Abstract
"The intellectual and moral satisfaction that I failed to gain from the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, the revolutionary methods of Marx and Lenin, the social contract theory of Hobbes, the ?back to nature' optimism of Rousseau, and the superman philosophy of Nietzche, I found in the nonviolent resistance philosophy of Gandhi? wrote King in Stride toward Freedom. Gandhi is not the only reference of King's philosophical background but Gandhi was the one who had made the most definitive contribution to developing civil disobedience as a method of political protest on a mass scale. King was encouraged to study Gandhi by Dr Johnson, the president of Howard University who considered that "Gandhi's theories and techniques deserved Negro's most careful consideration?. He started to read Gandhi in 1950-51.
