ABSTRACT
Giuseppe Giovanni Luigi Maria Enrico Lanza di Trabia-Branciforte – commonly called Lanza del Vasto – was a French-Italian philosopher, theologian, poet, artist, musician, and non-violent activist. Considered to be the first Western disciple of Gandhi, Lanza del Vasto worked for inter-religious dialogue, spiritual renewal, ecology and especially non-violence activism. In 1948 he founded the Community of the Ark in Southern France, which still exists today. Nowadays there are also several community groups in Germany, Canada, Belgium, Spain and Mexico. The originality of Lanza del Vasto's thought lies in his attempt to formally introduce Gandhi's ahimsa concept into Catholicism. It seems that: Lanza del Vasto frequently makes explicit or implicit reference to just war criteria, and expels the violence from them and his just conflict ethics is formally closer to Immanuel Kant than to Aquinas, notably as it includes a jus post bellum perspective.
