ReligiousLeftLaw.com

The Life and Work of Mohandas K. Gandhi: Recommended Reading

This was originally posted at the Ratio Juris blog but I thought to make it available here, if only because I’ve udpdated it a bit and appended two new lists of titles: “Further Reading,” and a short compilation on “Nonviolence in T...

Gandhi at the Aga Khan Palace

From a blog post by Vinay Lal with his characteristically thoughtful and informed reflections upon visiting the Aga Khan Palace in Pune, India: “He may be the ‘Father of the Nation,’ but it is more than his reputation, lately under as...

The Good & Capitalism: Toward an Appreciation of the Meaning of Socialism

The following was inspired in the first instance by arguments culled from Michael Luntley’s The Meaning of Socialism (1990). First Assumption: “There is more to the achievement of the good life than the satisfaction of individuals’ actu...

Rural Poverty, Land, and Capitalist Globalization

At the PropertyProf Blog, Steve Clowney draws our attention to a recent New York Times article “on a conflict between subsistence farmers in Mali (who unknowingly don’t have good title to the land they farm) and international agricult...

The Religious Left: Beyond "Dirty Hands"?

By my lights, identification with the “religious Left” includes a decisive rejection of the doctrine of double moral standards, defined by Raghavan Iyer in The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi (1983 ed.) as “[the] comm...

Musings on Utopia: Historical & Philosophical

We conclude our introduction to utopian thought and imagination with a small sample of historical and philosophical musings on utopia. In sum, I think they well capture the essence—the necessity and value—of the utopian enterprise. ...

Moral Exemplars and Narrative Goodness: basic philosophical literature

“It is not implausible to think we are elevated by others who are more developed than ourselves in their striving for harmonious hierarchical development and for a valuable life. We are aided and encouraged along our own path...

Private Property & Ownership: The Gandhian Critique

The following is Bhikhu Parekh’s pithy introduction to Gandhi’s critique of the Liberal—and capitalist—conception of private property and ownership: “The logic of private property was logically incoherent for two reasons. First, ther...

Sufi Poetry—1

“The Arabic world abounds with poetry festivals. Iran’s heritage of great love poetry is close on the lips and in the hearts of a large percentage of Iranians. Throughout much of the classical Islamic world, poetry is at the center...