Fundamental Relations Between Nonviolence and Human Rights

The purpose of this essay is to explore some important relations between the principles of nonviolence and the principles of human rights  relations which I believe are highly significant, theoretically and practically. Advocates of these two approaches1 to fundamental issues of human values and human relations can make valuable contributions to the understanding and support of each others' positions. It may even be true that the two approaches overlap completely in denotation: that is, that every instance in which a particular action could be justified as a correct application of principles of human rights could equally well be justified as a correct application of principles of nonviolence. But even if one could devise a knock-down argument to collapse the two positions into one, I do not see that anything would be gained by such a "reduction." The connotations of the two views are quite different, as is indicated in Section 1. It is, I think, more productive to see the two approaches as complementary — mutually enlightening and supportive. I hope the reader will be convinced of that; I have no desire to argue further for identifying the two positions.