by Arne Naess

The Contemporary Reaction against Nonviolence

The period spanning the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s witnessed an upsurge of physical violence and a proliferation of recommendations to use manifest violence, physical and verbal. It inundated colonial, racial, and educational controversies in Europe, America, India, and many other areas. Sometimes it has been systematically and consistently anti-Gandhian, being in part a direct reaction against the limited success of Gandhian and pseudo-Gandhian preaching and practice.

We shall not enter here into the controversies about the causes of this development, which we vaguely characterize as the “new violence.” A symptom, rather than a cause, is widespread dissatisfaction, indignation, and impatience when considering the slowness of the movement of liberation in the colonial, racial, and educational spheres. The imperatives “Do it quicker!” and “Freedom now!” testified to this demand for immediate, radical change. The slogan “Revolution!” has invaded all spheres of discussion. Revolution is generally conceived as a violent overthrowing, idealizing “power over” and coercion at the cost of “power to.” Changes should be forced on opponents; agreement and compromise should be shunned. The slogans are sometimes formed consciously so as to be in direct opposition to the preaching of nonviolence.

Read all of this article: Part IV: Nonviolence and the “New Violence”

A NOTE ON THE TEXT: Posted here is Part IV of Gandhi and Group Conflict: an Exploration of Satyagraha, a Theoretical Background. The first edition was: Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1974. However, it is currently available, in a somewhat revised and edited version, as Volume 5 of the 10 volume Selected Works of Arne Naess, published by Springer Verlag.  We use here the Springer version as it corrects some grammar from the original (Norwegian)  English language version and is more readable. We are grateful to Springer Verlag and to Mrs. Arne Naess for permission. Copyright © 2012 Mrs. Arne Naess/Estate of Arne Naess. We are also grateful to Alan Drengson for his assistance.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess (1912-2009) was one of the foremost environmental thinkers of the 20th century, and is often referred to as “the father of deep ecology”. He was critical of environmentalists who did not seek to address the institutional causes of environmental degradation, or seek to change them. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) made a deep impact on him. And in the late 1960s he undertook a thorough study of Gandhi’s theory of nonviolent active resistance.  In satyagraha Naess found the answer to his quest for a strategy to address the ecological crisis: Gandhian nonviolent active resistance could be synthesized with deep ecology. This Gandhian side of Naess’s thinking is acknowledged but not well enough known. He was a major interpreter and theoretician of Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolent active resistance, on a par with, if not subtler than, either Joan Bondurant or Krishnalal Shridharani. In this work, his reinterpretation of the meaning of Gandhian strategy remains one of the most trenchant discussions of Gandhian philosophy thus far written.

Naess’s philosophical work was in the area of linguistic analysis, applying mathematical set theory to the problem of interpreting language and statements we make to each other. Every statement can have several interpretations, or sets and subsets. How do we evaluate these? He was also concerned about creating a new language for his environmental thinking, coining the term ecosophy, from the Greek words for environment and wisdom, to describe his belief that every living being, whether plant, animal, or person, has the right to live and blossom, the right to self-realization.

WEB REFERENCES: A useful critical appreciation has been written by David Orton of the Springer 10 volume set. The article serves as a useful guide also to the contents of the volumes.

The main site for articles on ecosophy, is Trumpeter. The Journal of Ecosophy.

Alan Drengson is one of the main interpreters of Arne Naess, and an executor of the Naess estate. His beautiful and useful ecostery foundation website is well worth visiting.