Title: Gandhi, Williams, and the Problem of Interest-relativity
Abstract:
As against the utilitarian claim that moral agents should maximize utility and the deontological claim that the agents should follow duty-based view, Bernard Williams argues that we should disregard these moral theories because they alienate moral agency from the agent’s own point of view. While Williams makes a well-motivated claim to resist moral theories which alienate agents from their own viewpoint, his view opens a problem of interest-relativity.
Interest-relativity is a form of relativism according to which the standards of rightness and wrongness of moral judgements are relative to an agent’s interests and desires. I argue that introducing Mohandas Gandhi’s notion of detachment—lack of excessive attachments to one’s interests and commitment—allows us to retain the agent’s point of view without the attendant interest-relativity. Given that Gandhi’s moral theory remains underdeveloped within the philosophical canon, my argument both explicates and theorises Gandhi’s notion of detachment.
Bio:
Samiksha Goyal is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Extending New Narratives Project at Simon Fraser University, Canada. She holds a PhD from Monash University, Australia and an MPhil from University of Delhi. Her research interests are in the history of philosophy and moral philosophy, with a particular focus on Indian classical texts and modern Indian thinkers such as Mohandas Gandhi and Rājchandra Rai. Her work examines the moral significance of detachment and its role in virtue ethics. Her research has been published in journals such as Journal of Dharma Studies, Economic and Political Weekly, and the APA Newsletter on Asian and Asian American Philosophers and Philosophies.
