is also the principle (li) that is unceasing in sincerity and purity, close to human feelings below and achieving the wishes of Heaven above; this is the Way that penetrates all things, the all-illuminating and cosmos-creating mind–

3  MORAL SOCIAL ORDER AND THE IDEAL RULER, THE SAGE-KING 

91

heart…In this sense, human beings not only possess ‘life’ (sheng) but also a ‘mandate’ (ming), or a ‘mission’ (shi) for life.

The profound cosmological scope of this all-embracing vision may appear perplexing, considering Confucius’s aversion to unnecessary abstraction and extravagant metaphysics, but it makes sense from a Confucian moral perspective. Put simply, morality is the paramount divine virtue of the citizen (and even more so of the ruler) and a life devoid of morality is a life without a purpose, without a mission, and certainly not appropriate in a political leader. A ruler without morality or wisdom is unfit to rule because since the ruler embodies the moral order of the state, and a state devoid of morality or wisdom will invariably manifest corruption, instability, and disorder. Sun Bo goes on to relate that Fancheng claims, “the Way or the divine is nothing but a highly developed and refined way of life. This is ‘culture’. This means that humans must consciously transform their qualities to make their human nature more perfect. Seen in this light, sages are ‘models’ of progression in the self-consciousness of human beings.”76 This description models the image of a Confucian sage-king and his role as a moral exemplar in a society that emulates him. As moral exemplar, his presence and his work perfect the state. The sage-king is a kind of sun whose rays illuminate and clarify the meaning and purpose of his community. Such rulers are, to use Fancheng’s term, ‘models’ for the moral progress of the state and of humanity. Like other thinkers in this tradition, Fancheng struggled with the problem of defining the requirements for sagely leadership. Sun Bo points out that different philosophical traditions advocating this principle have held a wide variety of interpretations. Even within the Confucian tradition, different schools of thought (the Neo-­ Confucians of Song and Ming eras, for example) have held unique interpretations of the term ‘sage.’ However, Sun Bo points out (using the arguments of Fancheng) that these diverse definitions—interpreted and reinterpreted with the vagaries of history and culture—nonetheless contain a thread of ideological continuity. The concept of the sage can also be viewed from a larger context and is amenable to a simple definition: “the sage is an ideal person with perfect moral character.”77 Although perhaps too comprehensive to be reduced to any one localized interpretive vantage point, it also ensures that the ideal remains expansive and adaptive enough to evolve through varying contexts without losing its essential social function. Since the sage tradition is not confined to one person or one era, it

92 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

has been successfully passed down through successive eras from the Zhou era to the present. Explaining Fancheng’s reasoning, Sun Bo continues,78 We at present esteem the Duke of Zhou and Confucius as the sages of the Chinese nation, but it is not confined to these two persons. King Wen, the father of Duke of Zhou, is venerated as a sage, so are the ancestors of Confucius. Mencius is esteemed as the Second Sage (after Confucius), and in Mencius, Boyi was deemed as the ‘pure’ sage, Liu Xiahui as the ‘harmonious’ sage, and Confucius was the sage whose actions were ‘timely’. In sum, among the sages there were a lot of them who were famous and yet did not have any writings. They illustrate a simple principle that individuals can cultivate themselves with morality and reach the level of sagehood; yet they need not study literature and may even be unable to write. Literary ability was an important aspect in the careers of the Duke of Zhou and Confucius, as they relied on their writings to pass down their teachings to posterity.

This also helps to highlight a clear distinction between types of knowledge as relevant to the character of the sage: knowledge that is articulated in literature, knowledge conveyed by moral example, and the intellectual reasoning/interpretation that these require as they evolve. Confucian sages and sage-kings have vast and varied modes of knowledge, as Fancheng defines them, but moral character and wisdom—as well as their practice— in this scheme are more important than their literary expressions. The literary canon (e.g., The book of Changes, Analects, Mencius, Spring and Autumn Annals, The Great Learning, etc.) has always been essential to Confucian/neo-Confucian doctrine, but writings and philosophical abstractions have always remained secondary to practical wisdom. Perhaps as an indirect result of its occasionally anti-intellectual propensities, the Confucian tradition has managed to incorporate the spirit of its literary legacy without being dogmatically constrained by it. Sun Bo also draws useful parallels between the philosophies of the Bhagavad Gita and Confucius. He argues that the Gita’s Mamekam Saranam Braja (‘surrender to me’ or ‘obey me’) is akin to the Confucian ‘Heaven,’ and what Confucius calls benevolence and righteousness are akin to the Gita’s Sattva guna or the higher nature of human being, which calls upon the individual to transcend his lower nature and reach the highest level of ‘knowing human beings and Heaven.’ Sun Bo elaborates further,79

3  MORAL SOCIAL ORDER AND THE IDEAL RULER, THE SAGE-KING 

93

Confucius mentioned the four eradications; the first is to eliminate our self-­ ego, which is similar to the idea of anatta or anatman in Bhagavad Gita. On achieving no-self (wuwo), no-prejudgement (wuyi), no-predetermination (wubi) and no-obstinacy (wugu) will follow as a result, and vice versa. These are the necessary things which the Bhagavad Gita teaches people to cultivate in themselves. The debate between selfinterest and righteousness that Mencius spoke of is similar to the adherence to self dharma (sva-dharma) and its resultant action in Hinduism. The innate duties among the different castes in Hinduism, is where yi (right actions or behaviors) are located. For example, in the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna is a Kshatriya warrior–ruler who has the protection of his own tribe as his innate duty; this can be translated in contemporary terms as ‘doing your assigned job well’.

Offering his own rare and original insight along these lines, Fancheng draws from his study of Hindu scripture and recognizes parallels between the Bhagavad Gita and Confucian thought. Using the Gita as a sounding board for Confucius, he sees clear similarities between Krishna’s emphasis on the righteous performance of one’s spiritual duty, the connection between practical goals and moral self-cultivation, and the diminished value of ritual and law compared to these on one hand, and the very same values articulated by Confucius (albeit in a different cultural context) on the other. For both the Gita and Confucius, rituals and formal rules play an important role in realizing the deeper wisdom and morality that inspire them, but it is ultimately wisdom, spiritual calling, and moral integrity that remain the primary foundation and best guides for individuals in performing their duty to self, family, state, and the larger society. Tan Chung points out how, for many modern scholars, the Confucian philosophy of political leadership can be described via four syllables: neisheng waiwang—meaning, ‘a saint internally and a moral-leader externally.’80 This definition of the sage-king, Tan Chung points out, has persisted among Chinese philosophers for a long time and helps to clarify the scope of Chinese moral values not only within Chinese society, but also in China’s foreign relations throughout its history. Departing from the usual line of historical scholarship focusing exclusively on China’s domestic affairs, Tan Chung applies this Confucian dictum to its foreign policy. Arguing that its political culture has been, from classical times, imbued with an appreciation for sheng (sainthood) and wang (moral leaders), and the combination of these two creating wangdao (entailing a moral and peaceful approach to international politics), Chinese foreign

94 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

policy (at least up to the present) has avoided its antithesis badao, which entails geopolitical hegemony, imperialism, and an adversarial international policy. Drawing on Mencius, who said, “from ancient times the good rulers have pursued good deeds and are unmindful of power,” Tan Chung explains that wangdao as a policy guide means ‘to pursue good deeds,’ while badao means ‘mindful of power.’81 In international politics, badao prescribes a ‘Realist’ notion of relations between states in which ‘political egoism’ is expressed in terms of power-maximization and in which nationalism predominates and governs state behavior, whereas wangdao emphasizes diminished ‘tribal identity,’ international cooperation, and peaceful coexistence. Tan Chung further elaborates on how these kinds of basic Confucian ideals became central to Chinese political thought and practice. Confucian teaching and writings, including the classics like the Shijing (Book of Odes) and Shujing (Book of History), compiled by Confucius, eventually became the fundamental source of education for academics and politicians without any opposition. He points out how the founding emperor of Han Dynasty, Emperor Gaozu, was hesitant to accept Confucian teachings at first.82 The founding emperor of the Han Dynasty, Emperor Gaozu (202 to 195 BC), was initially hostile towards Confucian teachings. He was annoyed by his scholar adviser, Lu Jia’s (240–170 BC) insistence on the importance of these two classics. He shouted at Lu Jia that as he had ‘obtained the kingdom on horseback, how would Shijing and Shujing matter to me?’ Lu Jia replied: ‘Though Your Majesty has obtained the kingdom on horseback, can you rule it on horseback?’ The Emperor was convinced by him, and the moral authority of Shijing and Shujing was firmly established.

Tan Chung points out that the term harmony is a predominant concept in Confucian thinking and that it is derived from the Confucian saying, Junzi he er butong, xiaoren tong er buhe, which means “the sagacious people stay together in harmony while keeping their differences. The mean people stay together without differences and without harmony.”83 Applied to international politics, this suggests that while the nations may have their domestic and foreign differences, these differences need not lead to conflict and violence, but may well (like yin and yang) engender harmonious and peaceful coexistence.

3  MORAL SOCIAL ORDER AND THE IDEAL RULER, THE SAGE-KING 

95

Chinese intellectual culture, argues Tan Chung, can be described as ‘quotation culture’ as generation after generation of Chinese intellectuals keep quoting the sages from ancient times to weave ancient thinking into ‘a strong ideological system.’84 Hence, ideas like benevolence, virtue, moral rectitude, the sage-king, and justice are found in the Analects and have been transmitted through the classic texts from generation to generation. Rulers throughout history have been measured against this literary tradition and found either adequate or wanting with reference to its tenets. Tan Chung claims that even the great Han Emperor Wu (157–87 BC), who established Confucianism as a state ideology, was by some accounts not considered a hero—let alone a sage—in Chinese history because he engaged in wars and conquests, and thus did not emulate perfectly the ancient Confucian virtues.85 In this way, Confucius remained an attraction for the rulers of China since the ancient period—particularly from the early Han period through the present—despite the ever-changing images and interpretations of Confucius from regime to regime and from historical context to historical context. Sometimes he was presented as an uncrowned king or a sage-king, imparting moral values to the ruler for good governance, and sometimes he was interpreted not only as an extraordinary human being, but also as a sort of semi-divine being.86 But despite all these perpetually alternating portrayals, and despite its ever-­ evolving popular influence in China—particularly during the rise of Buddhism, Taoism, and other rival value systems—Confucianism remained a major philosophical force to be reckoned with in Chinese history and politics. Keith Knapp notes in his study of Han-era political values that this Confucian influence encouraged rulers and top officials to make a living exclusively from their state-funded salaries. They were disinclined to engage in profitable ventures beyond the scope of their political duty, since such private self-interested activity, in competition with their own citizen-constituents, “would increase the possibility that commoners would earn less money and thus not be able to support themselves.”87 Knapp explains, “The genteel, upper-class espoused an ethos that loathed the search for profit and glory—the money-grubbing and power-seeking that they saw as typical of the subelite. The upper-class ethos, by contrast, was one of ‘purity’ (qing)…By the Eastern Han era, this idea had come to mean that they remain uncontaminated by the desires of the everyday world.”88 Like Plato’s selfless public servants, whose wisdom and personal integrity remained uncontaminated by material interests (and, as we also

96 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

contend, in contrast to the many contemporary leaders who use political privilege for personal profit), this emphasis on public service, guided by concerns for the collective welfare—even at the expense of personal suffering and financial sacrifice—became a key Confucian virtue that shaped the classical political archetype. Indeed, Neo-Confucian Xunzi argued that knowledge ranks above birth and wealth, and that any person possessing knowledge should be promoted to the post of prime minister or high official. He states, “Although a man may be the descendant of commoners, if he has acquired learning, is upright in conduct, and can adhere to ritual principles, he should be promoted to the post of prime minister or high court official.”89 In a similar vein, Denis Twitchett’s study of Tang Emperor T’ang T’ai-­ tsung and his political vision, notes, “the good ruler looks out for worthy sages like a farmer hoping for a good harvest; a wise sovereign seeks out men of talent like drought-stricken sprouts longing for the rain. A disorderly monarch hates those who excel himself as though they were his enemies, but looks on men of petty worth as though they were his own sons, and cherishes them in his inner-most heart.”90 A good ruler, excelling as an exemplar of virtue and morality, should look for like-minded people as his ministers and high officials. As a farmer looks for a good harvest, the wise ruler looks for men of merit and virtue (a useful combination in which merit is upheld by virtue, and virtue is enhanced by merit) so that he can develop a meritorious and virtuous administration with which to establish a peaceful and well-ordered society. On the other hand, a poor ruler, moved by the desire for power, material self-interest, and competition with his constituents, would rather employ individuals of ‘petty worth,’ since employing meritorious and virtuous men in his court would be aiding his competitors. This aspect of the Confucian and neo-Confucian link between moral leadership and political rule was celebrated almost universally across the geographical and historical breadth of Chinese civilization. Skonicki’s work refers to memorials of the Western Han Confucian Dong Zhongshu (ca. 179–104 BCE) to Emperor Wudi, who instituted a model of governance that was rooted in moral rectitude and charisma of the ruler. Dong Zhongshu made a cosmological argument linking moral governance with heaven, and positing that when the ruler follows moral principles, his rule will suffer no disasters or calamities. However, if the ruler does not promote moral governance and indulges in selfishness and corruption, disasters will be inevitable. In this cosmological schema, “heaven constantly

3  MORAL SOCIAL ORDER AND THE IDEAL RULER, THE SAGE-KING 

97

observed the conduct of the ruler, and if his rule strayed off course, heaven would admonish him by sending down a minor disaster. If the ruler responded to this divine admonition by increasing his vigilance and by implementing moral government, then heaven would not send down further disasters. However, if he ignored heaven’s warnings, then he would be punished with a severe calamity sufficient to cause the dynasty’s collapse.”91 Even without the cosmological component here, it would make sense that the moral corruption of a community’s leaders inevitably leads to the moral corruption of the larger community. Another Neo-Confucian of the later period, Fan Zhongyan, 989–1052, made a similar, but more pragmatic, argument that the ruler must employ individuals of merit and high moral conduct to high positions. He claimed that “Confucius’ four fields (sike), which consisted of virtuous conduct (dexing), political affairs (zhengshi), speech (yanyu) and writing (wenxue), provided the best criteria for judging an individual’s suitability for government service. If the ruler choses to ignore these criteria and employ obsequious officials, then courageous individuals would lose faith in the dynasty and change their allegiances…”92 There are certainly examples of such lapses of morality and justice in the past and in our contemporary world. However, the key emphasis here is that the ruler as moral exemplar should employ individuals excelling both in morality and merit, rather than just administrative skill, to high offices.

Moral Leadership and Sensual Austerity For this reason then, whether at the head of the social hierarchy, the state, or the family, the ruler must avoid or abandon excessive desire and extravagance. As the fount of his community’s moral vitality, the Confucian ruler’s austerity is foundational to the community’s work ethic and discipline. When a ruler indulges in corruption, moral debauchery, and material extravagance, he lacks the moral standing to enforce moral probity among his constituency. The Confucian philosopher, Fu Xuan (217–278), asserted that any society’s aristocracy, including political rulers, must control their desires and avoid extravagance. He added that an important step in this direction would include regulating the role of merchants who engage in monopolistic activities. In his collection of short writings Fuzi, he says,93

98 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

If the upper classes desist in their desires, the lower classes will turn back to the true [path] … Therefore, the intelligent ruler ceases desiring and is lenient to those beneath him, harries the merchant and tarries the farmer, and honors the root [occupation] and humbles the branch. The Court [will then be] without officials who conceal the virtuous, the market without monopolistic traders, and the state without people who possess vast tracts of land.

By controlling these desires and by curtailing monopolistic activities, the ruling class builds a state in which wealth is not narrowly concentrated and in which there is no mass poverty. Following this Confucian logic, we can infer that monopolistic capitalism and the nexus between self-­interested and profit-driven politicians, special interests, and industrialists through systems like the Iron Triangle, has led to overt corruption, concentration of wealth in a few hands, and widening income and wage gap between the rich and poor. Confucius, in such a society, would hold its political leadership responsible for this dysfunction, and argue unless the leadership regulates its own desires (including the desire to acquire excessive wealth and indulge in extravagance), the state and society will inevitably descend into corruption and moral degeneration, and financial regulation alone will not be effective enough to stop this downward cascade. In the relationship between ren and li (benevolence and ritual propriety), li is the visible aspect of ren, and ren enjoys a more subtle status than li. To a question by Tsze-lu, “what constituted a complete man,” Confucius responded, “Suppose a man with the knowledge of Tsang Wu-chung, the freedom from covetousness of Kung-ch’o, the bravery of Chwang of Pien, and the varied talents of Zan Ch’iu; add to these the accomplishments of the rules of propriety and music:—such a one might be reckoned a complete man.”94 He further added, “But what is the necessity for a complete man of the present day to have all these things? The man, who in the view of gain, thinks of righteousness; who in the view of danger is prepared to give up his life; and who does not forget an old agreement however far back it extends:—such a man may be reckoned a complete man.”95 While renunciation is a hallmark of philosophical systems like Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, Confucianism is by contrast more commonly identified with filial piety, family values, stability, and rituals. Nonetheless, we argue, Confucian values do not preclude the importance of renunciation, and austerity is in many ways integral to the realization of these

3  MORAL SOCIAL ORDER AND THE IDEAL RULER, THE SAGE-KING 

99

values in Confucian political theory. Confucius himself renounced worldly possessions, sensual excess, and superfluous wealth, and was a wandering sage for years. In a passage from the Analects that summarizes his advocacy of frugal living, he says, “With coarse rice to eat, with water to drink, and my bended arm for a pillow;—I have still joy in the midst of these things. Riches and honours acquired by unrighteousness, are to me as a floating cloud.”96 However, just as the ‘normative’ interpretation of Plato’s asceticism discussed in Chap. 2 suggests in his case, Confucius’s advocacy of austerity is not a call for complete renunciation of material possessions or pleasure. Confucius never recommended that rulers repudiate material-physical attachment by complete renunciation—living in spiritual seclusion or meditating and speculating on abstract ideals. Indeed, any notion like this would be an anathema to him. Given his philosophical concern for spiritual and political practice over any utopian conception of a ‘perfect’ ascetic lifestyle, he might remind Gandhi—and certainly Plato—that a ruler, even while embracing the virtues of renunciation and a frugal life, would rule the best through the very worldly, embodied, and pragmatic moral standards that these desired virtues entail. The Confucian ideal of sage-king is a direct embodiment of the Confucian pragmatic thinker. The ruler is simultaneously sage and king—implying a life of frugality, sensual austerity, simplicity, and humble serenity, concomitant with the pragmatic fulfillment of physical needs and political ambition in the service of ethical principles. This Confucian prescription suggests that the ruler must be hard on himself. Political leadership requires an exacting commitment to humility and self-discipline, and any worthy leader must therefore maintain a regimen of stern moral self-cultivation. He must subject himself to the exacting demands required by the principles that he advocates, prior to applying them to the state or its constituents. He must even be willing to undergo extraordinary pain and suffering for his people. Deborah Sommer writes,97 hardship and suffering are humbly endured even by persons of royal status or by culture heroes who substitute their own suffering or labor for the suffering of others. The culture hero Tang is lauded in the final book of the Analects for personally …vowing to ritually take upon his own person …the mistakes of all his people…According to the Analects, even the mythic hero Yu (who dredged canals from primordial wetlands and created a structured order out of amorphous chaos) and the legendary Hou Ji (who developed

100 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

plant husbandry) experienced hardship when they labored in the wetlands and fields… Ancient spring rites whereby the ruler and highest ranking ministers personally performed the first plowing were called gonggeng, literally ‘plowing in person.’

For Confucius therefore, the enjoyment of sensual pleasure, while hardly a moral transgression in itself, is also not a virtue to be cherished or pursued. Rather, both personal happiness and social success are attained via adherence to disciplined commitment to immaterial values. There are many such references to virtuous individuals in the Analects who, with a ‘bowlful of rice’ and a ‘ladleful of water’ pursued the path of happiness, wisdom, and success, while serving others. Following this path of simple living, avoiding extravagance, and keeping physical indulgence, material wealth, and selfishness to a minimum, fosters a true sense of fulfillment in harmony with the divine ideals of virtue and wisdom. Nylan elaborates,98 Confucius says that though driven by destitution to eat wild herbs, he is nonetheless genuinely happy, as the only true destitution is to be without virtue…It is ‘taking pleasure in Heaven,’ in goodness, or in the ‘Way of Yao and Shun’ (three synonymous activities) that allows men like Yan Hui, who subsist on a bowlful of rice and a ladleful of water, to remain unalterably happy while enduring hardships that would make life unendurable to others.

It is not so much (the practical Confucian, earthly and embodied, would proclaim) that material prosperity or sensual pleasures should be shunned or vilified, or even less that they should become socially taboo. It is the commitment to a virtuous life of proper social relations, playing the appropriate role in these relations, and fulfilling one’s obligation to society, that engender the kind of true happiness that is necessary in order for anyone to be able to truly enjoy sensual, financial, or political success to begin with. It is a cardinal Confucian dictum that only in society and in social relations can one find true happiness: fulfilling individualistic pleasure can only be authentically realized within the context of a social-moral-­ relational matrix. Nylan describes some of the forms that this social-relational virtue assumes, which include, “for example: getting good men to serve in office through politicking; cultivating oneself in the arts of social intercourse; taking pleasure in virtue; taking pleasure in one’s profession; and taking pleasure in heaven and its moral imperatives.”99

3  MORAL SOCIAL ORDER AND THE IDEAL RULER, THE SAGE-KING 

101

In this way, the ideal of austerity, including sensual austerity and a frugal lifestyle, certainly plays a significant role in the Confucian scheme of moral leadership. Leading by example, the ruler must not indulge in those activities that she proscribes for her subjects. As mentioned earlier, Confucius famously says in the Analects, “With coarse rice to eat, with water to drink, and my bended arm for a pillow;—I have still joy in the midst of these things.” And just after this passage, he continues, “Riches and honours acquired by unrighteousness, are to me as a floating cloud.” This Confucian edict for leadership is a clear enunciation of austerity, and the ruler’s abstemious reserve in his personal affairs (and toward his own ego) is reflected in his administrative style. His personal austerity conserves the psychic space and energy necessary for public service and concern for the welfare of his constituents. Japanese Confucian scholar and statesman Tsukada Tahio (1745–1832) provides a different interpretation of the term ‘pleasure’ by applying this Confucian standard to it. By raising the question “Is it not a pleasure whenever you learn something to carry it out in practice?”, he claims, Confucius offered a moral vindication of pleasure. In fact, according to him, this statement “encompasses the whole sphere of scholarship.”100 According to Backus’s assessment of Tahio’s philosophy,101 This opinion comes in the context of a discussion on learning and practice, in which Taiho argues that learning means hard study under competent teachers of the texts in order to learn the Way, and practice is carrying out in moral conduct whatever has been learned. Learning is worthless unless it results in practice, and the two together constitute scholarship. Thus, exacting as he was in the matter of learning, Taiho emphasized character in his teaching.

This leads to the logical conclusion that the moral individual must avoid mistakes which emerge from imperfect knowledge, that the individual must be constantly on guard not to make mistakes, and when he makes mistakes he must mend his ways as soon as possible. Confucius says in the Analects, “If a minister makes his own conduct correct, what difficulty will he have in assisting in government? If he cannot rectify himself, what has he to do with rectifying others?”102 Tahio expands the connection between pleasure, morality, and character to include public service. A worthy man suffused with knowledge and moral character would not be satisfied simply by the acquisition of knowledge, but would be driven to put it into

102 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

practice. He would not be frustrated by adverse situations or remain content with prosperity, but would rather engage in public service. Such a character is fit to be employed in royal service. According to Tahio, “a worthy man is one who does not become discouraged in poverty and low station or self-satisfied in prosperity and high station, who takes such pleasure in the way of order and security of the former kings that he hones his talents and virtue with the desire to apply them to the country and its households.”103 Tahio argues deftly that the moral ruler and his officials will not indulge in extravagance or wanton pleasure, but work tirelessly to alleviate suffering of the their constituents. He explains,104 when anyone who possesses a country with its households gives the people repose, he is humane; when he lets them suffer, he is not humane. When he is given to wanton pleasure and extravagance, when his expenditures go unregulated and his exactions are severe, those whom he rules suffer every day of their lives… Therefore, if the man who rules above brings his every act of looking, listening, speaking, and moving back to the rituals, he will have discovered how to diminish himself and increase the lower orders, and the people will get their repose by themselves. This is the way of accumulating righteousness and multiplying achievement naturally, requiring no special attempt at charity nor any special exercise of the wit; it is the highest form of humanity.

Following the Confucian ethos in this regard, Tahio argues further that family is the bedrock of morality. Right relations are the origin of moral principles. Individuals learn moral principles through family relations, which are then extended to social relations. The five Confucian relationships underwrite this process: righteousness in the father, parental love in the mother, fellow feeling in the elder brother, respectfulness in the younger brother, and filial piety in the child.105 According to Backus, “as a set they certainly postdate Confucius, but as virtues formulated from affections that stem from the biological relationships of the family, they qualify most obviously as innate properties conferred by heaven. Accordingly they were recognized from early on to be the bedrock of morality, and they supported the view shared by all Confucians that society could be redeemed only by extending the virtues of the family.”106 For Tahio and Japanese Confucianism generally, the ruler must control himself before controlling others, and he must master virtue first before talking to others about virtue. Tahio proclaims “the gentleman and noble

3  MORAL SOCIAL ORDER AND THE IDEAL RULER, THE SAGE-KING 

103

man who sets his mind on the way of order and security needs to stand fast in the virtues of filial piety and respectfulness in order to cultivate his person beforehand; then what difficulty will he have in dealing with the realm, its countries, and households?”107 Great men, according to Tahio, must not be concerned about their comfort (food, sex, money, and extravagance) but for the community. They do not even worry about their own welfare or reputation before caring for the order and security of the people they rule or serve. Gentlemen and leaders are always concerned about humanity, even when taking a meal. Confucius further said in the Analects, “There are three things which the superior man guards against. In youth, when the physical powers are not yet settled, he guards against lust. When he is strong and the physical powers are full of vigor, he guards against quarrelsomeness. When he is old, and the animal powers are decayed, he guards against covetousness.”108 One Confucian prescription for the individual who wants to be a superior man is that they follow certain rules appropriate to their age. For example, young people must guard themselves against lust. When they have established this kind of self-control, they are prepared to develop higher capacities necessary for more mature pursuits. As discussed in Chap. 4, Gandhi’s concept of Brahmacharya is similar to this ideal, although it is much more essential to his worldview—as the foundation of personal virtues and the social praxis that they sustain—than sexual restraint plays in the Confucian moral paradigm. Confucius contended that, even when rulers engage in recreation, they must not engage in sensual extravagance. His wider conception of recreation involves more than mere physical pleasure, which, by itself, amounts to no more than personal debasement and the impairment of nature. Instead, proper recreation involves increasing virtue by intellectual self-enrichment. Confucius alludes to this in the Analects, “As to the unworthy man, but let him have some spare time and freedom from work, and he is apt to indulge in singing and sensuality, drinking and gluttony, in the pursuit of intemperate pleasure to the wasting of his mind and purpose and to the injury of his blood and humors, until he ends up by destroying himself.”109 He makes a distinction between two types of enjoyment—one that impairs the mind, and one that increases virtue, “To enjoy the proper performance of ritual and music, to enjoy mentioning the goodness of others, and to enjoy having many worthy friends bring increase. To enjoy pretentious pleasures, to enjoy idle excursions, and to enjoy the pleasure of feasting bring

104 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

impairment…Those who are not humane … take pleasure in that by which they are destroyed.”110 In the Confucian moral order, material, emotional, and sensual pleasures pursued for their own sake are not condemned, but they are also not condoned with any enthusiasm. Moderate sensual pleasure that does not undermine the ruler’s moral duty towards the state is permitted but is also, nonetheless, not encouraged. Confucius recommends “enjoyment without being licentious, and of grief without being hurtfully excessive.”111 Sensual capacities must be exercised with restraint and, in the proper hierarchy of life goals, moral discipline and ritual propriety prevail over material desire. Service to society and the social order guided by individual and collective morality is more important than fulfilling a sexual urge and, where the interests of these goals conflict (as they invariably will) there is no question about which one prevails. Riegel raises this question and answers it from a Confucian perspective,112 If the urgency is as extreme as this, would he copulate in the presence of his parents? He would rather die than do that. Would he copulate in the presence of his brothers? He would die before doing that. Would he copulate in the presence of a countryman? He still would not do it. To fear family and to a lesser extent to fear others, is ritual principle…Mencius argues that an ordinary person, no matter how intent on satisfying his appetites for food and sex, would not risk offending his brother by seizing food from him or a neighbor by seizing his daughter.

In the well-known dialog between Confucius and Yen Yuan, Yen Yuan asked Confucius about perfect virtue and the steps necessary to realize it. Confucius responded, “Look not at what is contrary to propriety; listen not to what is contrary to propriety; speak not what is contrary to propriety; make no movement which is contrary to propriety.”113 This ideal: ‘speak no evil, hear no evil, and see no evil,’ insofar as such generalizations are ever apt, could be considered a hallmark of Asiatic philosophical character generally, and we will examine how Gandhi was influenced deeply by this ideal. His Ashram had three monkeys depicting these three postures— closing the mouth, ears, and eyes. Confucius championed this ideal life in the classical period. The same principle is clearly embodied in Buddhism’s eightfold path, and one can witness its influence cross-culturally in various Asiatic cultures from Japan to India. Confucius was one of its classical exemplars and he clearly enunciated it in his Analects. This dictate, for a

3  MORAL SOCIAL ORDER AND THE IDEAL RULER, THE SAGE-KING 

105

Confucian world, was applicable equally to rulers and the ruled, but was even more urgent for rulers who serve as civilization’s preeminent role models. What then is the status of sex and/or sensual gratification in this ethical system? We contend that Confucius did not banish sex or sensual desires. He was too practical a thinker and too visceral a personality to repudiate the physical, emotional, and material dimensions of human life. However, he clearly recognized the inherent danger that these dimensions of human nature presented if left unrestrained (let alone predominant) in human affairs. For this reason, sensual austerity plays an important role in his political system. Confucius never advocated asceticism, or a complete renunciation of sensual life (and he himself was married with children), but he certainly encouraged moderation in this regard—especially for rulers. His famous golden mean advised moderation and self-control in every aspect of life, and recommended a sensual, emotional, and political life guided by higher moral principles. Indeed, the kind of psychological moderation that tempered sensual morality in later Confucian thought may have had metaphysical origins similar to Plato’s. In the spirit of what Fung Yu-Lan calls the neo-­Confucian “school of Platonic Ideas,”114 political thinkers in the Song era (like western Platonists from Hellenistic times through the Renaissance) combined a mind-imbued panpsychic worldview with a compatible moral psychology and social theory that established a hierarchical—but not completely dualistic—relationship between physical desires and moral demands. Influenced by Buddhist and Taoist metaphysics, the neo-Confucian notion of family, within society, within nature, within the cosmic intelligence of ‘the Supreme Ultimate’ unifying and harmonizing them all, established this cosmic mind as a center of the moral imperative inherent in nature—a natural order or intelligence which (like the Platonic ‘Good’) both transcends and encompasses the physical world and body, and which, thereby, is the animating force that guides and shapes them. In this way, physical needs, while important and essential to personal, social, and political health, are nonetheless lower dimensions of a higher spiritual-moral wisdom meant to guide them. For neo-Confucians (in their respective ways), as for Gandhi and the Platonists, the austerity of a community’s ruler (valuing wisdom via mindful living over physical pleasure via bodily needs) is mirrored in the moral fiber of the community itself.

106 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

Notes 1. Thierry Meynard, The Jesuit Reading of Confucius: The First Complete Translation of the Lunyu (1687) Published in the West (Leiden: Brill, 2015). 2. Sun Bo, “On the General Meaning of the Sage: The Theory of Confucianism (Rujia) in Han Studies Transmitted by Mr Xu Fancheng,” China Report 46, 4 (2010), 341. 3. Ibid. 4. A term used by Joseph R. Levenson. See Joseph R. Levenson, Confucian China and Its Modern Fate (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968). 5. Zhao Lu, “To Become Confucius: The Apocryphal Texts and Eastern Han Emperor Ming’s Political Legitimacy,” Asia Major 28, 1 (2015), 128. 6. Ibid., p. 130. 7. Ya-pei Kuo, “‘The Emperor and the People in One Body’: The Worship of Confucius and Ritual Planning in the Xinzheng Reforms, 1902–1911,” Modern China 35, 2 (2009), 130. 8. Ya-pei Kuo, “‘The Emperor and the People in One Body’: The Worship of Confucius and Ritual Planning in the Xinzheng Reforms, 1902–1911,” 133. 9. Ibid., p. 135. 10. Ibid., p. 136. 11. Chien-min Chao, “Myths of Legendism,” Journal of Chinese Studies 3 (2), 252–253. 12. G.  D. Deshingkar, “Mao Against Confucius?,” China Report 10, 1–2 (1974), 7. 13. Suisheng Zhao, “Chinese Intellectuals’ Quest for National Greatness and Nationalistic Writing in the 1990s,” The China Quarterly 152, (1997), 725–745. 14. Feng Chen, “Order and Stability in Social Transition: Neoconservative Political Thought in Post-1989 China,” The China Quarterly 151, 1997, 593–613. 15. S.  J. Noumoff, “Philosophy and Practice: The Masses and the Superstructure in China,” China Report 15, 4 (1979), 27. 16. Wai-Yee Li, “The Idea of Authority in the Shih chi (Records of the Historian),” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 54, 2 (1994), 361. 17. Zhao Lu, “To Become Confucius: The Apocryphal Texts and Eastern Han Emperor Ming’s Political Legitimacy,” 115–116. 18. Zhao Lu, “To Become Confucius: The Apocryphal Texts and Eastern Han Emperor Ming’s Political Legitimacy,” 140–141.

3  MORAL SOCIAL ORDER AND THE IDEAL RULER, THE SAGE-KING 

107

19. Julia K. Murray, “Heirloom and Exemplar: Family and School Portraits of Confucius in the Song and Yuan Periods,” Journal of Song-Yuan Studies 41, 1 (2011), 228. 20. Ibid., 265. 21. See the relevant title of the edited book by Ames and Hershock. Roger Ames and Peter Hershock, eds., Confucianisms for a Changing World Cultural Order (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2018). 22. Nathan Sivin, “State, Cosmos, and Body in the Last Three Centuries,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 55, 1 (1995), 5. 23. Ibid., 7. 24. Quoted in Ku-Ming (Kevin) Chang, “‘Ceaseless Generation’: Republican China’s Rediscovery and Expansion of Domestic Vitalism,” Asia Major 30, 2 (2017), 112. 25. Ibid. 26. Wang Gungwu, “Secular China,” China Report 39, 3 (2003), 311. 27. Nathan Sivin, “State, Cosmos, and Body in the Last Three Centuries,” 7–8. 28. Ibid., 10. 29. Thomas A. Wilson, “Genealogy and History in Neo-Confucian Sectarian Uses of the Confucian Past,” Modern China 20, 1 (1994), 7. 30. James Legge, The Chinese Classics, vol. 1 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960), 256. 31. Legge, The Chinese Classics, vol. 1, 292. 32. Chen Yong, “Conceptualizing “Popular Confucianism”: The Cases of Ruzong Shenjiao, Yiguan Dao, and De Jiao,” Journal of Chinese Religions 45, 1 (2017), 69. 33. James C.  Hsiung, “The Human-Nature Premise: Is It Possible to Reconcile Christian & Confucian Cultures?,” American Journal of Chinese Studies 20, 2 (2013), 112. 34. Legge, The Chinese Classics, vol. 1, 250. 35. Dong Jiang and Xiaohong Ma, “The Analects and Sense of Justice: The Spirit of Law and Historical Practice,” Modern China 46, 3 (2020), 292–293. 36. Roger T.  Ames, “What Ever Happened to ‘Wisdom’? Confucian Philosophy of Process and ‘Human Becomings’”, Asia Major 21, 1 (2008), 66. 37. Judson B. Murray, “‘Only Jade Can Epitomize Human Virtue’: Ideas on Education and Moral Development in Han-Period China,” Asia Major 29, 2 (2016), 108. 38. Ibid., 109. 39. Legge, The Chinese Classics, vol. 1, 266. 40. Ibid., 268. 41. Ibid., 155.

108 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

42. Mu-chou Poo, “Ideas concerning Death and Burial in Pre-Han and Han China,” Asia Major 3, 2 (1990), 27. 43. Dong Jiang and Xiaohong Ma, “The Analects and Sense of Justice: The Spirit of Law and Historical Practice,” 290. 44. James C.  Hsiung, “The Human-Nature Premise: Is It Possible to Reconcile Christian & Confucian Cultures?,” 115. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid. 48. Roger Ames and Peter Hershock, eds., Confucianisms for a Changing World Cultural Order. 49. Erica Brindley, “The Polarization of the Concepts ‘Si’ (Private Interest) and ‘Gong’ (Public Interest) in Early Chinese Thought,” Asia Major 26, 2 (2013), 1. 50. Ibid., 3. 51. Ibid., 3–4. 52. Ibid., 4. 53. Paul R. Goldin, “Han Law and the Regulation of Interpersonal Relations: ‘The Confucianization of the Law,’” Asia Major 25, 1 (2012), 4. 54. Ibid. 55. Roger T.  Ames, “The Focus-field Self in Classical Confucianism”, in R. Ames, W. Dissanayake, T. Kasulis, eds., Self as Person in Asian Theory and Practice (Albany: SUNY Press, 1994), 192. 56. Henry Rosemont, “Classical Confucian and Contemporary Feminist Perspectives on the Self”, in Douglas Allen and Ashok Malhotra, eds. In Culture and Self: Philosophical and Religious Perspectives, East and West (New York: Westview Press,1997), 68. 57. Dong Jiang and Xiaohong Ma, “The Analects and Sense of Justice: The Spirit of Law and Historical Practice,” 281. 58. Ibid., 286. 59. Ibid., 282. 60. Ibid., 283. 61. Ibid., 285. 62. Legge, The Chinese Classics, vol. 1, 265. 63. Junghwan Lee, “‘Jiaohua’, Transcendental Unity, and Morality in Ordinariness: Paradigm Shifts in the Song Dynasty Interpretation of the ‘Zhongyong’,” Journal of Song-Yuan Studies 42, (2012), 160. 64. Ibid., 188. 65. Legge, The Chinese Classics, vol. 1, 326. 66. Ibid.

3  MORAL SOCIAL ORDER AND THE IDEAL RULER, THE SAGE-KING 

109

67. Michael Puett, “Nature and Artifice: Debates in Late Warring States China Concerning The Creation of Culture,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 57, 2 (1997), 479. 68. Ya-pei Kuo, “‘The Emperor and the People in One Body’: The Worship of Confucius and Ritual Planning in the Xinzheng Reforms, 1902–1911,” 124. 69. Ibid., 125. 70. John D.  Langlois, Jr., “Song Lian and Liu Ji in 1358 on the Eve of Joining Zhu Yuanzhang,” Asia Major 22, 1 (2009), 145. 71. Legge, The Chinese Classics, vol. 1, 146. 72. Ibid. 73. Sun Bo, “On the General Meaning of the Sage: The Theory of Confucianism (Rujia) in Han Studies Transmitted by Mr Xu Fancheng,” 334. 74. Ibid., 335. 75. Ibid., 337. 76. Ibid., 334. 77. Ibid. 78. Ibid. 79. Ibid., 338. 80. Tan Chung, “Chinese Civilisation: Resilience and Challenges,” China Report 41, 2 (2005), 115. 81. Ibid., 113. 82. Ibid., 116. 83. Tan Chung, “Historical Chindian Paradigm: Inter-cultural Transfusion and Solidification,” China Report 45, 3 (2009), 118. 84. Ibid., 197. 85. Ibid., 201. 86. Zhao Lu, “To Become Confucius: The Apocryphal Texts and Eastern Han Emperor Ming’s Political Legitimacy,” 119. 87. Keith N. Knapp, “Exemplary Everymen: Guo Shidao and Guo Yuanping as Confucian Commoners,” Asia Major, 23, 1 (2010), 94. 88. Ibid., 98. 89. Quoted in ibid., 105. 90. Denis Twitchett, “How to Be an Emperor: T’ang T’ai-tsung’s Vision of His Role,” Asia Major 9, 1/2 (1996), 23. 91. Douglas Skonicki, “Employing the Right Kind of Men: The Role of Cosmological Argumentation in the Qingli Reforms,” Journal of SongYuan Studies 38, (2008), 42. 92. Ibid., 61. 93. Quoted in Keith N. Knapp, “Exemplary Everymen: Guo Shidao and Guo Yuanping as Confucian Commoners,” 93.

110 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

94. Legge, The Chinese Classics, vol. 1, 279. 95. Ibid., pp. 279–280. 96. Legge, The Chinese Classics, vol. 1, 200. 97. Deborah Sommer, “Boundaries of the ‘Ti’ Body,” Asia Major 21, 1 (2008), 308. 98. Michael Nylan, “On the Politics of Pleasure,” Asia Major 14, 1 (2001), 75. 99. Ibid. 100. Quoted in Robert L. Backus, “Tsukada Taihō on The Way and Virtue. Part One: Career and Scholarship,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 50, 1 (1990), 7. 101. Ibid., 7–8. 102. Legge, The Chinese Classics, vol. 1, 268. 103. Quoted in Robert L. Backus, “Tsukada Taihō on The Way and Virtue. Part One: Career and Scholarship,”25. 104. Ibid., 19–20. 105. Ibid., 62. 106. Ibid., 63. 107. Quoted in Robert L. Backus, “Tsukada Taihō on the Way and Virtue Part Two: Attaining the Gates to the Way of the Sage,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 50, 2 (1990), 525. 108. Legge, The Chinese Classics, vol. 1, 312–313. 109. Backus, “Tsukada Taihō on the Way and Virtue Part Two: Attaining the Gates to the Way of the Sage,” 531. 110. Ibid., 532. 111. Legge, The Chinese Classics, vol. 1, 161. 112. Jeffrey Riegel, “Eros, Introversion, and The Beginnings of Shijing,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 57, 1 (1997), 153–154. 113. Legge, The Chinese Classics, vol. 1, 250. 114. Fung Yu-Lan, History of Chinese Philosophy (New York: Free Press, 1976), 294–318.

CHAPTER 4

Brahmacharya, Nonviolent Social Praxis, and Leadership

In this chapter, we focus on Mohandas K. Gandhi, the youngest of the three icons we examine in this book and separated from the other two by thousands of years. While Plato and Confucius are ancient figures whose life and times are shrouded in historical myth, Gandhi’s career and biography in the late nineteenth to mid twentieth century was scrupulously recorded. Although Plato remained mostly an academic philosopher and Confucius a high official and later a wandering philosopher-sage, Gandhi remained mostly a political activist and leader. His hundred-volume collected works, comprised of speeches, writings, and letter exchanges, offer useful perspectives on his social and political theory. The scope of his social and political theory is enormous, but in this chapter we focus specifically on his conception of sensual austerity and moral leadership. For Gandhi, sexual life, sensuality generally, and politics are intimately connected, and personal self-control or moral cultivation translates directly into power of various kinds, both public and personal.1 Rudolph and Rudolph argue that Gandhi’s popular appeal among India’s masses may be attributed, at least in part, to the degree that he was able to embody a powerful ideal of sensual self-control connecting his sociopolitical projects to a pervasive and popular Hindu notion of renunciation.2 Alter concurs, “affecting the persona of a world-renouncer, Gandhi was able to mix political, religious, and moral power, thus translating personal self-control into radical social criticism and nationalist goals.”3 Howard makes a similar argument: “In his life and political methods, Gandhi spontaneously © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. A. Mahapatra, R. Grego, Sensual Austerity and Moral Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89151-0_4

111

112 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

integrated secular objectives with his religious pursuit of liberation (moksa)…Gandhi’s integration of activism and renunciation is not simply a theoretical puzzle…This paradox was embedded from its inception in the very ethos of Indian ascetic traditions.”4 For Gandhi, there cannot be any compartmentalization between private and public, or inner conviction and outward behavior, as truth is an indivisible whole.5 Howard argues that Gandhi’s vow of celibacy was motivated by his drive to commit himself to public service, which led to initiating satyagraha and movements for fighting racial oppression and political suppression by the British authorities, first in South Africa and then in India.6 Gandhi’s ideas on the connection between sensual austerity and moral leadership cannot be understood without considering the diverse philosophical traditions that influenced his thought. Though a devoutly Hindu thinker—referring to the Bhagavad Gita as his ‘mother’—he also drew deeply from the panoply of world religious ideals, remarking that: “Mahavir, Buddha, Jesus, Mahomed and other teachers have sung the praises of one and the same God.”7 Among the Jain saints, Srimad Rajachandra or Kavi Rajachandra (whom Gandhi called Raychandbhai) was a powerful early influence, and Mahavir, the founder of Jainism, he called “an incarnation of compassion, of ahimsa”8—referring on many occasions to Jainism’s five Mahavrat (five vows—ahimsa or nonviolence, satya or truth, asteya or non-stealing, brahmacharya or sensual austerity, and aparigraha or non-possession), also emphasized in other Dharmic traditions, as the five cardinal virtues for a life of public service. He also relied on secular ideas from the west—including those of Thoreau, Tolstoy, and Ruskin. Gandhi’s influence spans the panorama of global cultures, spiritual traditions, and social-political institutions, as well as social-political activists, thinkers, and scholars. His ideas shaped the framework of the Indian independence struggle and inspired social justice leaders across the globe, including Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Dalai Lama of Tibet, and Nkrumah of Ghana. Martin Luther King, Jr. called Gandhi “the guiding light of … nonviolent social change.”9 G.  D. H.  Cole, the noted British political scientist, in his reflections on Gandhi’s book Hind Swaraj (Indian Home Rule), wrote in 1948, “Gandhi’s case against the West looks … infinitely stronger than it looked, to us Westerners, thirty years ago.”10 Since, as historian Eric Hobsbawm wrote in 2002, “the 20th century was the most murderous in recorded history. The total number of

4  BRAHMACHARYA, NONVIOLENT SOCIAL PRAXIS, AND LEADERSHIP 

113

deaths caused by or associated with its wars has been estimated at 187 million…,”11 Gandhi’s message appears more relevant than ever. More than 150 years have passed since Gandhi was born and seventy years have passed since a fanatic killed him, but Gandhi’s influence remains pervasive. During global celebrations on his 150th anniversary in 2019, US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, called Gandhi an ‘extraordinary’ man who shaped the history of India, the United States, and the world.12 Many states and international organizations held events to celebrate the occasion. Poland issued a postage stamp to commemorate Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary. In the Russian Parliament, an exhibition was opened on the correspondence between Gandhi and Leo Tolstoy. Burj Khalifa, the tallest skyscraper, located in Dubai, was lit up with a special LED projection in tribute. A nonviolence march was organized in the Netherlands. The United Nations issued stamps in his honor. The UN Secretary-General António Guterres said that Gandhi promoted nonviolence not merely “as a philosophy and a political strategy, but as a means to achieve justice and change. Indeed, many of his ideas foreshadow the holistic thinking behind the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”13 Gandhi’s pictures decorate the walls of offices of social and political leaders across the globe. International leaders visit his memorial in New Delhi and Gandhi’s statues are standing in many parts of the world. The United Kingdom unveiled a Gandhi statue in March 2015 in Parliament Square, London, not far from a statue of Winston Churchill, who called Gandhi “a half-naked fakir.” At his inauguration, then British Prime Minister, David Cameron, said, “This statue celebrates…the universal power of Gandhi’s message.”14 The same year the United Nations declared Gandhi’s birth date, October 2, as an International Day of Non-violence. There are departments and centers of Gandhian studies in academic institutions worldwide and an ever-increasing literature on Gandhi and nonviolence continues to spread across disciplines from philosophy, politics, sociology, psychology, history, and religion. In this study, we explore one of the less examined aspects of Gandhian ideas—the link between sensual austerity, public service, and leadership. We argue that this examination is useful not only for historical reference, but also for theories and practices of political leadership and policymaking. Gandhi remained unabashedly candid about the connection between sensual austerity and political leadership throughout his writings, insisting that any legitimate leader must lead by example in this regard. His autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, presents his life and

114 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

actions as ‘experiments’ for others to observe and learn from. Brahmacharya was central to this project and his work sought to actively bring this issue into the public domain. He wrote:15 I have committed mistakes even after I had thought over—experienced— the countless benefits of brahmacharya and I have known the bitter consequences. I have vivid memories of the exalted state of the mind before a lapse and the pitiable condition after it. But from these mistakes, I have learnt the value of that precious jewel. I do not know if I shall be able to preserve it unbroken. I hope to, with God’s help. I can see the good it has done to my mind and body. I, who was married in childhood, was blinded [by lust] in childhood and had children while a mere child, awoke after many years and seem to have realized on awakening that I had been pursuing a disastrous course. If anyone learns from my mistakes and my experience and saves himself, I shall be happy to have written this…

Surprisingly, the secondary literature on this topic is scant. There is, for instance, vast scholarship on Gandhi’s nonviolence, socioeconomic ideas, social justice, and his role in the development of contemporary conflict resolution discipline, but there is very little published research on his conception of sensual austerity and politics—despite Gandhi’s prolific references to brahmacharya and its connection to public service in most of his own collected works. The available literature on Gandhi and sensuality in politics is confined largely to Gandhi’s own sexual life, or his comments on dietary restrictions and celibacy. We came across research16 on Gandhi’s sexuality and how his ideas regarding sensual austerity shaped his world view, but—like the other classical figures we examine in this study—there is simply not enough literature on this theme to do justice to its role in shaping his political theory and vision of political leadership. Hence, once again, the need for the project undertaken in this book. In the first section of the chapter, we focus broadly on Gandhi’s worldview in order to place his moral psychology and political theory into a comprehensive philosophical framework. For Gandhi, the moral-political matrix is part of an indivisible whole, and many supposed boundaries between self and other, private and public, means and ends are actually blurry, porous, and interdependent. With respect to sensual austerity and political leadership, Gandhi’s worldview fosters an ethic in which political leaders cannot legitimately live lives of moral dualism or psychic binaries— behaving one way in private and behaving another way in public. The

4  BRAHMACHARYA, NONVIOLENT SOCIAL PRAXIS, AND LEADERSHIP 

115

interconnection between theory and its practice, lofty ideas and their execution in practical life, intellectual abstractions and their concrete expressions is an essential hallmark of Gandhian thinking. In the second section, we examine the link between sensual austerity and moral leadership specifically, and how Gandhi contends that moral leaders exist to serve their constituencies. In the third section we focus on Gandhi’s own experiments with the idea of sensual austerity and how these experiments are useful for understanding the connection between political leadership and sensual austerity. Here we mainly draw from Gandhi’s collected writings, while referring to available limited secondary literature on the subject.

Gandhian Worldview and Nonviolent Social Praxis David Mandelbaum’s work on Gandhi, in which he adopted a ‘life history approach,’ undertakes the difficult task of studying great men like Gandhi from a cross-cultural perspective:17 The image of man held by an observer necessarily influences what he makes of the life of the particular man he is studying. That image is moulded partly by his culture and, if he is a scholar or scientist, more directly by the state of his academic discipline. Garraty, in discussing this aspect of the writing of biography, specifically mentions Gandhi and asks, dubiously, whether a Western European Christian could produce a satisfactory biography of the Hindu, Gandhi. But while there are, to be sure, special advantages in having an empathetic, existential understanding of the person being studied, there are also advantages in having a less adhesive perspective. Best of all is to have contributions of both kinds about a person’s life and about his culture. On Gandhi’s life we do have books of both kinds, and from them we can begin to put together a comprehensible life history that will show his personal qualities—spritely humor and firm determination among them—as well as his political impact and social relevance.

This cross-cultural, ‘insider and outsider’ contrast would certainly facilitate a deeper appreciation for Plato and Confucius along these lines as well, and respecting both, we recognize that Gandhi’s career remains relevant regardless of the interpretive lens through which it is viewed. Unlike the lives and legacies of Plato and Confucius, for whom it is difficult to access detailed and reliable biographical information, the voluminous collected works of Gandhi provide a rich trove of information about Gandhi’s life and activities in his own words.

116 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

In a letter in 1930, Gandhi illustrated the connection between Truth, ahimsa (nonviolence), brahmacharya, and other important principles, by drawing this diagram.18 Truth Ahimsa Brahmacharya Control of the palate

Truth

Ahimsa

or Non-stealing

Non-possession

Fearlessness and so on

Gandhian ethics are grounded in the neo-Vedanta philosophical tradition of which he, along with other important Indian intellectuals of his era, was a prominent historical exemplar. Foundational to Vedanta and to Gandhi’s philosophy, is the concept of ultimate or absolute Truth, also understood as ‘Brahman’: the pure, primordial potentiality-inactuality that is the spiritual substrate of all reality, defined by Elliot Deutsch as “a name for the fullness of being which is the ‘content’ of non-dualistic spiritual consciousness experience—an experience in which all distinctions between subject and object are shattered and in which remains only a pure oneness.”19 In this sense Gandhi conceived of Truth as, in the words of Surendra Verma,20 the First Principle from which he deduces all other principles like Brahmacharya, Non-possession, and others. This fundamental Truth is an object of pure intuition and immediate cognition. In itself it does not stand in need of any medium for its knowledge and propagation as the sun needs no reflecting light to show itself.

This Truth or Brahman or God unifies all existence within its perpetual unfolding—bringing everything into being at every moment of existence and therefore sanctifying all creation, since all creation is Truth or God. Hence, for Gandhi, all existence (and therefore, all humanity) is sacred, and the principles he advocated are predicated on all humanity’s identity with the divine. For this reason, Gandhi conceived of the human community as an indivisible whole in which the distinction between self and other, private and public, is indistinct. This view also shapes Gandhi’s perspective on politics. As Godrej articulates, this Gandhian perspective21

4  BRAHMACHARYA, NONVIOLENT SOCIAL PRAXIS, AND LEADERSHIP 

117

stems from Gandhi’s general objection to the compartmentalization of human life into separable, distinct realms of action…This view of the interconnectedness of different realms of activity leads to the idea that each of them must be informed by and reflect the same central purpose or concern. For Gandhi, the spiritual and the ethical quest for truth serves as this driving purpose for the other realms of life, especially for the political. In this sense, the political is no different than action: it is to be guided by the quest for truth. Unlike more ascetic branches of Hindu thought, which marginalize the political realm by treating it as a negative externality to be subjugated by the spiritual, Gandhi revives the political sphere by linking it to the quest for truth: politics is, for Gandhi, intrinsically a realm of truth-seeking.

Within this radically unified reality, the individual’s conscience mediates between self and other—serving as an important foundation for a life that joins personal character to society through moral decision, and thus building peaceful societies through nonviolent action. For Gandhi, the virtuous individual follows five cardinal, and interrelated, principles—ahimsa (nonviolence), satya (truth), asteya (non-stealing), brahmacharya (a Sanskrit term broadly implying sensual austerity generally and/or sexual abstinence specifically), and aparigraha (non-attachment or non-possessiveness)— that are all interrelated and engender the spirit of ahimsa, expressed via satyagraha. So these five principles22 constitute an indivisible whole. They are inter-related and inter-dependent. If one of them is broken, all are broken. That being so, if in practice I fail to reside in brahmacharya … I jettison not only brahmacharya but truth, ahimsa and all the rest. I do not allow myself any divergence between theory and practice in respect of the rest. If then I temporize in the matter of brahmacharya, would it not blunt the edge of my brahmacharya and vitiate my practice of truth?

In the Gandhian moral universe these cardinal virtues emerge from a single ontological reference-point that he called ‘Truth,’ which is universal and context free, and which can be realized only through the practice of nonviolence. Only a brahmachari, one who has complete self-control, can practice nonviolence to the extent necessary to realize this Truth. Drawing from his own experience he proclaimed, “during my quest for truth, I saw the need for non-violence and so I tried to cultivate it. From that arose the need for non-possession. But I felt everything was hard without brahmacharya. This led to the discovery of satyagraha. This gave me

118 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

fearlessness.”23 “Satyagraha”—the active embodiment of spiritual Truth— also involves tapasya or penance on a physical level, which requires the satyagrahi to transcend the potential limitations of embodiment even while embodied. “Man has a long way to travel yet,” he laments, “his instincts are still those of a beast. Only his frame is human. Violence seems to reign all round. Untruth fills the world. And yet we do not doubt the rightness of the path of truth and non-violence. Know that the same is the case with regard to brahmacharya.”24 Simultaneously drawing on his own doubts and failures in this respect, he concedes,25 I too had doubts on this score, but now there is none. Both the disciplines pertain to the body. Mental passion leads to physical desire. Similarly, anger and other violent feelings affect the body. Brahmacharya and ahimsa would have no meaning in the absence of the body. Thus, both are qualities dependent on the body and are related to other bodies.

This depiction of the individual body interdependent with and ‘related to other bodies’ reflects the larger relational reality in which human souls are interdependent with and influence other souls. Just as sensual austerity is necessary for the lover of truth, it is also necessary for the demands of public service. Gandhi made this connection during his activism in South Africa. He wrote, “I realized there (in South Africa) that one who wishes to serve the world must practice brahmacharya.”26 He adds that political leaders in particular must be both lovers of truth and highly disciplined spiritual aspirants.27 Both my continence and non-violence were derived from personal experience and became necessary in response to the calls of public duty. The isolated life I had to lead in South Africa whether as a householder, legal practitioner, social reformer or politician, required, for the due fulfilment of these duties, the strictest regulation of sexual life and a rigid practice of non-­ violence and truth in human relations, whether with my own countrymen or with the Europeans. I claim to be no more than an average man with less than average ability. Nor can I claim any special merit for such non-violence or continence as I have been able to reach with laborious research. I have not the shadow of a doubt that any man or woman can achieve what I have, if he or she would make the same effort and cultivate the same hope and faith.

4  BRAHMACHARYA, NONVIOLENT SOCIAL PRAXIS, AND LEADERSHIP 

119

Throughout his subsequent career, Gandhi remained convinced that the more one evolves and accepts the significance of Truth and nonviolence, or the more one moves closer to satyagraha, the more she will be inclined to follow a path of austerity and service. The path of public service and duty also involves a kind of self-mortification, in which the individual, instead of finding fault in others, first examines his or her own soul and tries to extirpate any signs of moral transgression there. Gandhi writes, “A virtuous and non-violent brahmachari who appreciates virtue instead of seeing the faults of others, admires their goodness while magnifying his own smallest short-comings.”28 Sensual austerity, nonviolent struggle against injustice, and love for truth are all intricately interconnected. These are, in turn, united within the character of the virtuous individual and realized in part via the practice of brahmacharya:29 What is character, however? What are the hall-marks of a virtuous life? A virtuous man is one who strives to practise truth, non-violence, brahmacharya, non-possession, non-stealing, fearlessness and such other rules of conduct. He will give up his life rather than truth. He will choose to die rather than kill. He will rather suffer himself than make others suffer. He will be as a friend even to his wife and entertain no carnal thoughts towards her. Thus the man of virtue practises brahmacharya and tries to conserve, as well as he can, the ultimate source of energy in the body. He does not steal, nor take bribes. He does not waste his time nor that of others. He does not accumulate wealth needlessly. He does not seek ease and comfort and does not use things he does not really need but is quite content to live a simple life. Firm in the belief that “I am the immortal spirit and not this perishable body and that none in this world can ever kill the spirit,” he casts out all fear of suffering of mind and body and of worldly misfortunes and refusing to be held down even by an emperor, goes on doing his duty fearlessly.

For Gandhi, as for Plato, sensual austerity redirects vital energies from the violent drive for sexual and appetitive satisfaction to higher nonviolent aspirations like satyagraha, or ‘soul-force.’ Gandhi argued that “without brahmacharya the satyagrahi will have no lustre, no inner strength to stand unarmed against the whole world…For he who lusts with the thought (of sexual pleasure) will ever remain unsated…Such a one can never be a full satyagrahi. Nor can one who hankers after wealth and fame.”30 Genuine public service is not possible without sensual austerity, as the former flows from the latter. Gandhi wrote, “according to me life without self-control

120 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

has no meaning. Without self-control no real service is possible.” These values are living ideas rather than abstract theories—especially for the virtuous leader who wants to serve his country and people. Gandhi argued along these lines that a ruler must practice brahmacharya before undertaking the role of public service. He wrote, “the first thing is to know what true brahmacharya is, then to realize its value and lastly to try to cultivate this priceless virtue. I hold that true service of the country demands this observance.”31 In a speech at Lausanne in 1931, he responded to the question ‘What is Truth’?, by drawing an analogy between the strict protocols of scientific method with those of spiritual practice:32 Just as for science there is an indispensable course common for all, even so it is true for persons who would make experiments in the spiritual realm— they must submit to certain conditions…we have the belief based upon uninterrupted experience that those who would make diligent search after Truth-God must go through these vows: the vow of truth-speaking and thinking of truth, the vow of brahmacharya, of non-violence, poverty and non-possession. If you do not take these five vows you may not embark on the experiment.

Martin Luther King, Jr., whose Gandhian influences are well known, and who applied Gandhi’s nonviolence principle to peace and social justice activism in the United States, said, “in a real sense, Mahatma Gandhi embodied in his life certain universal principles that are inherent in the moral structure of the universe, and these principles are as inescapable as the law of gravitation.”33 Gandhi noted that while Brahman or Truth, as the absolute basis for all provisional truths, is fundamental to the sciences, the epistemic purview of science (limited to mechanistic causes, instrumental explanations, and a physicalist ontology) invariably falls short of the absolute purview that it remains a partial expression of. He drew parallels, for instance, between the principle of nonviolence and the constants of physics to argue that the moral principle of nonviolence can be as certain as a scientific law. However, he wrote, “violence can only be overcome through non-violence. This is as clear to me as the proposition that two and two make four. But for this one must have faith … very few people have grasped this eternal truth.”34 While the law of gravitation presumably works without human minds having faith in it, the Gandhian principle of nonviolence requires the added element of personal will. Unlike scientific

4  BRAHMACHARYA, NONVIOLENT SOCIAL PRAXIS, AND LEADERSHIP 

121

laws, presumably applicable only to a closed physics, moral principles are based on holistic moral psychology and social relations. However, both scientific and religious inquiry share a common desire to attain higher dimensions of Truth via rigorous discipline.35 This spirit of discipline and sacrifice is also essential to public service. Just like Plato, Gandhi believed that public servants cannot serve two masters: the satyagrahi’s ashram, like Plato’s Guardian’s barracks, was largely devoid of possessions, family ties, and material pleasures (Gandhi is closer in this respect to Plato than to Confucius, who emphasized the importance of family values and family relations as a basis for broader social action). Gandhi notes, in a very Platonic sense, that:36 If a man gives his love to one woman, or a woman to one man, what is there left for all the world besides? It simply means, ‘we two first, and the devil take all the rest of them.’ As a faithful wife must be prepared to sacrifice her all for the sake of her husband, and a faithful husband for the sake of his wife, it is clear that such persons cannot rise to the height of universal love, or look upon all mankind as kith and kin.

Gandhi’s ashram in South Africa, called Phoenix, was very much akin to Plato’s Academy in grooming dedicated individuals for public service, though they differed with respect to the Academy’s emphasis on an elitist intellectual focus versus the ashram’s exclusive focus on manual labor and devotional practice. However, one of the Ashram’s key protocols, like those of the Republic’s barracks, was its program of general austerity and sexual abstinence. Responding to an aspirant, Gandhi laid out strict rules to be followed in the ashram:37 In Phoenix 1. you will have to observe brahmacharya; 2. you will be under a vow of scrupulous regard for truth; 3. you will have to do chiefly manual labour, that is, work with the hoe and the shovel; 4. if you intend to add to [your] book-learning, please forget all about it. Whatever addition comes naturally or because circumstances demand it will be welcome; 5. you should make up your mind that our duty is to strengthen character rather than acquire book-learning;

122 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

6. you should fearlessly oppose injustice from the caste or the family; 7. you should embrace absolute poverty. You should think of joining Phoenix only if you would and can do this. You should tell yourself that life there will grow harder as the days pass and know that this is for your good.

In the perennial debate on morality and politics in terms of ends and means, political realists have traditionally held that a state and its leaders should eschew moral principles in favor of political utility. Machiavelli, so often lauded as the archetypal first ‘modern’ political thinker, asserted in the Prince that “a man who wishes to act entirely up to his professions of virtue soon meets with what destroys him….”38 Furthermore, a ruler should not fear “the reputation of being cruel, for in time he will come to be more well-considered than if liberal, seeing that with his economy his revenues are enough, that he can defend himself against all attacks….”39 While the realist tradition places the debate on means and ends within a dualistic paradigm and argues that ends justify means, Gandhi’s ontological-­ ethical holism refutes the separation of means and ends entirely. For him, political, domestic, and international institutions and goals operate in a single, relational social milieu. Means define ends and ends determine means. From a Gandhian perspective, even if we accept the Machiavellian dictum that politics is power-politics, it does not necessarily follow that ‘might is right,’ and while ‘self-interest’ may in fact guide individuals and groups, self-interest need not be synonymous with ‘selfishness.’40 Gandhian holism dissolves traditional realist dualism into a relational social paradigm. As Booth explains, “in the traditional realist/ Machiavellian formulation they (ends and means) remain essentially separate, but in the traditional non-dualistic/Gandhian formulation the idealism/realism ideal-types can be conceived as collapsing into each other.”41 This also highlights the classic contrast between traditional political realism and Gandhian moral realism. While for Gandhi, ‘power based on love’ is a political end-in-itself, a traditional realist of Machiavellian vintage would advise the political leader to value love only as an instrumental strategy, when utilitarian concerns require it. He should, in Machiavellian terms, be ‘feared rather than loved.’ In a Machiavellian-Hobbesian realist world, nation states, political actors, and even citizens, naturally and rightfully ‘fear each other,’42 regard each other with suspicion, and worry that

4  BRAHMACHARYA, NONVIOLENT SOCIAL PRAXIS, AND LEADERSHIP 

123

war remains perpetually immanent. The realist schema involves “little room for trust among states,”43 but in the Gandhian political scheme, political actions and institutions exist precisely to eliminate fear and mistrust, and it is not a conflict of interests but rather the harmony of interests that guides the conduct of states. To the realist depiction of politics involving competing individuals or groups in zero-sum competition, Gandhi provides a moral counterpoint. Arguing that material resources and power are relative, secondary values and that their acquisition is pointless without an absolute, primary ethical goal toward which to direct their use, he focused instead on the value of these means only in order to realize goals. For him, power is not, “power-­ over-­others in terms of military power (sticks), economic power (carrots), cultural power (imposed identity) or political power (because it is so decided), pitting one arsenal of power against the other for balance, competition, or best of all: victory.”44 Gandhi’s version of power, in contrast, is power-over-self, appropriately conceived in terms of brahmacharya, that involves individuals and organizations self-regulating their actions in conformity to ethical imperatives. While debating the financial prospects of an educational institution, Visva-Bharati, founded by his contemporary Rabindranath Tagore in colonial India, Gandhi advised his colleagues that the attraction of this institution should not be material but moral as “‘material resources’ is, after all, a relative term… (but) attraction must be moral…if I were asked for advice I would say: ‘Do not yield to this temptation’. Visva-Bharati must take its stand on the advancement of moral worth. If it does not stand for that, it is worth nothing.”45 The moral purpose of politics and political leadership for Gandhi is to ensure the community’s security and the peaceful resolution of conflicts. He provided the widest possible definition of morality in this connection: “morality means the acquisition of virtues such as fearlessness, truth, brahmacharya (celibacy) and so on. Service is automatically rendered to the country in this process of cultivating morality.”46 His method of nonviolence (underwritten by his belief in transcendent morality), and his goal (peace) reinforce each other—there can be no peace without nonviolence, and nonviolence requires moral agents who champion peace. It requires more courage, he asserted, to be a ‘soldier of peace’ than to be a wielder of weapons. He wrote in 1921, during the famous non-cooperation movement against the British rule, “As our movement is avowedly peaceful, it is much better even to drop sticks (weapons). Soldiers of peace that we are, we should copy the ordinary soldier as little as possible whether in

124 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

point of uniform or otherwise.”47 The term ‘soldier of peace’ may appear paradoxical in the context of nonviolence, but here it implies that peace can be pursued as aggressively as war. Gandhi believed that ideas and values which emerge in particular sociopolitical contexts may be unique to these contexts but also have universal applications. He argued that the nonviolence principle applied in the context of nineteenth-century South Africa and twentieth-century India against oppressive colonial policies was specific to those struggles but could still be useful in other contexts. This Gandhian call to praxis modified political projects in ways that adapted moral principles to situational goals with the assumption that essential moral ideals, like nonviolence as practiced in places such as India and South Africa, could be replicated at other places and times in a similar (though not abstractly identical) spirit. The Gandhian paradigm encompasses gradations and variations of moral ideology that work in tandem to realize ultimate Truth as expressed through social-political peace. Recent movements like Extinction Rebellion, a global environmental project seemingly far removed from the Indian/South African freedom struggles a century ago, drew its inspiration from this Gandhian vision. According to Roger Hallam, a founder of the movement, “Extinction Rebellion is humbly following in the tradition of Gandhi and Martin Luther King.”48 This Gandhian approach has also been echoed in many other universalist/impartialist movements over the past half century, including human rights, gender equality, poverty eradication, etc. Gandhi’s conception of coextensive theory-in-practice is based on genuine faith in the human capacity to learn and apply ‘impartialist’ moral principles, such as nonviolence, cultivated through individual self-­discipline and renunciation. This kind of nonviolence, he insisted, is therefore never a weapon of cowards or weaklings (in contrast to thinkers like Nietzsche who regarded such values and practices as an attempt by the weak to exercise power over the strong via the denigration of elitist warrior ideals), but is instead a weapon of courage and strength. In fact, Gandhi preferred violence as a ‘lesser evil’ in the service of justice, to submission or inaction in the face of injustice. Furthermore, nonviolence is active struggle, not submission or passive resistance. In an interview with the American journalist, Drew Pearson, in 1924, he argued:49 By non-violence I do not mean cowardice. I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence…I

4  BRAHMACHARYA, NONVIOLENT SOCIAL PRAXIS, AND LEADERSHIP 

125

am not pleading for India to practice non-violence because she is weak, but because she is conscious of her power and strength…who discovered the law of nonviolence were greater geniuses…Having themselves known the use of arms, they realized their uselessness and taught a weary world that its salvation lay not through violence, but through non-violence. Therefore, I respectfully invite Americans to study carefully the Indian National Movement and they will therein find an effective substitute for war.

The political realists of his era often considered nonviolence a ‘passive’ or conciliatory strategy.50 While contemporaneous leaders like Lenin, Stalin, and Mao were leading violent political movements, Gandhi was a solitary advocate of nonviolent political activism in major worldwide social struggles.51 Following his commitment to social praxis, Gandhi adhered to the nonviolence principle throughout his work in South Africa and India. His Noncooperation Movement in 1920–1922 and Salt March in 1930 are testimonies to this Gandhian credo. The American journalist, Webb Miller, who covered the Salt March, vividly described how Gandhi’s colleagues practiced nonviolence in the face of police brutality. Miller reported,52 In eighteen years of reporting in twenty-two countries, during which I have witnessed innumerable civil disturbances, riots, and rebellions, I have never witnessed such harrowing scenes as at Dharasana (a site of the Salt March). It was astonishing and baffling to the western mind accustomed to see violence met with nonviolence, to expect a blow to be returned. My reaction was of revulsion akin to the emotion one feels when seen a dumb animal beaten: partly anger partly humiliation. Sometimes the scenes were so painful, I had to turn away momentarily. One surprising feature was the discipline of the volunteers. It seemed they were thoroughly imbued with Gandhi’s nonviolence creed, and the leaders constantly stood in front of the ranks imploring them to remember that Gandhi’s soul was with them.

In this way Gandhian political philosophy and activism follow logically from his worldview, including his diverse ontological, ethical, and religious influences and his formal conception of the human condition. The politics of peace and nonviolence is realized through self-discipline, sensual austerity, and renunciation mutually reflected in the interdependent relationship between, rulers, citizens, and nations. Keeping this in mind, Alter writes, “…one might rightly conclude that Gandhi was not so much obsessed by sex and food as by a discourse of science which allowed sex

126 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

and food to become social, moral, and political facts of life, as well as biological ones.”53

Brahmacharya, Public Service, and Political Leadership Since brahmacharya entails the kind of self-discipline and control necessary for the realization of peace and wisdom, only brahmachari political leaders exemplify the kind of nonviolence-in-action necessary for justice. Gandhi neither coined the term brahmacharya nor presented any theoretical exposition of the concept. It is a Sanskrit term, developed in ancient Hindu scriptures and literature, that played a key role in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. However, no other public leader was as fixated as Gandhi on the idea of the sensual austerity central to the brahmacharya ideal. His voluminous writings and speeches testify to this and, as many focused studies have elaborated, even reveal elements of a somewhat prudish trivialization and fetishism in his various life experiments. As Alter observes, “although Gandhi’s own theory of celibacy was derived in more or less equal parts from Christian and Hindu doctrines, the regimens he developed were extreme and highly idiosyncratic.”54 Assessing the role of brahmacharya in Hindu religious history, Gandhi noted that “the body was the temple of the spirit and an instrument to be dedicated to the service of God’s creation. For the body to perform this function, all the senses and the mind had to act in perfect co-ordination, free from all inner tensions.”55 Despite his similarity to Plato and Confucius on this theme, only Gandhi provided detailed prescriptions for practicing sensual austerity or brahmacharya. For Plato (depending on whether one reads him in a “normative” or “austere” light per Zoller’s categories), sensuality was either natural but unimportant or simply beneath contempt—but in either case it was unnecessary to develop a detailed program to manage it. For Confucius, sensuality was not a subject requiring detailed, literal explanation in his ‘high-context’ cultural milieu. All three still share the view that sensual austerity is integral to moral leadership and, like Plato and Confucius, Gandhi considered it fundamental to a functional political administration. Also like them, his conception of sensual control included proper management of positive and negative emotions and desires. He wrote to one of his colleagues that brahmacharya is necessary for ‘wringing my soul for adequate purity, to enable me [to] render

4  BRAHMACHARYA, NONVIOLENT SOCIAL PRAXIS, AND LEADERSHIP 

127

greater service’ to humanity. For Gandhi, as for Confucius, a leader’s control over his body and mind sets an example for his peers and galvanizes a positive synergy through the entire social network that his actions influence. Like Plato’s Academy, Gandhi’s ashrams in South Africa and India were breeding grounds for future leaders and nonviolent workers—and imposed a strict and physically austere regimen on their residents. Also for Gandhi, as for Plato, communal living in this kind of environment provides a space in which to cultivate the spirit of public service. Gandhi’s correspondence with ashram initiates and followers outside the ashram clearly indicate how serious he was that followers adhere to brahmacharya. In a letter to Jaiprakash Narayan (famously known as JP), one of his well-known colleagues in the Indian National Congress, Gandhi made the same plea. Narayan, 33 years his younger, often sought Gandhi’s counsel. When Narayan went to the United States for college his wife Prabhavati stayed in Gandhi’s ashram, and when Narayan returned from the United States he wanted to reunite with his wife. Gandhi advised Narayan to observe brahmacharya or to marry another woman if his wife did not want to continue sexual relations with him:56 You consider sex necessary and beneficial for the spirit. In such a situation I would not consider a second marriage immoral from any point of view. In fact I feel that your doing so may well set an example to others. Many young men use force with their wives. Others visit prostitutes. Still others indulge in even worse practices. Prabhavati has chosen to live the life of a virgin. You do not wish to practise brahmacharya. Therefore I see nothing wrong in your respecting the wishes of Prabhavati and finding yourself another wife. If you cannot think of another woman, you should, for the sake of Prabhavati, observe brahmacharya. If your love for Prabhavati is really true you will find that as soon as you go near her your sexual craving will subside. I have placed my views before you. Do as your duty bids you. May God grant you the strength to do so.

As it happened, Narayan did not marry again. He remained married to Prabhavati until she died in 1973, and they stayed active in public life without having any children. Narayan became a major leader during the Quit India Movement in 1942, and later played a significant role in Indian politics. Gandhi understood the discipline that sensual austerity demands and recognized that it is at least as spiritual and intuitive, as it is rational, in nature. Like the Platonists and the Confucians, Gandhi viewed virtue as

128 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

the practical application of personal moral sensitivity, rather than any formal imposition of rules and regulations. Since sensual austerity is the cornerstone of moral integrity, a leader’s moral integrity is ensured by his commitment to brahmacharya. In turn, since morality is the foundation of leadership, the health of any political administration is dependent upon its moral basis. Communities are only as moral as the political leadership that guides them. Morally remiss leaders demean their communities and immoral communities choose destructive leaders to guide them. In a 1934 letter to Agatha Harrison, a British industrial reformer and unofficial diplomat, Gandhi made this relationship clear, “what occupies my mind at present is how to achieve the purity of the Congress and to rid the Ashram here of subtle untruth and breaches of brahmacharya.”57 The reciprocal dynamism of moral synergy emerges when brahmacharya becomes the moral-political praxis guiding a community. Sensual austerity, fostering self-renunciation and inner peace, ensures the possibility that selfless compassion and nonviolence will guide public policy. Gandhi argued that sensual pleasure is morally enervating because it redirects the energy and resources necessary for public service to the gratification of selfish physical desires. He reasoned that a leader whose heart is filled with compassion for others will have no ‘spare time’ for sensual pleasure. Political leaders occupied with ceaseless public service have no time for self-centered indulgence. Service to people is akin to serving God (in fact, given Gandhian neo-Vedanta metaphysics, it is serving God) and, as the leader is undertaking both kinds of service simultaneously, his agenda is too full to accommodate any other focus. Drawing on the Bhagavad Gita, Gandhi wrote, “one who wants to lose himself in the Brahman, one who wants to be ever immersed in service, has no time for sensual pleasures.”58 Self-less service to society requires unmitigated self-control. He wrote,59 … how can anyone who would serve the Ashram, serve men and women, boys and girls, how can he afford to gratify his sensual desires? And serving the Ashram is such a small matter; it is like a drop in the ocean. Hence anyone who would serve the world should flee his desires.

Gandhi linked the logic of service and sensual austerity to his own life and times, particularly to undertakings like the Indian freedom struggle. He saw the struggle for India’s freedom through a radically ethical lens, as

4  BRAHMACHARYA, NONVIOLENT SOCIAL PRAXIS, AND LEADERSHIP 

129

a project in swaraj (self-rule) rather than just a colonial conflict. Here, swaraj has a double meaning: on one hand the political freedom of India from the colonial rule, and on the other hand the more profound freedom of individuals, communities, and their leaders from the inward oppression of lust, anger, gluttony, etc., that leads to social-political injustice in the first place. Ananta Giri’s study of Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj examines how the latter meaning underwrites the former meaning in practice:60 an uncritical and mechanical rendering of Swaraj as self-rule does not address the problem that self-rule is not always accompanied by visions and practices of co-determination, co-constitution and co-responsibility… When we cultivate the non-sovereign dimension in ourselves we realize that we are not the masters of the other and the world and we exist not to colonize and annihilate. We realize that we are servants and we are marked by a fundamental fragility of life and hence we are non-sovereign. Cultivation of non-­ sovereignty is a multi-dimensional political and spiritual task and it is linked to our calling of responsibility.

Hence, for Gandhi, sensual austerity provides the inward moral strength necessary for generating the outward commitment to action, and reciprocally, the outward call to action cultivates the inward fortitude required to manifest it in turn. The tautological logic of this dynamic synergy generates a self-perpetuating consciousness-raising force, which is the manifestation of satyagraha. Rudolph and Rudolph further elaborate on this Gandhian theme, describing how Gandhi sought to address problems within the Indian National Congress, the leading political party in the freedom movement, by emphasizing this principle. They wrote, “in the late 1930s, when the nationalist movement was experiencing severe difficulties, Gandhi characteristically looked for the source of trouble not in society and history but in himself…He had not achieved such complete control,”61 and quoted Gandhi to substantiate their argument, “I have not acquired that control over my thoughts that I need for my researches in non-violence. If my non-violence is to be contagious and infectious, I must acquire greater control over my thoughts. There is perhaps a flaw somewhere which accounts for the apparent failure of leadership….”62 Just as Confucius drew illustrations of political morality from ancient Chinese texts and parables, Gandhi drew moral examples from Hindu epics like the Ramayana and Mahabharata. The Ramayana’s ideal king,

130 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

Rama, defeated the evil and violent Ravana to establish the Ramarajya (or the ideal rule of Rama). Similarly, the Mahabharata’s Yudhishthira of the Pandav clan fought against the evil and unjust Kuru clan to establish dharmarajaya (or the rule of dharma and justice). Gandhi interpreted these stories as models that could be applied to an analysis of political rule in the present age. The binary moral logic of good versus evil, coextensive within a larger vision of an all-embracing universal justice, was well-suited to Gandhian social-political struggles in which opposing forces were eventually to be reconciled in a program of universal rights and justice. Historical conflict in the Gandhian paradigm is an epic story of divine justice resolving worldly conflicts through the irresistible compulsion of an all-­ embracing destiny. These struggles inevitably result in love and justice emerging victorious at the conclusion. Applying this logic to his fight against colonial rule, Gandhi compared the British rule to Ravanarajya, the rule of Ravana, and exhorted his followers to initiate the Ramarajya. He asked:63 How are we to be rid of this Ravanarajya? By becoming evil men in dealing with evil men? By meeting a crafty man with craftiness? How can we ever match them in their wickedness? How can we outwit the Empire in its cunning ways? How can the men of policy among us succeed against this Empire …Even if we, Hindus and Muslims, would employ cunning, we simply do not have it. If we want to kill Ravana with brute force, we should have ten heads and twenty arms like him. From where are we to get these? It is only a man of Rama’s strength who can do so. What was that strength of his? He had observed brahmacharya…

It was because Rama observed brahmacharya that, by manifesting inward justice outwardly, he could defeat the mighty force of Ravana, and Gandhi prescribed the same solution for modern leaders struggling against injustice, exploitation, and corruption. Rama, also known as Purushottma (best among men), and Maryadapurusha (a man who follows ideal rules) observed brahmacharya and thus fostered sufficient inner moral strength to fight against the evil force of Ravana. Following this Gandhian logic, political leaders—whether Rama or modern presidents and prime ministers—must observe sensual austerity to fight against injustice. He described how Rama and his brother Lakshmana, “practised rigid discipline of the senses, spent their days in self-denial, eating only fruits and tubers, and both the brothers practised the strictest brahmacharya”64 to fight and

4  BRAHMACHARYA, NONVIOLENT SOCIAL PRAXIS, AND LEADERSHIP 

131

defeat Ravana. He also referred to the famous devotee of Rama, Hanuman (also known as Maruti, famous warrior in the Ramayana) when instructing students, “may you therefore be like Maruti of matchless valour born out of your brahmacharya and may that valour be dedicated to the service of the Motherland.”65 Gandhi’s ideal state, or Ramarajya, is therefore conjoined to his idea of brahmacharya, nonviolence, and justice. With the establishment of this ideal community, people could enjoy true freedom and justice, and there would be no need for costly legal or administrative mechanisms. Again, as with Plato and Confucius, Gandhi admonishes rulers to lead by example. Plato’s Republic, like Gandhi’s Ramarajya, is predicated on metaphysical idealism, a hierarchical moral psychology based on sensual restraint, and a theory of ethical public leadership in which the ruler’s character in this regard is essential to justice. And like Plato’s Republic, Gandhi’s Ramarajya may be an unrealizable ideal in actuality, but still remains integral to the telos of righteous action—whether for citizens of the just state or freedom fighters in anticolonial struggles. Gandhi often referred to Rama in his writings, speeches, and even morning prayers that extolled the virtues that Rama represented. He was so enamored by Rama, in fact, that he encouraged chanting the name of Rama to develop the spirit of self-control and public service. In the Gandhian cosmological and moral order, ideal rule, Truth, nonviolence, and brahmacharya all are interlinked, and the state which embodies all these principles must be led by a ruler embodying them as well. Reciprocally, the individual is representative of his society and, if the individual is moral, his society will reflect this. It is this symbiotic relationship between the individual and society that shaped Gandhian political theory. Brahmacharya liberates citizens and rulers alike to transcend their enslavement to the ego’s desires and selflessly serve others—which is necessary for the life and health of any community. Simply put, the ideal ruler must be a brahmachari, and there can be no compromise on this principle. Thus,66 the whole world will be to him one vast family, he will centre all his ambition in relieving the misery of mankind and the desire for procreation will be to him as gall and wormwood. He who has realized the misery of mankind in all its magnitude will never be stirred by passion. He will instinctively know the fountain of strength in him, and he will ever persevere to keep it ­undefiled. His humble strength will command respect of the world, and he will wield an influence greater than that of the sceptred monarch.

132 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

India, Gandhi claimed, was “karmabhumi (land of work), dharmabhumi (land of dharma), and tyagabhumi (land of sacrifice)—the Himalayas stand witness to this triumvirate—but all these depend on the strict observance of brahmacharya; if dharmarajya is to be established in India, Truth, righteousness and brahmacharya must be the foundation of the state.”67 Gandhi reminded his followers time and again about the difficulty of such an enterprise (following sensual austerity and fighting for freedom through nonviolence) and even instructed them to reject this path if they found it too difficult to follow. Gandhi understood the all-important difference between theory and practice, especially with respect to the brahmacharya path, which was indubitably difficult. For moral leadership and public service, brahmacharya is an absolute virtue, only realizable completely or not at all—but it can nonetheless be realized via many life-paths. “With brahmacharya as your shield and buckler,” he wrote, “you should find no difficulty in entering any walk of life, and if you will follow the vocation natural to you—agriculture, cow-protection, and commerce—in the right way, you will serve both your community and the country.”68 Brahmacharya is therefore not just a theoretical subject but also a practical project or a program of action. It is also a project of self-mastery in the service of larger social issues like caste eradication, anticolonialism, religious freedom, etc. To account for this larger vision, Gandhi widened the definition of self-control. Drawing on the ideas of one of his followers, Vinoba Bhave, Gandhi added six more principles to his original five— nonviolence, truth, non-stealing, brahmacharya, and non-possession— making the total number of disciplines eleven. The additional six included bread labor, control of the palate, fearlessness, equal regard for all religions, swadeshi (self-reliance), and removal of untouchability.69 His holistic worldview ensured that these expanded principles remained interconnected, implying that failing to follow one of them will automatically lead to failure in others. Thus, the ideal ruler is above ethical reproach. Firmly committed to the principle of sensual austerity, he is simply incapable of doing any wrong. As Gandhi explained, “he alone is strong who never misuses his strength and voluntarily renounces the misuse of his strength, so much so that he becomes incapable of such misuse.”70 This idea could be instructively compared with Confucius’s sage-king, who can shape the destiny of his people through the magnitude of his inner moral fortitude. All three thinkers—Plato, Confucius, and Gandhi—exemplified this role themselves in important ways. Plato tried to shape governance in Syracuse, Confucius

4  BRAHMACHARYA, NONVIOLENT SOCIAL PRAXIS, AND LEADERSHIP 

133

served as advisor in the state of Lu, and Gandhi was a mentor to India’s leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru. None of these thinkers played the role of ruler directly, but their respective influences configured the nature of political rule globally.

Brahmacharya, ‘Mastery of the Science of Life’ The Gandhian perspective on brahmacharya can be compared to the Confucian conception of moral self-cultivation. Like the neo-Confucian Mencius, Gandhi’s moral psychology was largely about developing an intrinsically beneficent human nature for cooperative coexistence with like-minded natures. Both believed that this involved making the soul aware of the deep spiritual resources enabling it to flourish and grow— enriching community and the world as a result. Though this more optimistic emphasis separated Mencius (and Gandhi) somewhat from other neo-Confucians like Xunzi (who stressed the need for more ‘coercive’ legalistic methods by which to cultivate and develop a harmonious society), all of them agreed that constructive political life—and leadership in particular—begins with moral character. In modern western political philosophy, a similar distinction might be drawn between figures like Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Hobbes’s vision of the human condition as, by nature, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” involving a ceaseless struggle between ego-centered, greed-­ driven individuals over scarce material resources and requiring a powerful, ruthless, legal regime to enable human communities to flourish, was, in some respects, similar to that of Xunzi—minus Xunzi’s more relational metaphysics of personal identity. Locke, on the other hand, believed along with Mencius and Gandhi that individuals are social animals but that this natural self-interest is driven as much by sociability as by selfishness. Healthy and just political authority, in their consensus view, is a cooperative venture designed to develop and organize this sociability for mutually beneficial projects. Both Gandhi and Mencius might even be comfortable with the Lockean classical liberal idea of government as a kind of ‘necessary evil’ in accomplishing this, although the modern western denigration of political community to the status of an abstract artificial legal ‘social contract’ between isolated self-interested individuals would be unpalatable to Gandhi and Mencius (whose thinking was informed by a more communitarian conception of social relations in the classical Asian traditions). Though the theories of these thinkers emerged from vastly different

134 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

social-­political contexts, they have, as Harrison points out (in the context of Hobbes and Locke but which can be applicable in the context of other great thinkers), “the advantage for us of being driven by high theory, which travels beyond ancient troubles and can be translated into contemporary concerns. The fundamental problems and solutions they raise and discuss are ones that we still can discuss, use, or criticise today.”71 Gandhi was not a dogmatically communitarian thinker, and he displayed enough of an individualist, almost libertarian, political disposition that he was often labeled an anarchist. The world’s spiritual progress, he believed, ultimately depends on individual self-cultivation through self-­ discipline, so that social justice is contingent upon individual moral progress, as individual flourishing is contingent upon social justice. His distrust of large states and large state institutions like the legal system, military, and administrative bureaucracy was explicit in his writings and speeches. While he advocated for an interconnected moral world, the morally guided individual remains the center of nonviolent social action. As Gandhi’s own experience suggests, this moral guidance arises from the individual’s commitment to brahmacharya. Alter finds in Gandhi’s approach to sensual austerity and morality a ‘transcendental moral conviction’ and also an enigma “on account of how he conceived of morality as a problem in which Truth and biology were equally implicated.”72 For Gandhi, sensual austerity provides the inner peace, stillness of mind, and spiritual focus required for a moral psychology that fosters personal justice. Authentic, realistic moral principles have the living experience of brahmacharya as their foundation. An ethical life is nothing other than the realization of brahmacharya in social action. Gandhi often acknowledged that, though he was ignorant of this connection in his early life, it slowly dawned on him during his career in public service. Without full conscious comprehension of its meaning, he began practicing sensual austerity from an early age. Its significance first dawned on him while working in the Indian Ambulance Corps during the Zulu Rebellion in South Africa during the first decade of the twentieth century. After contemplating the brahmacharya ideal and its practice for several years, he made a solemn vow to begin undertaking it in 1906. In his autobiography, he mentions the name of Rayachandbhai, the famous Jain poet, philosopher, and mystic, and how correspondence with him was a major influence in this connection. He wrote,73

4  BRAHMACHARYA, NONVIOLENT SOCIAL PRAXIS, AND LEADERSHIP 

135

But it was in South Africa that I came to realize the importance of observing brahmacharya even with respect to my wife. I cannot definitely say what circumstance or what book it was, that set my thoughts in that direction, but I have a recollection that the predominant factor was the influence of Raychandbhai, of whom I have already written…What then, I asked myself, should be my relation with my wife? Did my faithfulness consist in making my wife the instrument of my lust? So long as I was the slave of lust, my faithfulness was worth nothing. To be fair to my wife, I must say that she was never the temptress. It was therefore the easiest thing for me to take the vow of brahmacharya, if only I willed it. It was my weak will or lustful attachment that was the obstacle.

For Gandhi, as a married, worldly, London-educated lawyer, the commitment to brahmacharya did not come as a sudden epiphany. Its compelling logic dawned on him as a gradual revelation over the course of a lifetime, and not without problems. In his autobiography he described the personal struggle for self-mastery (his own inner swaraj) that his realization of brahmacharya entailed. However, Gandhi’s appreciation for brahmacharya as the basis for social action eventually overrode his physical desires and egocentric attachments. This fundamentally transformed the nature of his relationships with women. From that day when I began brahmacharya, our freedom began. My wife became a free woman, free from my authority as her lord and master, and I became free from my slavery to my own appetite which she had to satisfy. No other woman had any attraction for me in the same sense that my wife had. I was too loyal to her as husband and too loyal to the vow I had taken before my mother to be slave to any other woman. But the manner in which my brahmacharya came to me irresistibly drew me to woman as the mother of man. She became too sacred for sexual love. And so every woman at once became sister or daughter to me. I had enough women about me at Phoenix. Several of them were my own relations whom I had enticed to South Africa. Others were coworkers’ wives or relatives. Among these were the Wests and other Englishmen. The Wests included West, his sister, his wife, and his mother-in-law who had become the Granny of the little settlement.

Margaret Sanger, the well-known American birth control activist and sex educator who discussed her ideas with Gandhi, took a different position than Gandhi on the issues of sex, sensual life, and challenged Gandhi’s ideas. While Gandhi insisted that birth control methods are superfluous

136 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

and are not necessary for a disciplined individual who could engage in sexual activity only for procreation, Sanger challenged that a healthy life and society does not need strict regulation of sex life, particularly between husband and wife. She wrote, “Mr. Gandhi is strangely illogical in his demand that women ‘resist’ the sexual advances of their husbands to avoid frequent pregnancies.”74 While Sanger’s counterpoint to Gandhi makes sense from a rational-utilitarian point of view, and Gandhi acknowledged that a healthy family life does not necessarily preclude sex between husband and wife, he still insisted that sensual austerity is necessary for public service. Gandhi was well aware of Sanger’s objections and decided not to impose his views on others—allowing ashram initiates to leave if they wanted to fulfill their sensual desires. He also made sure to emphasize that his views on sexuality were in no way associated with traditional gender-­ biased Hindu taboos against women or contact with women. Unlike the orthodox tradition which relegated women’s roles exclusively to the performance of domestic tasks, Gandhian settlements instituted complete gender equality and ensured that every member had the same opportunities. In typical Gandhian fashion, Gandhi used religious themes and arguments to challenge the religious orthodox ascetic tradition that considered women ‘doorkeepers of hell.’ He considered woman ‘an incarnation of our Mother,’ and claimed that God, the ‘Master Potter,’ created both genders with equal love, demanding that they have equal freedom. A man and woman may choose to marry, live a householder’s life, and continue to produce offspring, but once they decide to dedicate life to public service they must abstain from sex and any corporeal indulgence. Public service demands sacrifice and restraint and, for this reason, married couples in his ashram were not allowed to have sexual relations. In a letter to his son Ramdas, he wrote, “my ideas about the relations between husband and wife have changed of course. I would not like any of you to behave towards his wife as I did towards Ba [Gandhi fondly called his wife, Kasturba].”75 Gandhi’s reasoning was that, having learned the value of and connection between sensual austerity and public service the ‘hard way’ (via ‘experiment’) himself, he hoped that his students could avoid this arduous path by following his advice. In fact, this concern—the violation of sensual austerity in communal living—remained a challenge to many social and religious reformers because of its tendency to fade with each passing generation of adherents. Gandhi was well aware of the force and power exerted by sexual desire, and appreciated the danger this posed to the integrity of communal living. His invocation of religious themes in

4  BRAHMACHARYA, NONVIOLENT SOCIAL PRAXIS, AND LEADERSHIP 

137

response to this was deliberate, as religious symbolism was likely to be more effective for the ashram’s members than arguments based strictly on legal-ethical rationales. Gandhi often referred to the Gita to illustrate the meaning of renunciation, austerity, and nonviolence. Gandhi was well acquainted both intellectually and personally with the mind-body relationship in connection to the origin of sensual desire. He therefore understood that physical abstinence without corresponding mental abstinence would be only an empty gesture. As a metaphysical Vedanta idealist, Gandhi (much like neo-Platonic metaphysical idealists) saw physical desire as intrinsically connected to mental will. Physical distraction has its origin in ‘chitta vrittis’ (mental movements/disturbances). Gandhi conceded that because of the physical demands it makes on the novice, sexual abstinence is not easy to observe. He also allowed that sexuality was acceptable for a husband and wife who follow normal social rules, and acknowledged its appropriateness for a healthy society in this way. Sensuality between couples is commensurate with a dignified life. However, for those dedicated to public service, brahmacharya is absolutely necessary. In response to numerous letters and questions from his followers on this issue, Gandhi attempted to dispel myths and misconceptions about the term, brahmacharya. For example, he elaborated on its status as a state of mind rather than any physical ability:76 But ordinarily brahmacharya is understood to mean control over the sexual organs and prevention of seminal discharge through complete control over the sexual instinct and the sexual organs. This becomes natural for the man who exercises self-restraint all round. It is only when observance of brahmacharya becomes natural to one that he or she derives the greatest benefit from it…mere abstention from sexual intercourse cannot be termed brahmacharya. So long as the desire for intercourse is there, one cannot be said to have attained brahmacharya. Only he who has burnt away the sexual desire in its entirety may be said to have attained control over his sexual organs. The absence of seminal discharges is a straightforward result of brahmacharya, but it is not all. There is something very striking about a full-fledged brahmachari. His speech, his thought, and his actions, all bespeak possession of vital force.

This level of detail sometimes seemed excessive, and detractors occasionally portrayed his exactitude as an indication of obsessive fetishism. However, his method was intended to make the nature and demands of a unique and unusual lifestyle clear to potential candidates and, because of

138 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

this, it needed to be elucidated in explicit terms. As there is no half-­ hearted, partial, or rudimentary brahmacharya, and since it involves sensual austerity in its widest possible interpretation, potential initiates must be fully cognizant of its conditions. Echoing an almost Platonic perspective on moral perfection and ideal wisdom, he wrote,77 The word in Sanskrit corresponding to celibacy is brahmacharya and the latter means much more than celibacy. Brahmacharya means perfect control over all the senses and organs. For a perfect brahmachari nothing is impossible. But it is an ideal state which is rarely realized. It is almost like Euclid’s line which exists only in imagination, never capable of being physically drawn. It is nevertheless an important definition in geometry yielding great results. So may a perfect brahmachari exist only in imagination. But if we did not keep him constantly before our mind’s eye, we should be like a rudderless ship. The nearer the approach to the imaginary state, the greater the perfection.

Again, for Gandhi there is no such thing as partial or limited brahmacharya. As life—like the cosmos—is an indivisible whole, brahmacharya too is indivisible, and for the individual dedicated to public service, this interconnectedness is absolute. Hence, while brahmacharya involves sexual austerity, it also involves austerity in every other aspect of sensual life, including food, words, and behavior, whether in private or in public. Among all these other types of austerity, Gandhi often emphasized control of the palate. He experimented with various dietary restrictions during the course of his career and recommended the same to his colleagues and followers. Gandhi’s dietary experiments, as Nico Slate rightly contends, cannot be just confined to an analysis of food or health or nutrition, but they are linked to his wider project of peace and justice. Slate argues, “Gandhi’s life reveals the power of connecting food to the struggle for justice. Learning the most important lessons from Gandhi’s diet requires pushing beyond questions of nutrition to the larger social and political impact of what we eat, how we eat, and how we live.”78 While making the case that “by exploring his diet, we can discover how to connect what we eat to our deepest values,” Slate further elucidates the cosmopolitan influences on Gandhi’s nutritional experiments and how those experiments are guided by an element of moral cosmopolitanism:79 In Gandhi’s diet, the homogenizing tendencies of globalization intersected with the diversifying consequences of the migratory flows created by

4  BRAHMACHARYA, NONVIOLENT SOCIAL PRAXIS, AND LEADERSHIP 

139

empire…Gandhi’s diet spanned the borders of nations and of religions. While there was something distinctly Jain and Hindu about his spiritual outlook on food, Gandhi also learned from Christian and Muslim approaches to diet. His religious pluralism informed his culinary cosmopolitanism. The reverse was also true: his adventures in eating helped him to respect other religious traditions.

Gandhi believed that eating vegetarian food (and avoiding nonvegetarian and acidic food) is necessary for practicing brahmacharya. He argued, however, that dietary austerity alone would not be sufficient to observe brahmacharya and that the practice of brahmacharya is not reducible to vegetarianism. He believed it possible that there are brahmacharis who eat meat. He conceded,80 I know lustful persons who are vegetarians on principle, who wear only a khadi shirt and cap and live an outwardly simple life but dwell in their minds on pleasures and luxuries, and I also know real brahmacharis who, following the practice in their country, eat meat and have always dressed themselves in coat and trousers.

Dietary restrictions and other controls are helpful but, by themselves, are neither sufficient nor necessary for brahmacharya or for leadership. Gandhi also believed that it is necessary for potential public servants to learn brahmacharya as part of a natural life-path. Learning is a noble task, involving degrees and certificates to a minimal extent, but primarily focusing on learning humility, self-control, public-service, and nonviolent conflict resolution. In this, he was deeply influenced by the Hindu tradition that divides human life into four phases, brahmacharya—the life of student, grihastha—the life of householder, vanaprastha—the life of forest dweller or retired, and sannyasa—the life of renunciate.81 Brahmacharya, the first stage, is of course one of the most important and, as the initial awakening of wisdom, it is crucial to assimilating key life-lessons. The importance in Hindu tradition of the terms brahmachari (the one who practices brahmacharya) and Vidyarthi (or student) being used interchangeably is significant. This illustrates how essential both brahmacharya and the student role are to growth of the soul. Writing to his youngest son, Devdas, in 1918, Gandhi wrote, “I have placed great hopes in you. Strengthen your character and follow the path of nonviolence. Observe

140 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

brahmacharya as far as possible. Proceed with your studies to the extent necessary and carry on my activities.”82 We have already mentioned the eleven-fold vow necessary to becoming a brahmachari and, we explained, Gandhi arrived at these by introducing six more vows to the ancient five vows from the Dharmic traditions. He wanted to provide the widest possible understanding of the ideal so that nothing noble in social life is excluded from it. As the practicing individual renounces sexual desire, he is simultaneously taking control over other senses, thoughts, and moral aspirations, so that a true brahmachari would be “incapable of lying, incapable of intending or doing harm to a single man or woman in the whole world,” and he would be “free from anger and malice and detached in the sense of the Bhagavad Gita,” and all the activities of such a person would be a “steady progress towards God and whose every act is done in pursuance of that end and no other.”83 Gandhi admitted that he was not a ‘perfect brahmachari’ since he indulged in sexual pleasure during his youth and lived the life of a householder for many years. However, precisely because of this experience, he recognized the value of brahmacharya for anyone interested in public service. Despite his disavowal of any relative, partial, or developmental realization of brahmacharya, his life and testimony indicate nonetheless the possibility of a scale or gradation of brahmacharya that one could achieve in stages: as a probationer or imperfect brahmachari (or even just a seeker of the brahmacharya path) slowly moving towards a higher kind or perfect brahmacharya. Gandhi himself aspired to this kind of relative progress throughout his life—stating that he strove in successive stages to realize the status of a perfect brahmachari, in order to be a better servant of the people. During his maturity at age 75, he wrote in 1945 a letter, “but if I can become a perfect brahmachari thereby, would I not be able to contribute more to the welfare of the world?”84 Again, for Gandhi, brahmacharya is the living embodiment of Truth, which is absolute, infinite, all-encompassing and transcends the limitations of space/time, and subject/object dualism—overcoming all separation between individuals, groups, and nations, that create divisions and conflicts. When Gandhi talks about Truth, he is also referring to the ethical principles that transcend these divisions and conflicts. Nonviolence and peace are therefore also integral expressions of this larger Truth. However, to understand and realize these expressions of Truth, the brahmachari must be prepared both intellectually and morally, and must undergo the rigorous training and discipline needed to make body, mind, and spirit

4  BRAHMACHARYA, NONVIOLENT SOCIAL PRAXIS, AND LEADERSHIP 

141

ready for its revelation. Gandhi frames this vision in terms of the individual Truth-seeker, irrespective of any ethnic, religious, or national identity, finding inner peace through a sensual austerity that stills the chitta vrittis or movements of restless mind obscuring Truth within the soul. Gandhi claims that one who knows this Truth cannot commit a single mistake in life as a leader of his state and society. He raises the question, “why is it that Truth is not seen to possess the power of a magnet?”, and responds, “tell me if you have seen perfect truth anywhere, and then ask me that question. Truth is not a common pebble but a jewel rarer even than a diamond. Much harder labor is needed to discover it than to dig a mine.”85 This metaphorical Gandhian invocation to mining precious metals is apt: Truth can be cultivated only through discipline and renunciation of the ego’s attachments. Gandhi envisioned the unadulterated experience of perfect brahmacharya as akin to communion with God, since for him these states of development are synonymous, or at least coextensive. A perfect brahmachari realizes God, and the individual who has realized God is a perfect brahmachari. It would seem (and Gandhi would no doubt agree) that this idea transcends simple analytic-logical justification, but for the purpose of this study it also seems fair to take Gandhi at his word and connect this concept, as he also did, to the moral psychology required for moral leadership in politics. Gandhi drew liberally from the world’s religious and wisdom traditions in making the fundamental connection between brahmacharya, God realization, and public service, that helped him practice these ideals in his life and transmit them to the world. However, Gandhi’s analytic philosophical contemporaries like A. J. Ayer often referred to metaphysics in general as ‘nonsense’ (and the idealism of their Anglo-American contemporaries like Bradley and Royce to be, as their predecessor Jeremy Bentham would have said, ‘nonsense on stilts’), and probably considered Gandhi’s idealism even more incoherent. However, Gandhi was never an armchair philosopher, but instead an activist in the most authentic sense of that term. His actions were a living expression of his personal principles—a philosophy or Truth-in-action—rather than a second-hand application of some preexisting theory. Hence, for Gandhi, practicing brahmacharya and communion with the divine are interdependent aspects of a single dynamic expression of Truth—there being no separation of Truth from the principles and actions in which it is realized. Put simply: God and Truth are one and the same. Gandhi rejected the idea common in some Hindu theologies, that the

142 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

realization of God or moksha must involve leaving the mortal body or dying. As a practical thinker who envisioned Brahman or God as immanent in the living world, Gandhi held that God is present wherever nonviolence, compassion, and cooperation—all unifying forces—engender a peaceful and harmonious society, for surely the forces of unification are an expression of the inherent drive in all divided antithetical beings to reunite with their divine source. This is the philosophical-spiritual vision that inspired him to see God in individuals, communities, and societies, and to direct his social activism toward that end rather than to any kind of otherworldly liberation. The brahmachari engaged in public service is serving God (or rather, has become God-Truth-in-action) as he sees God in the people and public service with which he is engaged. Gandhi always remained a Hindu at heart and his main differences with the tradition stem from his work as an activist, placing its principles in the service of social justice for a modern India. As a practicing Hindu who was proud of his culture and tradition, the reformer in Gandhi was eager to accept its important ideals while simultaneously critiquing its irrelevance in other ways. For example, he was a strong critic of the lower social-­ spiritual status that traditional Hinduism accorded to women, but at the same time he supported the significance of its ashrama system. Gandhi even “considered brahmacharya essential to the service of women rights.”86 Hence, Gandhi as Hindu social reformer was often more apparent than Gandhi as nonviolent social activist, despite the fact that both roles are interdependent. He struggled relentlessly against entrenched superstitions and injustices within the Hindu tradition and, to this end, he worked for institutional reforms within Hinduism, including advocating widow remarriage, banning child marriage, removal of untouchability, and so on. In fact, his eleven vows included removal of untouchability within the caste system (Gandhi famously called the untouchables Harijans, or people of God). Still, throughout all his social reform and political activities (including the freedom movement), brahmacharya or sensual austerity remained the major guiding force. Authentic social justice always emanates from personal spiritual justice, and political justice remains grounded in the soul as the only source from which to take its bearings. Brahmacharya, by creating the conditions necessary for inner spiritual transformation that manifests outward moral progress, is the bridge required to connect these dimensions of justice. Sensual austerity is not the goal per se, but it is the necessary means to attaining peace and harmony within and without. It is,

4  BRAHMACHARYA, NONVIOLENT SOCIAL PRAXIS, AND LEADERSHIP 

143

therefore, indispensable for moral leadership in any just political community. While his views on its necessity in this way are fairly uncompromising, Gandhi still understood that its application will vary in form and tenor with diverse contexts and people. While adhering to its central tenets, the practitioner will find that her particular brahmachari path unfolds in unique ways, depending upon her circumstances. Originating in the ultimately infinite and ineffable heart of Brahman or Truth itself, brahmacharya cannot be reduced to a rigid ideology but must instead be actively expressed in the changing and uncertain world of living experience—a world that mere ideas can never do justice to. Gandhi was emphatic in stressing the importance of brahmacharya in practice rather than theory, just as he stressed the importance of justice as a way of life rather than an ideal. “My brahmacharya” he wrote, “was not derived from books. I evolved my own rules for my guidance and that of those who, at my invitation, had joined me in the experiment.”87 In this way, Gandhi’s life highlights the well-known distinction in the Hindu tradition between a pandit and a yogi: the former having theoretical command of the scriptures but not necessarily following the path that the scriptures prescribe, and the latter largely ignorant of the ‘letter’ of the scriptures but following faithfully the ‘spirit’ of them. Gandhi’s conception of brahmacharya would be closer to that of the yogi than to the pandit, and, in this, he followed a long legacy of Hindu reformers like Ramakrishna and Ramana Maharishi, who lacked formal education or theological erudition but were brahmacharis renowned as spiritual leaders. Gandhi also presented the brahmacharya ideal as attainable and, while ‘grand’ and ‘difficult’ to realize, nonetheless accessible and certainly worth pursuing. He particularly recommended these four steps to aspirants:88 The first step is the realization of its necessity. The next is gradual control of the senses. A brahmachari must control his palate. He must eat to live, and not for enjoyment. He must see only clean things and close his eyes before anything unclean. It is thus a sign of polite breeding to walk with one’s eyes towards the ground and not wandering about from object to object. A brahmachari will likewise hear nothing obscene or unclean, smell no strong, stimulating, things. The smell of clean earth is far sweeter than the fragrance of artificial scents and essences. Let the aspirant to brahmacharya also keep his hands and feet engaged in all the waking hours in healthful activity. Let him also fast occasionally.

144 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

The third step is to have clean companions—clean friends and clean books. The last and not the least is prayer. Let him repeat Ramanama with all his heart regularly every day, and ask for divine grace.

As quoted above, Gandhi frequently invoked the name of Lord Rama, the Hindu god and ideal ruler, but he welcomed aspirants to appeal to Jesus, Buddha, or any other religious figure. In fact, his emphasis on the above four steps places Gandhi closer to practical Confucianism in emphasizing continuous practice and self-cultivation for realizing brahmacharya. A potential brahmachari must use any possible means necessary for realizing it. Gandhi used a wide variety of metaphors and allegories to illustrate this. He would, for instance, compare the struggling brahmachari to a young mango plant or a baby who requires special care to nurture. A brahmachari who has realized perfect self-control is fully imbued with the spirit of brahmachari and does not need such extra care (or as Gandhi said, he does not need ‘protecting walls’ around him since brahmacharya will be his default condition). However, the uninitiated brahmachari must be nurtured, since following brahmacharya will be like walking on a sword’s edge (ashidhara) and there is a high risk of lapse and failure. To safeguard against this eventuality, aspirants need protecting walls as “a young mango plant has need of a strong fence round it” or as “a child goes from its mother’s lap to the cradle and from the cradle to the push-cart till he becomes a man who has learnt to walk without aid.”89 Gandhi appreciated this inner struggle (mirroring the struggles for social justice that it provides preparation for) and understood the hardships that it presents for most modern people, who have become psychologically dependent on the empty but addictive bemusements and distractions of the contemporary world. Nonetheless, he was convinced that this goal was achievable and was candid in relating his own struggle in this regard. He confessed in 1932:90 I indulged in sexual pleasure nearly up to the age of 30. Nor can I claim that I exercised self-control in eating. I used to eat all kinds of delicacies for the mere pleasure of the palate. Then I steadily drifted towards restraint. But this does not mean at all that I have overcome the cravings of the senses. All I can claim is that I have learnt to hold them under control. Thus, self-­ indulgence had already had its effect on my body, but it has been counteracted in the measure that I have acquired self-control.

4  BRAHMACHARYA, NONVIOLENT SOCIAL PRAXIS, AND LEADERSHIP 

145

Rudolph and Rudolph elaborate well this Gandhian internal struggle to have mastery over self and how this struggle had reverberation in Gandhi’s public life and Indian freedom struggle:91 When the mature Gandhi spoke of self-control, he had in mind not merely the control of the ‘carnal self’, although that was how he often put it. It was hatred and anger as much as sexual self-expression that he sought to pacify and control. Such emotions did not die easily in him. His capacity for fury at his wife and sons, in whom he could not bear to see the human frailties he would not tolerate in himself, remained long into his South African sojourn… Gandhi’s techniques of public action in the nation sought to exclude anger. His private horror of private anger remained. Gandhi turned to the Gita, taking from it an ethic that could serve his private and public self: to become he ‘who gives no trouble to the world, to whom the world causes no trouble, who is free from exultation, resentment, fear and vexation’. To live it meant peace from the inner strife between filial duty and self-expression and enabled the public man to inspire the confidence and possess the authority that detachment brings.

The emphasis on sexual austerity may appear esoteric or eccentric to aspiring public leaders in the contemporary world and may also seem unnecessarily burdensome on political leaders occupied with the demands of public service, but as Gandhi repeatedly argued, sensual austerity via brahmacharya is a crucial prerequisite for public service. The swaraj within each individual is foundational to the moral swaraj within society as a whole. As perfect brahmacharya or absolute sensual austerity is impractical for non-leaders in public service, Gandhi recommends to followers some modicum of sensual austerity, which would presumably increase as their level of political authority and responsibility becomes more significant. Gandhi also distrusted reason or rational argument to fully legitimize the relevance and necessity of brahmacharya. This distrust was directed toward what he refers to as, ‘untrained reason.’ He argued, “we have lost the robust faith of our forefathers in the absolute efficacy of satya (truth), ahimsa (love) and brahmacharya (self-restraint). We certainly believe in them to an extent. They are the best policy but we may deviate from them if our untrained reason suggests deviation.”92 As the Sanskrit term ‘brahmacharya’ is complex and amenable to varied interpretations, Gandhi attempted to offer some general definition. Though brahmacharya is an ancient Hindu concept and interpreted differently by diverse socio-religious reformers from all the Dharmic religious

146 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

traditions, Gandhi tried to define it in simple terms for his followers. In its narrow definition, the term connotes sexual abstinence, or lack of sexual activity, or celibacy. However, this narrow traditional definition is far too simplistic for Gandhi’s purposes, as it remains focused entirely on the body and physical behavior to the neglect of mind and spirit. Gandhi would argue that even the complete cessation of all sensual desire on the mental level is inadequate unless it is accompanied by a positive sense of life-­ purpose. He explained,93 What is brahmacharya? It is the way of life which leads us to the Brahman. It includes full control over the process of reproduction. The control must be in thought, word and deed. If the thought is not under control, the other two have no value…For one whose thought is under perfect control, control over speech and action is easy. The brahmachari of my conception will…exhibit all the attributes of the man of steadfast intellect described in the Gita…Moreover, to use the word brahmacharya in a narrow sense is to detract from its value. Such detraction increases the difficulty of proper observance. When it is isolated even an elementary observance becomes difficult, if not impossible. Therefore, it is essential that all the disciplines should be taken as one. This enables one to realize the full meaning and significance of brahmacharya.

The American priest A. W. Richard Sipe’s definition of celibacy which, he argues, is misunderstood even in the Western context, approximates Gandhi’s definition of brahmacharya. Though Gandhi’s definition is often couched in Hindu religious terms, Sipe’s definition, while expressing the same message, appears equally appealing and more secular. Writing long after Gandhi, in 2008, Sipe elaborates,94 Despite the fact that the ideal and the practice of celibacy exist in many religious traditions, it is not well understood. Self-control or self-mastery is one of the essential developmental life tasks. Athletic, intellectual, or military conquests as well as religious idealism all depend for success on the drive to conquer one’s self and modulate natural desires…Self-knowledge and insight are best gained not in acting out one’s feelings, but restraining action in favor of understanding. Religious contemplative life has incorporated this belief for centuries. This conviction about the value of restraint is a cornerstone of celibate motivation and achievement. The implications of this truth about the worth and need to control human “passions” far exceed the goal of personal growth and insight. Morality is not possible without the ability

4  BRAHMACHARYA, NONVIOLENT SOCIAL PRAXIS, AND LEADERSHIP 

147

to restrain impulses and modulate and redirect desires. Culture and society in order to exist and flourish depend on an understanding and practice of restraint.

For Gandhi, as for Sipe, therefore, brahmacharya is a kind of complete package, encompassing all aspects of life. It is like a measuring rod against which every activity of life, including each daily activity (e.g., what to read and what not to read, what to eat and what not to eat, what to see and what not see) is measured. Vinay Lal elaborates on this perspective, “Gandhi described brahmacharya as the ‘search [for] Brahma [truth],’ and thus, in its most ordinarily accepted sense, the ‘control in thought, word and action, of all the senses at all times and in all places.’ Brahmacharya, the elimination of all desire, was to be obtained by diving into, and realizing, the inner self: and it is this spiritual discipline that furnished the nonviolent resister with true armor.”95 While acknowledging the difficulty of this project in the individual’s daily life, Gandhi explained that strict discipline is necessary for the individual who wants to live for noble purposes, including nonviolent social action, public service, and political leadership. A concrete symbol of this discipline, and the level of daily renunciation it involves, was the image of three monkeys displayed in one of his ashrams—one monkey covering its eyes with its hands, implying it would not see anything evil or immoral, another monkey covering its ears with its hands, implying it would not hear anything evil or immoral, and the last monkey covering its mouth with its hands, implying it would not speak anything evil or immoral. Since existence is unified in Brahman and life as an aspect of Brahman is an indivisible whole, then every aspect of individual life and social life operates in the same milieu, and adherents to the brahmacharya path must remain vigilant all the times, in every aspect of their lives. Gandhi’s ideal of brahmacharya and Plato’s idea of the Good come to mind in this connection. Ideas by their metaphysical nature are not corporeal, but they exert an even more compelling influence and exhortation to action in a clear-headed soul than does any physical force. Like Pythagorean axioms existing exclusively in the mind, or Plato’s Republic existing primarily as a pure Form, which are both—despite their immaterial status—necessary for meaningful action in the physical realm (what Gandhi calls ‘great results’), Gandhi’s brahmacharya, though a spiritual state of mind rather than a pure  material substance, nonetheless invokes in the enlightened individual an urge to nonviolent social activism and public service in the

148 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

material world, as well as the moral guidance and self-control at the physical level required for this mission. Unlike Plato, Gandhi did not offer any sophisticated method to cultivate qualities necessary for political leadership. His approach being more practical than theoretical, he had no ‘blueprint’ for the development of ideal social institutions or precise administrative techniques for running them. He did, however, concur with Plato’s view that the usual vehicles for political success (business and wealth, law and the courts, lobbying and public-interest groups, etc.), are usually expressions of sophistry rather than wisdom, and are often adverse to a virtuous political culture. Gandhi, along with Plato, would certainly caution the aspiring political leader to avoid career paths that are geared toward financial success, legal opportunism, social status, and political power. Gandhi’s philosophy of political leadership was, in a sense, as minimalist as his prescription for the moral life. ‘Simple living, high thinking,’ or a life of sensual austerity conducive to moral excellence and public service, combined with the guiding principles of Truth and nonviolence, was Gandhi’s program for political leadership. To the question, “have you any working method to teach this (self-control) to the masses?”, Gandhi replied, “It is…to attain complete self-control and go and live that life amongst the masses. A life of self-restraint and denial of all luxuries cannot but have its effect on the masses. There is an indissoluble connection between self-control and the control of the palate. The man who observes brahmacharya will be controlled in every one of his acts and will be humble.”96 Since the ultimate goal of every life is the realization of Truth, and there is no duality of means and ends, the political leader must actualize a nonviolent satyagraha in her own life to foster a nonviolent, peaceful, harmonious society that reflects the Truth of which it is the supreme expression. Satyagraha in a political leader’s thought manifests this in his actions and, through these, in his community. Gandhi thus presents political life as a translucent spectrum in which nothing is hidden from the view of the public. As a spiritual-social-political leader himself, Gandhi intentionally conducted his life experiments in a very candid, open manner and wanted his followers, or any political leader, to follow the same path when conducting her own experiments with Truth. Extolling the qualities of a just political leader, Gandhi wrote,97 As with regard to the goal so with the means, unadulterated purity is of the very essence in this species of satyagraha. The leader in such a movement must be a man of deeply spiritual life, preferably a Brahmachari—whether

4  BRAHMACHARYA, NONVIOLENT SOCIAL PRAXIS, AND LEADERSHIP 

149

married or unmarried…The leader must be versed in the science of satyagraha. Truth and ahimsa should shine through his speech. All his actions must be transparent through and through. Diplomacy and intrigue can have no place in his armoury. Absolute belief in ahimsa and in God is an indispensable condition in such satyagraha.

This message of Gandhi is particularly relevant to our times, we argue, and as sex scandals, emotional excess, personal vanity, greed, incivility, and unconstrained covetousness for power and prestige, increasingly degrade the quality and sustainability of functional, democratic political life and institutions, the ideal of sensual austerity in cultivating ethical leadership for a just political community—originating with Plato and Confucius and culminating in the brahmacharya ideal of Gandhi—appears more and more relevant.

Notes 1. Joseph S.  Alter, “Celibacy, Sexuality, and the Transformation of Gender into Nationalism in North India,” The Journal of Asian Studies 53, 1(1994), 45. 2. Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne H. Rudolph, Postmodern Gandhi and Other Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967). 3. Alter, “Celibacy, Sexuality, and the Transformation of Gender into Nationalism in North India,” 45. 4. Veena Howard, Gandhi’s Ascetic Activism: Renunciation and Social Action (Albany: SUNY Press, 2013). 23. 5. Farah Godrej, “Nonviolence and Gandhi’s Truth: A Method for Moral and Political Arbitration,” Review of Politics, vol. 68 no. 2, 2006, pp. 287–317. 6. Veena Howard, “Rethinking Gandhi’s Celibacy: Ascetic Power and Women’s Empowerment”, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, vol. 18, no. 1, 2013, 130–161, p. 137. 7. Mohandas K. Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 49 (New Delhi: The Publications Division, Government of India, 2015), 212. (The collected works of Gandhi runs into one hundred volumes. Hereafter, in each reference to these works, the number of the volume has been given in Italics before the page numbers.) 8. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 31, 505. 9. Thomas Weber, Gandhi as Disciple and Mentor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 171.

150 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

10. G. D. H. Cole, Reflections on ‘Hind Swaraj’ by Western Thinkers (Bombay: Theosophy Company, 1948), 17. 11. Eric Hobsbawm, “War and Peace in the 20th Century,” London Review of Books 4, no. 4 (2002), https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-­paper/v24/n04/eric-­ hobsbawm/war-­and-­peace-­in-­the-­20th-­century. 12. Nancy Pelosi, “Pelosi Remarks at Embassy of India MLK and Gandhi Reception,” October 3, 2019, https://www.speaker.gov/ newsroom/10319-­0. 13. António Guterres, “Gandhi’s Ideas Drive Efforts of United Nations for Equality, Empowerment, Global Citizenship, Secretary-General Tells ‘Leadership Matters’ Event’,” September 24, 2019, https://www.un.org/ press/en/2019/sgsm19765.doc.htm. 14. Paul Vale, “Mahatma Gandhi Statue Unveiled By David Cameron In London’s Parliament Square,” The Huffington Post, March 14, 2015, https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/03/14/gandhi-­s tatue-­ unveiled-­by-­david-­cameron-­outside-­parliament-­in-­london_n_6869536. html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLm NvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAACJHR__rDIM21TK3n6UvcV9jMSM kPweUC8b4sHqrGziC-­1-­vCBmRA5tFfFGDoBLvohgot4zdT6OqoGnp BGVLuBlpzVsWhCzxq45jrGlpaiT_YMjxzG_hfNzbodGpwRJrVAdu9NAOYlYrd3aFAH1W_wUjpbp2hdo9R37m5W98KH5S. 15. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 12, 50. 16. For example, see Lloyd Rudolph and Susanne Rudolph, Postmodern Gandhi and Other Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967); David Mandelbaum, “The Study of Life History: Gandhi,” Current Anthropology 14, 3 (1973), 177–206; Joseph Alter, “Gandhi’s Body, Gandhi’s Truth: Nonviolence and the Biomoral Imperative of Public Health,” The Journal of Asian Studies 55, 2 (1996), 301–322, and “Gandhi’s Body, Gandhi’s Truth: Nonviolence and the Biomoral Imperative of Public Health,” The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 55, no. 2, 1996, pp. 301–322; Farah Godrej, “Nonviolence and Gandhi’s Truth: A Method for Moral and Political Arbitration,” The Review of Politics 68, 2 (2006), 287–317; Vinay Lal, “Nakedness, Nonviolence, and Brahmacharya: Gandhi’s Experiments in Celibate Sexuality,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 9, 1/2 (2000), 105–136; and, Veena Howard, Gandhi’s Ascetic Activism: Renunciation and Social Action (Albany: SUNY Press, 2013); and, “Rethinking Gandhi’s Celibacy: Ascetic Power and Women’s Empowerment,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 81, 1 (2013), 130–161. 17. David G.  Mandelbaum, “The Study of Life History: Gandhi,” Current Anthropology 14, 3 (1973), 195. 18. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 44, 89.

4  BRAHMACHARYA, NONVIOLENT SOCIAL PRAXIS, AND LEADERSHIP 

151

19. Elliot Deutsch, Advaita Vedanta: A Philosophical Reconstruction (Honolulu: Hawaii University Press, 1994), 13. 20. Surendra Verma, Metaphysical Foundation of Mahatma Gandhi’s Thought (New Delhi: Orient Longmans Press, 1970), 26. 21. Godrej, “Nonviolence and Gandhi’s Truth: A Method for Moral and Political Arbitration,” 292–293. 22. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 87, 14. 23. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 95, 184. 24. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 62, 430. 25. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 73, 252. 26. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 62, 247. 27. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 63, 342. 28. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 51, 85. 29. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 14, 134. 30. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 73, 70. 31. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 88, 102. 32. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 48, 405–406. 33. King, Jr. 1959. King Institute (undated) “India Trip (1959),” http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/ enc_kings_trip_to_india/ 34. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 90, 165–166. 35. Verma, Metaphysical Foundation of Mahatma Gandhi’s Thought, 18–19. 36. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 44, 68. 37. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 11, 191. 38. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, translated by W. K. Marriott and edited by Anthony Uyl (Woodstock, Ontario: Devoted Publishing, 2016), 38. 39. Ibid., 39. 40. Ken Booth, “Security in Anarchy: Utopian Realism in Theory and Practice,” International Affairs 67, 3 (1991), 545. 41. Ken Booth, “Navigating the ‘Absolute Novum’: John H. Herz’s Political Realism and Political Idealism,” International Relations 22, 4 (2008), 517. 42. John J.  Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W. W. Norton and Company 2001), 29. 43. Ibid., 32. 44. Johan Galtung, “Two Worlds: Gandhi and the Modern World,” in Debidatta A. Mahapatra and Yashwant Pathak, eds., Gandhi and the World (New York: Lexington, 2018), 2. 45. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi 82, 243. 46. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 10, 70. 47. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 21, 243. 48. Quoted in Polly Toynbee, “Now we know: conventional campaigning won’t prevent our extinction.” The Guardian, May 1, 2019, https://

152 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/01/extinction-­ rebellion-­non-­violent-­civil-­disobedience, 2019. 49. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 23, 197. 50. Kurt Schock, “Nonviolent action and its misconceptions: Insights for social scientists,” Political Science and Politics 36, 4 (2003), 705–712. 51. Sean Scalmer, Gandhi in the West: The Mahatma and the Rise of Radical Protest (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 52. Quoted in Richard B. Gregg, The Power of Nonviolence (Canton, Maine: Greenleaf Books, 1960), 25–26. 53. Joseph S.  Alter, “Gandhi’s Body, Gandhi’s Truth: Nonviolence and the Biomoral Imperative of Public Health,” The Journal of Asian Studies 55, 2 (1996), 316. 54. Alter, “Celibacy, Sexuality, and the Transformation of Gender into Nationalism in North India,” 61. Also see, in this context, Vinay Lal, “Nakedness, Nonviolence, and Brahmacharya: Gandhi’s Experiments in Celibate Sexuality,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 9, 1/2 (2000), 105–136. 55. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 77, 2–3. 56. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 92, 225–226. 57. Ibid., 300. 58. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 51, 227. 59. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 36, 182. 60. Ananta Giri, “Swaraj as Blossoming and Satyagraha as Co-Realizations: Compassion, Confrontation and a New Art of Integration,” in Debidatta A.  Mahapatra and Yashwant Pathak, eds., Gandhi and the World (New York: Lexington, 2018), 78. 61. Rudolph and Rudolph, Postmodern Gandhi and Other Essays…, 211. 62. Quoted in, Ibid. 63. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 18, 386. 64. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 18, 454. 65. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 33, 143. 66. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 30, 235. 67. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 33, 16. 68. Ibid., 142. 69. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 88, 59. 70. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 26, 248. 71. Ross Harrison, Hobbes, Locke, and Confusion’s Masterpiece: An Examination of Seventeenth-Century Political Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 5. Another useful study in this comparative project is: Asaf Z. Sokolowski, Metaphysical Problems, Political Solutions: Self, State, and Nation in Hobbes and Locke (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011).

4  BRAHMACHARYA, NONVIOLENT SOCIAL PRAXIS, AND LEADERSHIP 

153

72. Joseph S.  Alter, “Gandhi’s Body, Gandhi’s Truth: Nonviolence and the Biomoral Imperative of Public Health,” 301. 73. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 39, 165–166. 74. Esther Katz, ed., The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, Volume 4: Round the World for Birth Control, 1920–1966 (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2016), 326–327. 75. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 50, 354. 76. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 55, 19–20. 77. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 18, 345. 78. Nico Slate, Gandhi’s Search for the Perfect Diet: Eating with the World in Mind (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2019), 172. 79. Ibid., 178 80. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 30, 402. 81. Mandelbaum argues “in sexual matters, Gandhi’s views in his mature years paralleled the precepts of Hindu scripture, though he followed them far more literally and rigorously than did most other Hindus.” Mandelbaum, “The Study of Life History: Gandhi,” 185. 82. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 91, 171. 83. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 87, 108. 84. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 79, 222. 85. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 88, 11. 86. Howard, “Rethinking Gandhi’s Celibacy: Ascetic Power and Women’s Empowerment,” 131. 87. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 67, 197. 88. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 30, 236. 89. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 88, 100. 90. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 50, 32–33. 91. Rudolph and Rudolph, Postmodern Gandhi and Other Essays…, 218–219. 92. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 14, 126. 93. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 88, 58. 94. A.  W. Richard Sipe, “Celibacy Today: Mystery, Myth, and Miasma,” CrossCurrents 57, 4 (2008), 545–546. 95. Lal, “Nakedness, Nonviolence, and Brahmacharya: Gandhi’s Experiments in Celibate Sexuality,” 105–106. 96. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 61, 394. 97. The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, 69, 63.

CHAPTER 5

Parallels, Variations, and Pathways

In this book we have examined a largely neglected aspect of intellectual history and political thought—the link between sensual austerity and moral leadership—by drawing on the ideas of three representative thinkers from different classical cultural traditions: Plato from ancient Greece, Confucius from ancient China, and Gandhi from modern India. Furthermore, we advocate a forward-looking approach in arguing that this theme, though developed in different social and political contexts, remains relevant for current scholarship on moral leadership in the contemporary world. Though each was a product of unique historical circumstances, they were all concerned with some of the universal and perennial questions that have engaged visionary minds across cultures, eras, and geographical boundaries. A major concern that engaged all three thinkers was how to build a peaceful and harmonious society with wise and moral individuals as its building blocks. Despite the disparate cultural contexts of their respective ideas, all of them found that sensual austerity is necessary for the realization of a flourishing society and political culture. Sensual austerity for all these thinkers implied control of the senses and desires, and all agreed that sensual austerity is a necessary ingredient in any morally governed person, institution, state, or society. In fact, they claimed, a peaceful and harmonious relationship between individuals, states, and societies is only possible when the proper relation between sensual austerity and moral leadership exists. In this chapter we draw parallels between these ideas in terms of both their similarities and differences. In the first © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. A. Mahapatra, R. Grego, Sensual Austerity and Moral Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89151-0_5

155

156 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

section we focus on the similarities in their ideas, and in the second section we focus on their differences, while in the final section we make tentative suggestions for further research in this area.

Sensual Austerity and Moral Leadership All three thinkers were, in various ways, living exemplars of their moral-­ political ideals, refusing to separate theory from practice. Plato, according to our most reliable sources, seems to have provided the moral example in his life that he promoted in his teaching, and he at least attempted to recreate the Republic of his dialogs in the rough-and-tumble world of ancient Greek politics. Plato’s Academy was a training-ground for potential philosopher kings in which the capacity for morality, wisdom, and leadership was honed through years of education in dialectic, astronomy, and music, and in a communal setting where the trainee underwent a process of detachment from base desires. Plato also tried his hand, and risked his life, in attempting to reform the city-state in Syracuse’s dangerous political milieu. Confucius’s famous retort to his disciples, “does heaven speak?,” implies that actions speak louder than words, and that a leader or a public servant must embody the ideals that he promotes in his own life (The Gandhian slogan “If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change…We need not wait to see what others do”1 recapitulates this idea as well). Confucius has been celebrated as an authentic exemplar of the values he advocated, and as the living embodiment of a sage-king or an uncrowned king, who transmitted these values to his disciples (and to future generations) directly through his own actions. As a high official in the state of Lu, he tried—like Plato in Syracuse, although with somewhat more success—to shape its political ethos. His disillusionment with the king’s excessive indulgence, however, frustrated his efforts at reform and led him to retire from this position to undertake life as a wandering sage. Gandhi, and Plato’s philosophical muse, Socrates, certainly exemplified the ideal of virtue-in-action during their careers, and their experiences are living refutations of current populist political culture in which leaders neither embody nor are expected to embody the ideals they claim to support. Gandhi in the late nineteenth century and twentieth century took an active leadership position in the fight against injustice, oppression, and colonialism. His ashrams, whether in South Africa or in India, were breeding grounds for brahmachari-leaders who also dedicated their lives to social and political activism through nonviolent social praxis.

5  PARALLELS, VARIATIONS, AND PATHWAYS 

157

The Gandhi-Narayan correspondence described in Chap. 4, highlights Gandhi’s focus on applied philosophy: valuing his own ideas insofar as they were affective in fomenting transformative action. Gandhi was keen to influence the course of public affairs in India. His influence on Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, was significant and played a key role in the development of Nehru’s policies, like the Non-Aligned Movement and Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence (or Panchsheel). The common moral and political worldviews that Plato, Confucius, and Gandhi shared were also predicated upon another distinct characteristic (already mentioned in several places so far) common to their respective philosophies: an ontology of what might be called idealistic monism—a worldview that posits an immaterial, universal cosmic consciousness, an ordering principle or supreme intelligence, creating, encompassing, and pervading the physical universe and all existence; an unbounded holism of which everything is a part, but whose infinite potential is never exhausted in the sum of its particular parts. For Plato this worldview culminated in ‘the Good’ and inspired similar ideas: from Plotinus’s One, to Augustine’s God, to Hegel’s Spirit, to Nietzsche’s Will, to Emerson’s Oversoul, to Heidegger’s Being. For Confucius it was expressed as ‘The Way’ and was reprised with greater idealist emphasis in concepts like ‘Heaven’ or ‘all under Heaven.’ For Gandhi, as inheritor of the Vedanta tradition, it was understood in terms of Brahman, Truth, or God. For all of them, every aspect of reality—disjointed and random from our mortal perspective— was part and parcel a unified cosmic Mind whose divine order and purpose we normally remain unaware of, despite being aspects of its unfolding creation. Humanity’s purpose is to reawaken to its true identity as an aspect of the cosmic Mind by transcending the delusion arising from a mistaken belief that the physical aspects of the cosmic Mind (including our separate bodies and egos) are ultimately real. This is accomplished by gradually de-identifying with the world of illusional physical entities, identities, and the values we associate with them, so that we may rediscover and reidentify with their true cosmic-spiritual ground. This ontology of cosmic consciousness engendered a similarly idealist conception of the mind-body relation. The ground of Being is infinite, formless, divine Mind, which—being the originating and animating source of all creation—assumes the particular physical forms that we mistakenly perceive to be separate, isolated entities that are unconnected, or even unrelated, to one another. Human consciousness, however, participates intimately in the cosmic Mind to which it belongs and is capable of

158 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

discerning both its own connection to this source and the connection that all things have with it and with each other. The human mind can, by focusing intently on cosmic consciousness, reaffirm these connections and eliminate its attachments to, and false beliefs about, the physical world. The mind-body relation in these traditions therefore, while not dualist in a Cartesian sense, certainly tends to privilege the metaphysical status of the mind over that of the physical body—the body being merely a particular physical aspect of the cosmic Mind that creates it. The human mind is the vehicle for realization of our true identity as the cosmic Mind, while the body and the attachments and desires we attribute to it are often the source of our deluded thinking about who/what we truly are. These views (that the existence is ultimately grounded in a divine order, that this order is something like a cosmic consciousness or Mind, that the many seemingly separate material entities comprising the physical universe is actually part of this unified cosmic Mind, that our purpose is to realize this and reconnect to this divine source of our existence, and that this reconnection is accomplished by training the human mind to focus on its participation in cosmic consciousness rather than on attachments to the physical forms that this consciousness assumes) lead logically to a moral psychology, and then a political philosophy, that mirrors the ontology from which they are derived. Human nature has a hierarchical structure in which levels of clear thinking lead progressively upward from focus on material entities and physical attachments/desires at the lowest stage (Plato’s world of sense-perception and material entities, for example), to contemplation of the nonmaterial ideas that unite these entities at a higher stage (Plato’s geometry and abstract ideas, for example), to the perception of the grand scheme or purpose behind existence at the penultimate stage (Plato’s Forms for example), to complete unity with infinite potentiality through pure consciousness at the ultimate stage (Plato’s Good, for example). The renunciation of attachments to the physical world—with all of its apparent disunity, capriciousness, disharmony, contentiousness, and fleeting promise—is essential to attaining this state of mind. Human beings who have attained respectively higher stages of insight become increasingly better people—more moral and wise (having experienced reality at deeper levels of meaning)—and are therefore more fit to shape the well-­ being of their communities through political leadership. Sensual austerity that liberates the potential political leader from physical attachments— along with all the morally corrosive egocentric vanity, greed, envy,

5  PARALLELS, VARIATIONS, AND PATHWAYS 

159

competition, and enmity that accompanies such attachments—is foundational to this process. Whatever their differences may be, the classical thinkers and intellectual traditions presented here all placed moral integrity of civic leaders at the very center of proper governance. We have suggested here that Platonism’s political idealism certainly influenced modern conceptions of political leadership and its connection to sensual austerity in important ways. However, one substantial difference in the conceptions of moral leadership between the classical thinkers we have examined and their modern/ postmodern successors (and this historical contrast is important here because it highlights a common spirit that all three of our classical exemplars shared) is that, for Plato, Confucius, and Gandhi, personal moral integrity on the leader’s part was integral to political leadership, whereas for latter modern thinkers, personal ethics of leaders are significant only to the extent that they ensure fidelity to the rational-legal system (to use Weber’s terminology) that serves as the primary guarantor of a state’s health and efficiency. In contrast to classical conceptions of moral leadership, modern political leadership has become an a-moral affair. In modern liberal democracies governed by their citizens, this means that adherence to the reigning administrative-legal system, legitimized by the social contract, is the only ‘moral character’ that an otherwise morally impoverished public life requires. Fukuyama observes that, in the contemporary social-­ political milieu, “The limitations of the liberal view of man become more obvious if we consider liberal society’s most typical product, a new type of individual who has subsequently come to be termed pejoratively as the bourgeois;” this contemporary citizen, in the tradition from Machiavelli to Hobbes and Locke, is2 narrowly consumed with his own immediate self-preservation and material well-being, interested in the community around him only to the extent fosters or is a means of achieving his private good. Lockean man does not need to be public-spirited, patriotic, or concerned for the welfare of others; rather as Kant suggested, a liberal society could be made of devils, so long as they were rational.

In Natural Right and History3 and elsewhere, Leo Strauss famously described how modernity’s progressively secular commercial culture undermined the foundational institutions and principles sustaining classical civilization’s values and, consequently, eradicated the transcendent,

160 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

eternal Platonic forms (or, for that matter, anything like Confucian virtues, the Mandate of Heaven, and Gandhi’s Vedanta principles) underwriting the possibility for any hierarchical, enduring, or universal ethics. Rejecting the ideal, objective, and universalist principles characteristic of these classical worldviews, modern thinkers reconfigured their purview in terms of a materialist ontology, a relativist ethics, and instrumental reason. While classical philosophies of governance called for statesmanship, our modern ‘science’ of politics requires only efficient management. Rather than providing a shared moral paradigm for its constituency and community, the modern state is restricted to protecting individual rights by safeguarding communities from the imposition of any moral authority. Efficient administration of material resources—including human ones— has replaced the realization of Truth as the state’s highest aspiration. Modern political administration is an a-moral public domain in which the ideal of rule via Platonic philosopher kings has been replaced by policy management and technocracy. Value-neutral bureaucracies run by municipal planners and professional administrators have replaced moral leadership in political life. John Ralston Saul delivers a scathing indictment of this postmodern development, exemplified by the new ideal of the ‘technocrat’ in place of the classical philosopher king, sage, or brahmachari. “The new holy trinity is organization, technology and information,” he writes. Further,4 The new priest is the technocrat—the man who understands the organization, makes use of technology, and controls access to information…No member of this priesthood would call himself a technocrat though that is what he is. Whether graduates from Harvard, the London Business School, or hundreds of other such places, they are committeemen, number crunchers, always detached from practical contexts, inevitably assertive and manipulative…. They may or may not be decent people. This amoral quality of leadership is essential to understanding the nature of our times.

Describing how these postmodern political policy wonks have usurped the role of the classical statesman, Saul adds that their existence and prestige is the logical culmination of Enlightenment rationalism’s self-refuting logic emerging through the entire spectrum of contemporary political economies from neoliberalism to socialism in both its democratic and totalitarian forms. David Lay Williams also locates this ethos in modernity’s gradual deflation of classical idealism, resulting in the kind of postmodern

5  PARALLELS, VARIATIONS, AND PATHWAYS 

161

ethical anti-foundationalism advocated by figures like Foucault. “Political theory for Foucault is not about principles. It is about power,”5 he claims. Indeed, as its critics from the Frankfurt School to Foucault have asserted, the Enlightenment’s radically individuated Cartesian self may be largely responsible for this development as well—creating the neoliberal conflict between the sovereign individual and the political communities that these atomized individuals comprise, and reconfiguring the political state as merely an instrumental living arrangement between such individuals, rather than a significant vital entity in its own right. However, Max Weber’s even more influential concept of moral political leadership, outlined in Politics as a Vocation6 is perhaps a better example of the late modern counterpoint to classical thought. Recognizing, like Strauss, that the modern/postmodern predicament is essentially nihilistic but, unlike Strauss, convinced that postmodernity’s devaluation of value is a valid assessment—rather than a misperception—of political reality, Weber attempts to ground a theory of moral leadership on a groundless moral basis. His very definition of a political state, “a relation of men dominating men, a relation supported by means of legitimate (i.e., considered to be legitimate) violence”7 is an abstract conception taken by itself, essentially devoid of moral substance. Weber’s attempt to deepen this conception via an explication of what sound political leadership entails, adds some substance but little moral depth to this definition. While he considers a leader’s commitment to authentic ethical ‘convictions’ and ‘passion’ important in the exercise of power, he places far more emphasis on instrumental ‘responsibility’ to the dispassionate implementation of power. This same kind of instrumental rationality is evident in the status he accords to ‘proportion’ (compared to ‘passion’ and ‘responsibility’) in the political leader’s character. While the hierarchy of these attributes might be roughly comparable to Plato’s (‘passion’ for Weber corresponding to the soul’s ‘passions’ in Plato, ‘responsibility’ for Weber corresponding to the soul’s ‘spiritedness’ in Plato), the highest and foundational source of moral leadership for Plato (‘wisdom’ mirroring the ultimate transcendent source of any authentic moral action) has no real corresponding analog in Weber’s schema. Weber’s concept of ‘proportion’ in the political leader is more a relational mediating skill than an aspect of moral character. Rather than serving as a locus for the revelation of transcendent and eternal justice (which Weber repudiated but which Plato considered the all-important function of wisdom), ‘proportion’ is the aspect of character that simply balances conflicting interests of passion and responsibility in the pursuit of

162 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

utilitarian, pragmatic—rather than ideal—goals. Thus, in keeping with the spirit of modernity (and in opposition to Platonism, Confucianism, and Gandhi’s philosophy), Weber attempts to ground a theory of moral leadership on adherence to an amoral instrumental politics—or at least one that provides no definitive source for moral standards. “We must be clear about the fact that all ethically oriented conduct may be guided by one of two fundamentally differing and irreconcilably opposed maxims: conduct can be oriented to an ‘ethic of ultimate ends’ or to an ‘ethic of responsibility’”,8 he writes, reasserting the means-ends dichotomy that the classical exemplars here had wished to eliminate and, by favoring the ethic of ‘responsibility’ over the ethic of ‘ultimate ends,’ also rejecting the source of transcendent universal Truth by which classical thinkers sought to guide political leadership. This contrast between ‘ancients and moderns’ (in Strauss’s lexicon) highlights an important thematic similarity between the classical thinkers we have examined, why this separates them from modernity, and why this is important. Despite speaking from three different sociocultural traditions, Plato, Confucius, and Gandhi all recognized a link between sensual austerity and moral leadership. Sensual austerity presupposes morality, and moral leadership requires sensual austerity. There is also a symbiotic psychological relationship between these two—leaders need self-control to live a moral life, and a moral life presupposes self-control. The three differ on what the precise nature of self-control demands, and this will be addressed later, but it is sufficient here to argue that, for all of them, a moral life, a moral polity, a moral society, and a moral world is not possible without it. The relationship between self-control via sensual austerity is the bond that links character to meaningful action. When this bond is broken the leader’s moral character is compromised, and the state consequently fails as well. Such a society may be functional technocratically, but it lacks the moral ethos necessary to build communal peace and harmony. All three thinkers agree that a truly well-ordered society relies on self-­ control, emerging from self-cultivation, which is based on austerity and renunciation. Such a society does not need legal instruments of fear and punishment, complex administrative systems, or technocratic wizardry to maintain order. Indeed, its order emerges effortlessly, since its rulers and citizenry have already achieved and manifested this in their character and social relations. Moreover, those invested with administrative responsibility lead by example—as philosopher king or guardian, as sage and adviser,

5  PARALLELS, VARIATIONS, AND PATHWAYS 

163

as yogi or public servant—and need not impose any moral principle on their constituency that they do not follow themselves. Largely rejecting modernity’s conventional public/private and self/ other dichotomies in the psychosocial sphere, along with the subject/ object dichotomy at the metaphysical level, they also resisted any division being drawn between a ruler’s or citizen’s personal and social interests. All three, in their respective ways, saw life as an interconnected whole, with every aspect of experience interdependent on every other. Individuals and social groups, leaders and followers, interact across perceived personal and organizational boundaries to comprise collectively the milieu of political life. Gandhi noted that, because of this, no one can insulate any dimension of life from any other; political leadership cannot remain isolated from the other dimensions of life, since every aspect of one’s character is influenced by every other. Moral decisions made with respect to one’s friends and family will invariably influence how one deals with one’s political constituency. In much the same sense as Confucius, Gandhi refused to compartmentalize the whole person into subsets of skills: a healthy, wise, morally sound person is an integrated being. While Confucius certainly recognized relational moral categories—father-son, sibling-sibling, ruler-ruled, etc.—he did not think that these relationships could exist apart from one another. Healthy family life and flourishing relationships within the family configure his ethical paradigm, whereby every person and group flourishes insofar as it performs its proper familial-social role (as we have seen, he famously tells us in the Analects that justice prevails “when the prince is prince, and the minister is minister; when the father is father, and the son is son”). However, the integrity of these roles—either within society or the individual’s own life—is contingent upon the larger matrix of relationships and interrelationships that determine their contexts: princes, ministers, and fathers do not exist in isolation, and they depend on one another to perform their roles. Princes define the roles of ministers and ministers enable princes to be princes, while fatherhood is necessary for generating the kind of people who will become capable ministers and princes. In the same way, individuals are inextricably social: individuals must understand and perform their family roles to be authentic individuals, while families must produce moral individuals to function properly. Thus, the broad interpretation of this Confucian edict would be that individual life, family life, and public life are interconnected. To generate capable leaders,

164 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

individuals must support strong family relationships, and families must cultivate moral individuals. Plato saw these same holistic connections and framed the entire structure of the Republic’s dialog to illustrate that a flourishing civic life necessarily mirrors a flourishing soul. The political culture of the city has a direct counterpart in the moral psychology of the soul, and the relationship between them is straightforward and direct, rather than merely correlated. The direct point of contact lies in the moral character of the leader and the kind of rule that she represents: a leader whose soul is governed by material-sensual desires will promote a plutocractic state at best and a tyranny at worst, while a leader whose soul is governed by spiritedness will promote an effective military dictatorship at best and a degenerate oligarchy at worst. A ruler whose soul has been liberated by genuine wisdom will govern as a philosopher king. Of course, the converse of all this is true as well: a wise political constituency will support the rule of philosopher kings, just as a materialistic citizenry will naturally gravitate toward tyrannous populists and autocrats (which, Plato would probably contend, we have witnessed over the past decade across the contemporary world). All three thinkers therefore argue that this holistic outlook on life, combined with internal self-discipline and cultivated through rigorous training, are bulwarks against the kind of moral degeneration that leads inexorably to degenerate leadership and decadent cultures (an insight, Strauss contends, exemplified by our current conventional zeitgeist, which focuses exclusively on the external, technocratic mechanisms of government to the neglect of its internal, ethical foundations). For this reason, their outlook also laid great stress on personal moral development. They believed that life has a noble purpose and that a healthy life evolves toward virtue. Plato’s Idea of the Good, Confucius’s Mandate of Heaven, and Gandhi’s Satyagraha, all represent both the soul’s ultimate destiny, and the living telos moving each soul in the direction of that destiny. Plato promoted rigorous education and training, including training in moral values, as the force through which this telos operates. Confucius emphasized the role of ritual propriety and benevolence. Gandhi claimed that brahmacharya and nonviolence simultaneously support and realize the goal of developing morally cultivated individuals as building blocks for constructing a peaceful society. Although they all believed in an enduring and stable human nature rooted in eternal, immutable Truth, this nature is also a dynamic one that must be understood as much in terms of its infinite potentials as its fixed characteristics. They held that the possibilities

5  PARALLELS, VARIATIONS, AND PATHWAYS 

165

of an evolving human nature always exceed the material circumstances of the given human condition. They therefore shared an optimistic view of individual human progress and repudiated the late modern/postmodern strain of thought (from Machiavelli and Hobbes through Freud and contemporary psychobiology) that confines moral psychology to the naturalistic limits imposed by material circumstances, environmental or ‘operant’ conditioning, neurochemical traits, or ego-centered ‘rational self-interest.’ They based their political theories on the assumption that self-­improvement can be facilitated via the right combination of education, training, custom/tradition, family support, and social conditioning, but is certainly not limited to these, as it is ultimately rooted in boundless spiritual potentiality. Strength is foundational to the just state, but neither military nor socioeconomic strength is sufficient for authentic justice. The strength to which these three thinkers refer is inner strength—moral fiber in the temperament of those who supervise the state, and cooperative synergy among its citizens—and certainly not strength in the sense of what Gandhi called the power emerging from ‘multiplication of atom bombs.’ A leader (military dictator or populist autocrat) in the modern world might find it difficult to appreciate the famous Confucian saying “with coarse rice to eat, with water to drink, and my bended arm for a pillow;—I have still joy in the midst of these things,” or the Gandhian dictum that a political leader must be a brahmachari to rule responsibly, but the three thinkers here consider this mindset to be the soul of genuine strength. The modern origins of contemporary realist theory come to mind in this connection as the antithesis of what these thinkers were attempting to convey: the modern Leviathan-state and rigid legalism in stark contrast to Gandhi’s Ramarajya, Confucius’s virtuous community, or even Plato’s Republic, insofar as these latter reject coercion as a legitimate tool of governance. Where realists have traditionally contended that fear is an indispensable aspect of state power (Weber, for instance, directly designating politics as, by its nature, an instrument of ‘violence’), our moral exemplars here, in contrast, depict political power as the means by which interpersonal cooperation can obviate the need for fear and violence. For Plato, the source of political power is reason. For Confucius, it is deference and duty. For Gandhi, it is nonviolence and Satyagraha. Also, where the realist tradition bases its conception of political justice on hierarchies of state power via administrative law, the thinkers here replace this idea with hierarchies of virtue. Political leadership is a moral

166 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

aristocracy or a meritocracy of wisdom. For Plato, this is instituted in the social roles accorded by intellectual merit in the Republic—from merchants, to soldiers and administrators, to philosopher kings. For Confucius, in the wisdom of the gentleman-scholar-sage. For Gandhi, in the humble, universal compassion of the Brahmachari. Plato’s myth of metals, using the quality of metals to symbolize the proper roles of citizens and rulers, exemplifies the kind of benign elitism that they advocated in this regard. At the top, corresponding to gold, is the philosopher king whose wisdom and virtue are suited for the demands of, and dedication to, directing affairs of state. Next, corresponding to silver, the administrators and military execute the directives of those who rule. Finally, corresponding to bronze, the merchants and laborers provide material resources necessary for the social health and wealth that well-governed communities require. Like Plato, Confucius’s cosmological perspective on state and society fostered a political order in which ‘all under Heaven’ was a key governing principle. In the Confucian world, when there is proper order, there is a harmonious society. Confucius did not, like Plato, elaborate a detailed scheme for implementing this principle. However, his emphasis on social hierarchy and order, based on proper hierarchy and order within the personal character of its citizens and rulers, approximates Plato’s conception of functional specialization in an ideal state. As in Plato’s ideal state, in Confucius’s perfect realm the sage-king will of necessity occupy the top of the political hierarchy. The qualification for this status, as for the philosopher king, is moral excellence—acquired via self-discipline and self-­ cultivation—that has prepared her soul for the duties of leadership. This preparation, ensuring perfect alignment in what the leader thinks, says, and does, will dispel the possibility of any chaos, disorder, and conflict in the harmonious society that her virtue will promote. As Confucius says famously, “…if you depend on moral sentiment, and maintain order by encouraging education and good manners, the people will have a sense of shame for wrong-doing and, moreover, will emulate what is good.” So, the qualification for leadership, and justification for the responsibilities it entails, is superior character. A similar commitment to moral hierarchy, influenced by culture and tradition, is also evident in Gandhi’s thought. Gandhi stands at the far end of world history from Plato and Confucius and, unlike them, inherited, rather than inaugurated, the intellectual-cultural ethos that his ideals exemplify. Heavily influenced by the Hindu intellectual-spiritual legacy, however, he was no mere product of it. Borrowing from thinkers as diverse

5  PARALLELS, VARIATIONS, AND PATHWAYS 

167

as Tolstoy, Ruskin, and Thoreau, Gandhi combined these perspectives with ideas from the world’s great spiritual legacies to formulate an ideology that was as much a plan of action as a systematic philosophy. Like Plato’s Academy, Gandhi’s ashram was central to his vision of an ideal society. Brahmacharya was a foundational concept upon which the grand design of his ideal society was constructed. Gandhi’s collected writings make hundreds of references to brahmacharya, indicating how important abstemiousness in all aspects of life is for public leadership. He was uncompromising in his disapproval of sensual desires (being a distraction at best and a hindrance at worst, to spiritual focus on higher goals) within the order of the ashram. While conceding the value of sensual desire on a wider social level for the functional needs of communities, married couples, and families, he reserved the role of political leadership for those who have followed the brahmacharya path. Indeed, the pinnacle of political hierarchy for each of these thinkers is the authority of moral excellence exhibited by the figure prepared for the responsibilities of leadership through self-discipline who, having transcended the character flaws wrought by attachment to the physical world, is uniquely prepared for selfless and enlightened public service.

Differences and Cultural Variations Although the forgoing similarities between these figures help to clarify this common message, their differences reveal important insights along these lines as well. The historical and cultural contexts that configured their respective intellectual purviews—though not highlighted in depth here— are also crucial to their thinking on this theme. The contrasts between the environments that shaped their worldviews were as stark and varied as could be, and their respective philosophies bear the imprint of these environmental differences in ways that shaped their respective approaches to sensuality, moral psychology, and political life. Plato, of course, is not only western civilization’s preeminent philosopher but also possibly its preeminent thinker in general: along with Aristotle, influencing every field of intellectual inquiry in every subsequent era up to the present. However, as noted earlier, Plato was also a product of his culture—his ideas reflecting the entire cultural paradigm of the Hellenic world, the pre-Socratic thinkers who shaped it, and the latter neo-Platonic Hellenistic, Medieval, and modern philosophies that reinterpreted it. Like Plato, Confucius was an exemplar of classical thought and one of the most prominent cultural

168 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

influences on subsequent generations in the history of East Asian civilization. However, this civilization was both logistically and culturally at the far end of the world from ancient Greece. An intellectual product, in many ways, of the Zhou-era legacy and its forebearers, his ideas were also reconfigured in significant respects through the Han, Tang, and Song eras via neo-Confucianism. As mentioned earlier, it is difficult to find a single homogenous interpretation of Confucian teachings and there have been numerous ‘Confucianisms,’ as Confucian teaching went through repeated amalgamations through interactions with Buddhism, Taoism, and Mohism, and as it acclimated to various cultures across Asia. The influence of Confucius in modern China also transformed both Confucianism as well as China. While certainly a prominent intellectual influence, Confucianism has both shaped and been shaped by its popular appeal, as public events and the revival of Confucius veneration define and redefine what Confucianism means. In contrast to Confucius, Gandhi has arguably become more popular and influential outside of his homeland than within it. While this study has not focused in detail on Gandhi’s post-Nehruvian influence on Indian political leaders and intellectual life, India’s political leaders following the heyday of Gandhian acolytes, such as Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, and Jayaprakash Narayan, became increasingly disassociated from his influence despite their continued formal adherence to his ‘brand.’ As India became a more powerful regional and global economic and military force, it adopted a more realist political culture that was less and less amenable to Gandhian principles. While they all emphasized the importance of living ideas and engaged thinking, each of them actualized this commitment in different ways. Confucius was closest to being a career politician and experiencing the ethical quandaries of leadership firsthand. As an administrator in Lu, he held high offices, including minister of justice, and he played a key role in reforming policies with respect to this office. Plato remained an academic philosopher except for his experience as adviser to two kings of Syracuse (Dionysius I and Dionysius II) during three trips over 40 years. It was through his experience with the debauchery of the Dionysian court that he initially recognized the necessity of sensual austerity for political leadership in a just state, as he relates in The Seventh Letter:9 Nor could any State enjoy tranquility, no matter how good its laws, when its men think they must spend their all on excesses, and be easygoing about everything except the drinking bouts and the pleasures of love that they

5  PARALLELS, VARIATIONS, AND PATHWAYS 

169

pursue with professional zeal. These States are always changing into tyrannies, or oligarchies, or democracies, while the rulers in them will not even hear mention of a just and equitable constitution.

Like Plato, whose efforts at political reform were similarly frustrated, Confucius’ disillusionment with the king’s excessive indulgence in sensual debaucheries led to his leaving active service and laboring as a relatively obscure sage to students and disciples for the remainder of his career. Gandhi’s career, however, unfolded in the midst of a modern global community, and thus became the subject of worldwide media attention and celebrity. His south Asian cultural perspective was influenced by western ideas via colonialism, the Indian diaspora, his own travel, and literature from around the world, while the world-civilizations influenced by his thinking were introduced to south Asian spiritualities this way. Like many other well-known non-Asian leaders and thinkers, for instance, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theology was influenced by Gandhian peace and social justice ideals. Bonhoeffer wrote to Gandhi on October 17, 1934:10 Europe and Germany are suffering from a dangerous fever and are losing self control…From all I know about you and your work after having studied your books and your movement for a few years, I feel we western Christians should try to learn from you, what realisation of faith means, what a life devoted to political and racial peace can attain…

Gandhi’s influence on Bonhoeffer was certainly powerful, and it illustrates the extent to which Gandhi’s moral influence extended beyond religious, ethnic, and national borders even during his lifetime—a situation that was not possible for Plato or Confucius. Another clear demarcation between their respective ideas in this regard is their differing conception of family and its role in the social-political matrix. For Confucius, family is an incubator of moral values and serves as the archetype for moral rectitude in relationships across the social spectrum. Put simply, if an individual cannot be a good family member, he cannot be a good member of the society, as family itself is state and society in microcosm. Nor, therefore, can a poor father, son, or sibling be a good ruler. Confucius was married with children himself and led the simple family life prescribed by his status as a Zhou-dynasty scholar. Plato, on the other hand, acknowledged the social role of family while underemphasizing its moral and political significance. Family ties, for Plato, were a

170 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

necessary aspect of social life at the materialistic base level, as inducements for merchants and laborers to produce and earn. The Guardian class of the Republic requires sex-based relationships exclusively for the sake of reproduction but not for emotional or family ties, which, far from Confucian requirements for moral development and public service, Plato sees as impediments to—or at least, distraction from—moral development for potential rulers and administrators. Gandhi is, in a sense, the least amenable of the three to family as an institutional foundation for moral growth and public service. Inspired by the brahmacharya tradition, he tended to view the sensual and emotional intimacy of marriage and family, even for non-leaders and public servants, as a kind of ‘necessary evil’ at best—a stage of life that is progressively abandoned as householders retire to the pursuit of a more spiritually focused life, and finally become complete sannyasis (renunciates). For spiritual or political leaders (and these two must be one and the same), sensual attachment (including family ties) is utterly inappropriate, since the selfless service required for such leaders can only be attained via the exclusion of all physical or selfish attachments. So, concomitant with their diverse views on the connection between family and moral leadership is a similar spectrum of attitudes toward sensual austerity and moral leadership. While they all obviously valorized sensual austerity as a prerequisite for moral leadership, their respective approaches to the interrelationship between sensuality and leadership vary in subtle but significant respects. Of the three, Gandhi was clearly the most adamant about the importance and depth of a leader’s commitment to it, while it played a less prominent, though important, role in Plato’s view, and was even more subtle in Confucius’s thought.

Pathways for Research In this study we have argued that, for these three important figures, the issue of sensuality and its control is fundamental to self-cultivation and, hence, to moral development. We have argued further that they also considered this dimension of moral development essential to the moral psychology of social justice and to political leadership. This latter point, we believe, is particularly important because of the relative dearth of scholarship in this area. While there is a voluminous literature on the moral and political philosophies of these thinkers and on their respective intellectual legacies regarding these topics separately, there is little, if any, substantial work on the crucial connection they all perceived between sensual

5  PARALLELS, VARIATIONS, AND PATHWAYS 

171

austerity, moral psychology, and social-political theory. Their respective views on this important connection remain largely unexplored. As central as this theme is to the philosophies we have examined here, and as vital as it is to understanding ethics, political theory, and the human condition, the importance of recognizing and addressing this research shortfall would seem relatively obvious. The possibilities this presents are multifarious and here we briefly flag several potential areas (among many others) for further research. In this study we have not addressed gender issues, largely because the literature—particularly in feminist scholarship on this topic and related concerns—is simply too enormous to cover. Needless to say, feminist research on Plato, Confucius and Gandhi with respect to patriarchy and— in Gandhi’s case—postcolonialism, gender identity, sexuality and power, etc., is already prolific and would benefit from further exploration of sensual austerity and political leadership in relation to these other themes. There are already related studies of this theme across disciplines (Zoller, mentioned in Chap. 2 on Plato, is one example) and further detailed studies of how Plato’s, Confucius’s and Gandhi’s ideas on sensual austerity and moral leadership were influenced by the gender-based milieu of their respective cultures, and shaped their culture’s conceptions of moral leadership in turn, would provide much novel insight on the intellectual history of political leadership. For instance, as we have seen here, clarifying precisely how Plato conceives of sensuality and the appetitive aspect of the soul is far from clear. His divided line and/or tripartite model may help in this regard but, although both play prominent roles in the Republic, they are sometimes absent completely and other times less clearly defined in his earlier and later work. Eros, as the vehicle, source, or substance of sensual-­ sexual desire, can be a nebulous concept and subject to widely diverse interpretations. As the diversity of contemporary scholarship indicates, assessing the nature of Eros as an influence on, aspect of, or intrinsic to epithymetikon (appetitiveness-sensuality), thymoeides (spiritedness-passion) or logistikon (reason), respectively, may have radically different moral implications and political consequences depending on how its constitution is construed—and this seems to have changed for Plato throughout the course of the dialogs. Indeed, the very nature of Eros as a gendered product of a profoundly patriarchal culture was no doubt fundamental to his thinking, and the wide-ranging body of current feminist research would benefit from further exploration of this concept in relation to Plato’s psychology of sensual austerity in moral-political leadership.

172 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

In addition (and perhaps related) to its implications regarding gender-­ related issues, further examination of the metaphysics and philosophy of mind that underwrite Platonic, Confucian, and Gandhian moral psychology and political philosophy might also yield new interpretive insights. All three hold views about the mind-body relation that shape their respective views on the hierarchy of the soul, and this hierarchy is central to each one’s concept of morality. As noted earlier, all three in some respect conceived of mind-consciousness in nonphysical terms: Plato and Gandhi expressing this explicitly, and Confucius in a less definitive way—although neo-Confucian metaphysics was arguably more explicitly nonmaterialist. This ontological status becomes psychologically significant if viewed through the lens of either mind-body dualism or absolute idealism, since the moral-spiritual hierarchy of the soul is ultimately predicated on this distinction. Depending on which lens we use, the connection all three saw between sensual austerity and the cultivation of the soul for political leadership changes substantially in tone and character. If mind-body dualism is true, then attaining wisdom and moral excellence involves freeing the mind from the physical body’s limitations, while if absolute idealism is true, then both mind and body can be vehicles for spiritual redemption in different ways. While many of the rich and varied theories currently emerging from contemporary consciousness studies (from varieties of panpsychism proposed by Chalmers11 and others, to physics-based ideas like Hameroff’s and Penrose’s ‘orchestrated reduction’12 or Tononi’s ‘Integrated Information Theory,’13 to research on ‘transmitter’ models of mind by Kelly14 and others at the University of Virginia) have sometimes been compared with Plato’s conception of the soul already, further analysis from these perspectives could still be fruitfully applied to this and related theories like Confucian li and ren or Gandhi’s brahmacharya, and could also be extended to engage their concepts of morality in politics in innovative ways. We did not explore here how globalization via media, telecommunications, and virtual information has reduced distances and enhanced cross-­ cultural exchange. However, thematic cross-cultural and comparative studies in intellectual history, moral psychology, and political philosophy highlight common dimensions of human experience in ways that clarify their particular social contexts. As the forgoing discussion has hopefully shown, the theme of this book is integral to understanding some very fundamental elements of western intellectual history and culture. Further analyzing these phenomena across cultures in this same way would enhance

5  PARALLELS, VARIATIONS, AND PATHWAYS 

173

our understanding of both their local and global significance. With these exemplary figures in mind, it would be useful to explore how, in our globalized and interconnected world, conceptions of sexual austerity and moral leadership have factored in modern discourses on social cohesion. Though there are numerous studies on sensual pleasure and its utilitarian benefits for individuals and societies, we came across few studies that make the Platonic-Confucian-Gandhian counterargument to plead a case for sensual austerity as a prerequisite for social justice and moral leadership. While there is also significant popular literature and media output on the social significance of sensual pleasure, it would be interesting to garner information on how sensual austerity and its relationship to moral leadership have affected, if at all, public imagination and social discourse. One recent empirical study, for instance, demonstrates how increasing consumption of pornography in the workplace has led to ‘moral disengagement’ and ‘negative organization outcomes.’15 And in this context it would be interesting to examine how a Platonic or Gandhian assessment of such findings might shape discourse in current research. If these ideas were relevant to figures as important across cultures as those we have presented, this seems to suggest that further study along these lines remains relevant. Certainly, for a global forum in which social-political discourse is largely conditioned by sex and sensual pleasure, the theme of sensual austerity and moral leadership in the history of ideas seems worthy of increased attention. Along similar lines, as reports of sex scandal and sexual harassment in politics and professional life garner increasing public concern, the topic of sensual austerity and moral responsibility in leadership training and research become increasingly relevant. The politics and economics of sex and power, along with gender and power, have inspired a cultural reevaluation of sexuality, sensuality, and justice—creating a professional milieu that calls for new ideas about leadership training related to these themes. Plato’s Academy and Gandhi’s ashrams were training centers for future leaders, and exploring how these examples may or may not offer any possible lessons in leadership-training theory for contemporary organizations would be fascinating. While training to address sexual harassment abounds in current corporate culture, and political life is replete with calls for institutional reform on this issue, relatively little attention has been focused on classical approaches to the moral assumptions presupposed in these narratives. Even in academic discourse, the open question of sensual life itself is compounded by the further question of its relationship with the morality

174 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

of political leadership. For instance, exactly what moral rectitude requires of the philosopher-ruler in politics or professional life remains unresolved. It may be, as the ‘ascetic-austere’ readings of Plato described by Zoller and Butler indicate, that the virtuous soul necessary for moral leadership requires renunciation of sensual desires (or at least prohibition of sexual behaviors, as mandated in the ‘non-fraternization’ protocols in many corporations and government agencies). Or conversely, per the ‘normative-­ evaluative’ school, the philosopher-ruler need only prioritize his soul’s rational capacities over the others, without renouncing his spirited or appetitive desires (just expecting leaders to ‘be professional’ by focusing exclusively on ‘business’ during working hours). This invites further speculation not only in the humanities and social sciences, but in the professional fields as well. For future researchers, these questions might well be explored in terms of quantitatively measurable data or qualitative methods that lend themselves to empirical study. Contemporary or historical political leaders and/or systems that exemplify characteristics described by Plato, Confucius, and Gandhi could also be compared to one another in quantifiable ways. Our major focus in this study was primarily on state leadership, rather than local government, supranational, or transnational organizations. Obviously, Plato and Confucius could not have conceived of what we now call the modern nation-state, and although Gandhi was very familiar and concerned with justice on the national level, he was just as interested in local action through much of his career. Nonetheless, all their ideas on sensual austerity and moral leadership are arguably applicable at every level of national, international, community, or institutional culture. Plato’s prescriptions for the city-state and Confucius’s advice for local rulers translate easily to larger or smaller demographics. Parallels can be drawn between Plato’s philosopher king or Confucius’s sage-king, and presidents or prime ministers of contemporary democratic republics. Recent research has been conducted on topics involving the nature of morality in international relations,16 but few of these explore directly the specific connection between sensual austerity and political leadership. We suggest that the depth and scope of this research would be enhanced by adding this focus—perhaps with special attention to the legacy of these three preeminent thinkers. Beyond empirical research, political theory itself might also benefit from renewed engagement with their legacy on this topic. Certainly, contemporary schools of thought, ranging from liberalism and republicanism to libertarianism to communitarianism to critical theory to

5  PARALLELS, VARIATIONS, AND PATHWAYS 

175

poststructuralism and feminism, have all traditionally had to, at some point, define and position themselves in relation to Plato. As Zoller and others note, feminists have most recently brought their attention to bear upon his moral psychology in connection with politics—with special consideration for the role that the body and sensuality play in shaping this connection. Even more exploration in this regard, however, might provide deeper insight into both its historical origins and its practical implications for rapidly changing social-political dynamics in a postindustrial, postcolonial and postmodern world order. Whether and/or to what extent the Platonic, Confucian, and Gandhian traditions may or may not be relevant in these areas still warrants further investigation but, considering their importance in shaping the cultural-intellectual context that gave rise to current political theory, they could clarify important questions along these lines. Perhaps, as Gandhi would surely agree, the field of conflict resolution and peace studies might benefit from deeper examination of the connection between sensual austerity and moral leadership in the history of ideas. Gandhi’s theories on ahimsa, Satyagraha, and Sarvodaya, for instance, are well known and have been explored extensively in the field of conflict resolution, but the importance of brahmacharya on this topic has received scant attention. As we have demonstrated, brahmacharya was a central tenet in Gandhi’s philosophy and, as noted earlier, further study in this area is needed for a complete picture of twentieth-century world history. We contend that the absence of scholarship along these lines in the field of conflict resolution reveals a genuine crisis in the discipline that could be addressed, at least partly, by more exploration of this theme in global intellectual and cultural history. Addressing these shortcomings in current scholarship will advance our continued attempt to understand more deeply the prospects and pitfalls of the human condition at this stage in world history. As we now stand at the dawn of a truly global age in which human development faces heretofore unimagined challenges and possibilities, we argue that exploring this previously neglected theme, as illustrated in the thought of these figures within the context of world history and across academic disciplines, provides an important opportunity for critical and creative self-refection. It will not only enrich and widen the breadth and depth of these disciplines, but will also help provide more enlightened pathways toward resolving conflicts and building peaceful and harmonious states, societies, and the world.

176 

D. A. MAHAPATRA AND R. GREGO

Notes 1. Mohandas K.  Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 12 (New Delhi: The Publications Division, Government of India, 2015), 158. 2. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (London: Penguin Books, 2012), 337. 3. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953). 4. John Ralston Saul, Voltaire’s Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), 22. 5. David Lay Williams, Rousseau’s Platonic Enlightenment (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2007), 172. 6. Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” in H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (Translated and edited), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946, 77–128. Also available at WkiSource at http://fs2.american.edu/dfagel/www/Class%20Readings/Weber/ PoliticsAsAVocation.pdf. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Plato, The Seventh Letter, translated by J. Harward, Available at http:// classics.mit.edu/Plato/seventh_letter.html. 10. Quoted in Clifford Green, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letter to Mahatma Gandhi,” The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 72, 1 (2021), 119–120. The full letter of Bonhoeffer to Gandhi can be found in the appendix to the article. 11. David Chalmers, “Panpsychism and Protopanpsychism,” in Godehard Bruntrup and Ludwig Jaskolla, eds., Panpsychism: Contemporary Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 19–47. 12. Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose, “Orchestrated Reduction of Quantum Coherence in Brain Microtubules,” in Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose, eds., Toward a Science of Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), 502–549. 13. Guilio Tononi, “Consciousness as Integrated Information”, The Biological Bulletin, Chicago University Press Journals 215, 3 (2008), 216–242. 14. Edward Kelly, Beyond Physicalism (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015), and Irreducible Mind (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009). 15. Nathan W. Mecham, Melissa F. Lewis-Western and David A. Wood, “The Effects of Pornography on Unethical Behavior in Business,” Journal of Business Ethics 168, (2021), 37–54. 16. For example, see Joseph S.  Nye Jr., Do Morals Matter?: Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020).

Index1

A Aparigraha/non-possession, 112, 117 Aristophanes, 27, 28 Aristotle, 1, 2, 23, 25, 26, 167 Asceticism, 3, 7, 8, 14, 34, 36–40, 45, 46, 99, 105 Asian traditions, 133 Asiatic thought, 75 Asteya/non-stealing, 112, 117, 119, 132 Augustine, 2, 19n2, 46, 157 Ayer, A. J., 141

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 169, 176n10 Bradley, 141 Brahmacharya/brahmachari, 14, 17, 103, 111–149, 160, 164–167, 170, 172, 175 Brahman, 116, 120, 128, 142, 143, 146, 147, 157 Brinton, Crane, 2 Buddha/Buddhism/Buddhist, 14, 68, 70, 75, 95, 98, 104, 105, 112, 126, 144, 168 Butler, Travis, 7, 8, 39–41, 174

B Bentham, Jeremy, 141 Best, Steven, 56, 57 Bhave, Vinoba, 132 Bloom, Allan, 7, 23, 24, 30, 37, 58, 61 neo-conservatism, 58, 61

C Celibacy, 3, 9, 10, 14, 54, 60, 112, 114, 123, 126, 138, 146 Chiang Kai-shek, 72 Chicken Case, 86 Chinese worldview, 76 Chitta vrittis, 137, 141

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 D. A. Mahapatra, R. Grego, Sensual Austerity and Moral Leadership, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89151-0

177

178 

INDEX

Churchill, Winston, 113 Classical thought, 161, 167 Cold War/Post-Cold War, 58, 70, 71 Conflict resolution, v, vi, 114, 139, 175 Confucius Analects, 9, 10, 13, 67, 68, 78, 79, 85–87, 89, 92, 95, 99–101, 103, 104, 163 Confucianism, 9, 67–76, 79, 82, 83, 95, 98, 102, 144, 162, 168 Confucius Institutes, 72, 75 Heaven, 70, 74, 76–79, 87, 88, 90, 92, 96, 97, 100, 102, 156, 157, 166 li/filial piety, 9, 10, 70, 71, 78, 81, 82, 87, 90, 98, 102, 103, 172 Lu, Kingdom of, 69 Mandate of Heaven, 78, 83, 160, 164 Neo-Confucian, 10, 68–70, 73, 80, 87, 88, 91, 92, 96, 97, 105, 133, 172 ren/benevolence, 78, 82, 89, 92, 95, 98, 164, 172 sage-king, 3, 9–13, 67–105, 132, 156, 166, 174 Cosmic mind, 42, 105, 157, 158 D Dalai Lama, 112 Democracy, 26, 27, 30, 35, 54, 58, 59 Descartes, Cartesian, 49 Dewey, John, 2 Dharmarajya, 132 Dionysius I, 168 Dionysius II, 168 Dong Zhongshu, 96 Dualism, 6, 8, 19n2, 30, 36, 37, 44–46, 54, 59, 60, 114, 122, 140, 172 austere vs. normative, 6–8, 32, 36–39, 126 Durant, Will, 27

E Ebrey, David, 40 Elshtain, Jean, 46 Emerson, 48, 157 Emperor Ming, 74 Emperor Wu, 82, 95 Emperor Wudi, 96 Eros, 23–61, 171 Extinction Rebellion, 124 F Faculty psychology, 47, 48, 85 Fan Zhongyan, 97 The Federalist Papers, 48 Feminism, 175 Five vows, 112, 120, 140 See also Mahavrat Foucault, Michel, 47, 56–58, 61, 161 Frankfurt School, 161 Freud, Sigmund, 35, 54–56, 61, 165 Fukuyama, Francis, 58, 61, 159 Fu Xuan, 97 Fuzi, 97 G Gaca, Kathy, 47 Gandhi ahimsa, 112, 116–118, 145, 149, 175 ashram, 104, 121, 127, 128, 136, 137, 147, 156, 167, 173 control of palate, 132, 138, 148 Devdas, 139 experiments with Truth, 148 Hind Swaraj, 112, 129 Kasturba, 136 nonviolence/non-violence, 15, 16, 18, 112–114, 116–120, 123–125, 128, 129, 131, 132, 137, 139, 140, 142, 148, 164, 165 nonviolent social praxis, 111–149, 156

 INDEX 

palate, 144 Sarvodaya, 175 Satyagraha, 15, 17, 112, 117–119, 129, 148, 149, 164, 165, 175 Gender, vi, 18, 52, 124, 136, 171, 173 Genevieve, Lloyd, 6, 37 Gita, Bhagavad, 90, 92, 93, 112, 128, 137, 140, 145, 146 Global community, vi, 169 Globalization/globalized world, 138, 172 Goldin, Paul, 12, 84 Greek thought, 1 Guardians, 5, 31, 35, 38, 121, 162, 170 Guo Moruo, 71 H Han Dynasty, 12, 74, 82–84, 94 Hanuman, 131 Harrison, Agatha, 128, 134 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 157 Heidegger, Martin, 157 Heraclitus, 25 Hetaira, 28 Hinduism/Hindu, 14, 16, 90, 93, 98, 111, 112, 115, 117, 126, 129, 130, 136, 139, 141–146, 166 Hobbes, Thomas, 49, 51, 133, 134, 159, 165 Hobsbawm, Eric, 112 Howe, Daniel Walker, 47, 48 Human condition, 28, 43, 59, 125, 133, 165, 171, 175 Hu Yuan, 87 I Idealism, absolute, 42, 59, 172 Independence movement, Indian, 112 Intellectual history, vi, 51, 76, 155, 171, 172

International Day of Non-­ violence, 113 International relations, vi, 58, 174 J Jainism, 14, 98, 112, 126 Jesus, 112, 144 Jurisprudence, 84, 86 K Kant, Immanuel, 49, 52–54, 159 Keju system or civil service system, 82 King, Jr., Martin Luther, 112, 120, 124 Kuru, 130 L Lakshman, 130 Lausanne, 120 Legge, James, 68 Lenin, 125 Liang Shuming, 76 Lin Biao, 73 Locke, John, 47, 48, 85, 133, 134, 159 M Machiavelli, Machiavellian (The Prince), 122, 159, 165 Mahabharata, 129, 130 Mahavir, 112 Mahavrat, 112 See also Five vows Mahomed, 112 Mandela, Nelson, 112 Mao, 70, 72, 73, 125 May 4th Movement, 88

179

180 

INDEX

Means and ends, 114, 122, 148 Media, 169, 172, 173 Mencius, 72, 77, 80, 88, 89, 92–94, 104, 133 Middle Kingdom, 71 Miller, Webb, 125 Mind-body dualism, 36, 37, 45, 54, 59, 172 Modernity, 36, 47, 50, 56, 60, 61, 159, 160, 162, 163 Mohism/Mohist, 68, 168 Moksa, 112 Morality, v–vii, 2, 12, 15–18, 25, 26, 28, 32–46, 48, 51, 52, 58, 69, 70, 75–81, 85, 87, 91–93, 96, 97, 101, 102, 104, 105, 122, 123, 128, 129, 134, 146, 156, 162, 172–174 Moral leadership, v, vi, 1–3, 17, 18, 24, 25, 42, 58, 68, 75, 76, 79–84, 87, 96–105, 111, 112, 115, 126, 132, 141, 143, 155–167, 170, 171, 173–175 Moral psychology, vi, 28–30, 35, 42, 46, 47, 49, 50, 54, 57, 58, 80, 81, 105, 114, 121, 131, 133, 134, 141, 158, 164, 165, 167, 170–172, 175 N Nagel, Thomas, 44 Narayan, Jayaprakash, 127, 157, 168 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 133, 157, 168 Neiman, Susan, 51, 52 Nicomachean Ethics, 2 Niebuhr, Reinhold, 46 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 6, 36, 42, 56, 57, 124, 157 Nkrumah, 112 Nylan, Michael, 100

O Oligarchy, 4, 30, 164, 169 P Panchsheel/Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, 157 Pandav, 130 Panpsychism, 172 panpsychic worldview, 105 Parmenides, 26 Parry, Robin, 43, 44 Pearson, Drew, 15, 124 Phoenix, 121, 122, 135 Plato, v, vi, 1–11, 13, 16–18, 23–50, 52–61, 69, 71, 76, 78, 82, 95, 99, 105, 111, 115, 119, 121, 126, 127, 131, 132, 147–149, 155–159, 161, 162, 164–175 the Academy, 27, 36, 121, 127, 156, 167, 173 Cambridge Platonists, 48 epithymetikon, 171 the Forms, 8, 26, 29, 30, 33, 34, 36–38, 43, 147, 158, 160 The Good, 26, 38, 42, 47, 49, 50, 54, 105, 147, 157, 158 Idea of Good, 157, 164 The Laws, 28 logistikon, 171 myth of the metals, 166 Phaedo, 6–8, 34, 37–40 Phaedrus, 6, 7, 34, 38 philosopher king, 1, 3–10, 17, 24, 30, 36, 46, 54, 82, 156, 160, 166, 174 pornai, 28 The Republic, 1, 5–7, 16, 23, 24, 27–32, 34, 45, 131, 147, 165 thymoeides, 171 Timaeus, 26, 44

 INDEX 

Plotinus, 36, 38, 46, 157 Plutocractic state, 164 Political theory/political philosophy, v–vii, 3, 10, 23–25, 46–59, 76, 99, 111, 114, 125, 131, 133, 158, 161, 165, 170–172, 174, 175 Postmodern, 56, 57, 159–161, 165, 175 Prabhavati Devi, 127 Public service, 14, 17, 33, 88, 96, 101, 102, 112–114, 118–121, 126–134, 136–142, 145, 147, 148, 167, 170 Pythagoras/pythagorean/ pythagoreanism, 26, 40, 47, 59, 147 Q Quit India Movement, 127 R Rama/Ramarajya, 16, 130, 131, 144, 165 Ramayana, 16, 129, 131 Ravana, 130, 131 Ravanarajya, 130 Realism, 54, 122 political realism, 122 Renunciation, 14, 45, 53, 56, 98, 99, 105, 111, 112, 124, 125, 137, 141, 147, 158, 162, 174 Ricci, Matteo, 67 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 35, 42, 49–54, 56 Royce, 141 Rule of law, 86 Ruskin, 112, 167 Russell, Bertrand, 6, 23, 36

181

S Sanger, Margaret, 15, 135, 136 Sanskrit, 14, 117, 126, 138, 145 Satya/truth, 3, 4, 6, 8, 15, 16, 29, 30, 33, 36, 39, 49, 60, 72, 78, 112, 116–121, 123, 124, 131, 132, 134, 140, 141, 143, 145–149, 157, 160, 162, 164 See also Truth Saul, John Ralston, 160 Schwartz, Joel, 50 Sensual austerity, v, vi, 1–3, 6, 8–10, 13–15, 17, 18, 25, 32–47, 50, 56, 57, 59–61, 68, 75, 76, 97–105, 111–115, 117–119, 125–130, 132, 134, 136, 138, 141, 142, 145, 148, 149, 155–167, 170–175 Sivin, Nathan, 76, 77 Social contract, 51–54, 60, 85, 133, 159 Socrates, 7, 8, 18, 26, 27, 33, 35, 37, 39, 42, 44, 156 Song Dynasty, 70, 87 Song Lian, 88, 91, 105, 168 South Africa, 17, 112, 118, 121, 124, 125, 127, 134, 135, 156 Srimad Rajachandra (Kavi Rajachandra/Raychandbhai), 112, 135 Stalin, 125 Strauss, Leo, 6, 23, 24, 36, 47, 49, 58, 61, 159, 161, 162, 164 Subject-object dichotomy, 163 Supreme Ultimate, 105 Swaraj, 15, 129, 135, 145 Symposium, 26, 35, 37, 43, 45 Syracuse, 27, 59, 132, 156, 168 T Tagore, Rabindranath, 123 Tang Dynasty, 70

182 

INDEX

Taoism/Taoist, 68, 70, 95, 105, 168 Tapasya, 118 Taylor, Charles, 34, 35 Thoreau, Henry David, 48, 112, 167 Thornton, Bruce, 28, 29 Tolstoy, Leo, 112, 113, 167 Truth, 3, 4, 6, 8, 15, 16, 29, 30, 33, 36, 39, 49, 60, 72, 78, 112, 116–121, 123, 124, 131, 132, 134, 140, 141, 143, 145–149, 157, 160, 162, 164 Tsukada Tahio, 101 Tyranny, 30, 45, 164 U Universalist/impartialist movements, 124, 160 V Vedanta tradition, 157 Virtue, 2, 4, 5, 10, 11, 13, 16, 17, 25, 30, 48, 53, 58, 60, 73, 79–81, 85–87, 89–91, 95, 96, 99, 100, 102–104, 112, 117, 119, 120,

122, 123, 127, 131, 132, 160, 164–166 Visva-Bharati, 123 W Wang Anshi, 87 Wang Yangming, 10, 88 Weber, Max, 159, 161, 162, 165 Williams, David Lay, 49, 160 World civilizations, vi, 1 World history, 166, 175 X Xinzheng reforms, 72, 88 Xu Fancheng (Hu Hsu), 69, 89 Xunzi, 80, 133 Y Yudhishthira, 130 Z Zhao Lu, 70, 73, 74 Zhou, Zhou dynasty, 71, 92, 169 Zoller, Coleen, 6–8, 32, 34, 36–39, 41, 45, 126, 171, 174, 175