The figures of the neighbor and friend are ubiquitous in Gandhi’s writings. While he himself assumes he is only reaffirming old figures, something truly radical happens in his writings (as in those of his sharpest critic, Ambedkar). Both write at a time when a modern commandment, so to speak, exemplified in the categorical imperative, is displacing the Biblical and other analogous commandments. It is in order to criticize this new commandment that both affirm instead old commandments around neighbor and friend.

In this paper, I will explore why Vivekananda’s words challenged and enticed so many audiences around the world. Why did publics as diverse as respectable New Englanders and Swadeshi “terrorist” honour him so fervently? I want to suggest that the title of my recent book “Guru to the World” was not designed to reinforce the tired story of Vivekananda as the first global guru who unlocked eastern spirituality for the materialism west.

In population axiology, comparisons of the value of different outcomes have traditionally been done in highly idealized ways. This has been done, for example, by considering only net-levels of wellbeing and not their components; by assuming scenarios of perfect equality; and by taking for granted full certainty, instead of option uncertainty. As those idealized models of populations' wellbeing are the only ones that have been considered to date, standard views in population axiology have been built upon them.

The standard way of thinking about emotions in cognitive science starts with their function. The function of the fear program, for instance, is to help the individual evade imminent dangers. This functionalist proposal illuminates the character of the fear program, e.g., the kinds of things that elicit fear, and the kinds of responses that fear produces. The functionalist approach has been extremely productive, but it faces a puzzle with the emotion of guilt, for it’s unclear what function the guilt program serves for the individual.