Philosophical Anarchism and Political Disobedience

Philosophical Anarchism and Political Disobedience
Author: Chaim Gans
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 194
Release: 1992-06-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0521414504
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This book examines the central questions concerning the duty to obey the law: the meaning of this duty; whether and where it should be acknowledged; and whether and when it should be disregarded. Many contemporary philosophers deny the very existence of this duty, but take a cautious stance towards political disobedience. This 'toothless anarchism', Professor Gans argues, should be discarded in favour of a converse position confirming the existence of a duty to obey the law which can be outweighed by values and principles of political morality. Informed by the Israeli experience of political disobedience motivated by radically differing moral outlooks, the author sets out the principles which should guide our attitude to law and political authority even amidst clashing ideologies and irreconcilable moralities. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of law, philosophy and politics, and anyone concerned with the individual's responsibilities toward his or her political community.

An Analysis of Henry David Thoraeu's Civil Disobedience

An Analysis of Henry David Thoraeu's Civil Disobedience
Author: Mano Toth
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 97
Release: 2017-07-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1351352091
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In Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau looks at old issues in new ways, asking: is there ever a time when individuals should actively oppose their government and its justice system? After a thorough review of the evidence, Thoreau comes to the conclusion that opposition is legitimate whenever government actions or institutions are unacceptable to an individual’s conscience. What is particularly interesting is that Thoreau’s creative mind took him deeper into the argument, as he concluded that this legitimate opposition really wasn’t enough. In Thoreau’s opinion, anyone who believed something to be wrong had a duty to resist it actively. These ideas were completely at odds with the prevailing opinions of the day – that it was the duty of every citizen to support the state. Thoreau connected ideas and notions in a novel manner and went against the tide, generating new hypotheses so that people could see matters in a new light. It is a mark of the success of his creative thinking that his views are now considered mainstream, and that his arguments are still deployed in defence of the principle of civil disobedience.

Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience
Author: William E. Scheuerman
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2018-03-02
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1509518657
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What is civil disobedience? Although Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King helped to bring the idea to prominence, even today it remains unclear how we should best understand civil disobedience. Why have so many different activists and intellectuals embraced it, and to what ends? Is civil disobedience still politically relevant in today's hyper-connected world? Does it make sense, for example, to describe Edward Snowden's actions, or those of recent global movements like Occupy, as falling under this rubric? If so, how must it adapt to respond to the challenges of digitalization and globalization and the rise of populist authoritarianism in the West? In this elegantly written introductory text, William E. Scheuerman systematically analyzes the most important interpretations of civil disobedience. Drawing out the striking differences separating religious, liberal, radical democratic, and anarchist views, he nonetheless shows that core commonalities remain. Against those who water down the idea of civil disobedience or view it as obsolescent, Scheuerman successfully salvages its central elements. The concept of civil disobedience, he argues, remains a pivotal tool for anyone hoping to bring about political and social change.

Angelic Troublemakers

Angelic Troublemakers
Author: A. Terrance Wiley
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2014-01-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1623564069
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This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Angelic Troublemakers is the first detailed account of what happens when religious ethics, political philosophy, and the anarchist spirit intermingle. Wiley deftly captures the ideals that inspired three revered heroes of nonviolent disobedience-Henry Thoreau, Dorothy Day, and Bayard Rustin. Resistance to slavery, empire, and capital is a way of life, a transnational tradition of thought and action. This book is a must read for anyone interested in religion, ethics, politics, or law.

Philosophical Anarchism and Political Obligation

Philosophical Anarchism and Political Obligation
Author: Magda Egoumenides
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2014-08-28
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1441151826
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Political obligation refers to the moral obligation of citizens to obey the law of their state and to the existence, nature, and justification of a special relationship between a government and its constituents. This volume in the Contemporary Anarchist Studies series challenges this relationship, seeking to define and defend the position of critical philosophical anarchism against alternative approaches to the issue of justification of political institutions. The book sets out to demonstrate the value of taking an anarchist approach to the problem of political authority, looking at theories of natural duty, state justification, natural duty of justice, fairness, political institutions, and more. It argues that the anarchist perspective is in fact indispensable to theorists of political obligation and can improve our views of political authority and social relations. This accessible book builds on the works of philosophical anarchists such as John Simmons and Leslie Green, and discusses key theorists, including Rousseau, Rawls, and Horton. This key resource will make an important contribution to anarchist political theory and to anarchist studies more generally.

The Cambridge Companion to Civil Disobedience

The Cambridge Companion to Civil Disobedience
Author: William E. Scheuerman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 457
Release: 2021-07-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1108804845
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The theory and practice of civil disobedience has once again taken on import, given recent events. Considering widespread dissatisfaction with normal political mechanisms, even in well-established liberal democracies, civil disobedience remains hugely important, as a growing number of individuals and groups pursue political action. 'Digital disobedients', Black Lives Matter protestors, Extinction Rebellion climate change activists, Hong Kong activists resisting the PRC's authoritarian clampdown...all have practiced civil disobedience. In this Companion, an interdisciplinary group of scholars reconsiders civil disobedience from many perspectives. Whether or not civil disobedience works, and what is at stake when protestors describe their acts as civil disobedience, is systematically examined, as are the legacies and impact of Henry Thoreau, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King.

Is There a Duty to Obey the Law?

Is There a Duty to Obey the Law?
Author: Christopher Wellman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2005-07-25
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780521830973
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This 2005 book discusses whether there is a duty to obey the law and the state.

On the Duty of Civil Disobedience/A Plea for Captain John Brown

On the Duty of Civil Disobedience/A Plea for Captain John Brown
Author: Henry David Thoreau
Publisher:
Total Pages: 48
Release: 2019-10-12
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9781774410554
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This Henry David Thoreau volume is a compilation of two great Thoreau works, "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" and "A Plea for Captain John Brown." The former title argues that individuals should not permit governments to overrule their consciences, while the latter was based on a speech pleading for the life of abolitionist John Brown. Resistance to Civil Government (Civil Disobedience) is an essay by American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau that was first published in 1849. In it, Thoreau argues that individuals should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that they have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice. Thoreau was motivated in part by his disgust with slavery and the Mexican-American War (1846-1848). A Plea for Captain John Brown is an essay by Henry David Thoreau. It is based on a speech Thoreau first delivered to an audience at Concord, Massachusetts on October 30, 1859, two weeks after John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, and repeated several times before Brown's execution on December 2, 1859. It was later published as a part of Echoes of Harper's Ferry in 1860.

Walden and on the Duty of Civil Disobedience

Walden and on the Duty of Civil Disobedience
Author: Henry David Thoreau
Publisher: CreateSpace
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2014-09-16
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9781502384256
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Two Classic books by Henry David Thoreau. Walden and On the Duty of Civil Disobedience. "Resistance to Civil Government". By Henry David Thoreau. Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862) was an American author, poet, philosopher, polymath, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay Resistance to Civil Government (also known as Civil Disobedience), an argument for disobedience to an unjust state. Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions are his writings on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern-day environmentalism. His literary style interweaves close natural observation, personal experience, pointed rhetoric, symbolic meanings, and historical lore, while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophical austerity, and "Yankee" love of practical detail. He was also deeply interested in the idea of survival in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay; at the same time he advocated abandoning waste and illusion in order to discover life's true essential needs. He was a lifelong abolitionist, delivering lectures that attacked the Fugitive Slave Law while praising the writings of Wendell Phillips and defending abolitionist John Brown. Thoreau's philosophy of civil disobedience later influenced the political thoughts and actions of such notable figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr.Thoreau is sometimes cited as an anarchist. Though Civil Disobedience seems to call for improving rather than abolishing government — "I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government" — the direction of this improvement points toward anarchism: "'That government is best which governs not at all;' and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have." Richard Drinnon partly blames Thoreau for the ambiguity, noting that Thoreau's "sly satire, his liking for wide margins for his writing, and his fondness for paradox provided ammunition for widely divergent interpretations of 'Civil Disobedience.'"

Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience
Author: Henry David Thoreau
Publisher: Theophania Publishing
Total Pages: 38
Release: 2010-09-17
Genre:
ISBN: 9781926842899
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Civil Disobedience (Resistance to Civil Government) is an essay by Henry David Thoreau that was first published in 1849. It argues that people should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that people have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice. Thoreau asserts that because governments are typically more harmful than helpful, they therefore cannot be justified. Democracy is no cure for this, as majorities simply by virtue of being majorities do not also gain the virtues of wisdom and justice. The judgment of an individual's conscience is not necessarily or even likely inferior to the decisions of a political body or majority, and so "it is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.... Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice." Indeed, he points out, you serve your country poorly if you do so by suppressing your conscience in favor of the law because your country needs consciences more than it needs conscienceless robots. Thoreau says that it is disgraceful to be associated with the United States government in particular: "I cannot for an instant recognize as my government that which is the slave's government also." The government, according to Thoreau, is not just a little corrupt or unjust in the course of doing its otherwise-important work, but in fact the government is primarily an agent of corruption and injustice. Because of this, it's "not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize."