Abstract
At the end of the Second World War, the figure of Gandhi haunts political philosophy as it wrestles with the task of justifying violence in the name of history. The story begins with Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at noon in 1938. Gandhi’s name appears during a discussion between Roubachof and Ivanof. A few years later (1946), Koestler publishes in French a book entitled Le Yogi et le commissaire, analysed by Merleau-Ponty in Humanisme et terreur (1946–1947). Camus replies in L’Homme révolté (1951). Ricœur’s thinking, examined in the present article, has its own place in this debate. At stake is our own knowledge of the conditions under which the rejection and condemnation of violence might, in fact, accommodate violence.