Thank you for your comments. If by ‘orthodox’ you mean ‘based on dogmatic belief,’ I agree with you and I think Gandhi would, also. He always worked from experience, and tested every hypothesis constantly. He also describes the emergency situation of ‘the madman with the sword’ wherein one must use even lethal force, if necessary, but can do so without violence of heart or mind.

Not knowing what you mean, exactly, by a radical response, I can’t comment on your last point. But thanks again for your thoughts. I will watch for your book.

I urge two further distinctions, which do not explicitly appear in my book but which I think are useful. One is the notion of “orthodox nonviolence”–the view that violence is categorically bad, under any and all circumstances. I, for example, espouse principled nonviolence but am not quite comfortable with being orthodox about it. (My nuanced position is that violence is always and necessarily exorbitantly expensive in terms of suffering, but may, in some particular instance, be less expensive than any available nonviolent response. I doubt that, but I also can’t prove otherwise. (You can’t prove a negative.))

The other distinction involves the notion of “radical nonviolence.” I regard both Gandhi and King as proponents of this, though it often gets lost in mainstream thinking about these men. Radical nonviolence espouses that true nonviolence requires a radical response, both on the personal and political level. In short, many of the current institutions and lifeways are fundamentally violent and will have to pass away before true nonviolence can be achieved as a society.