Civil Disobedience (Resistance to Civil Government) is an essay by Henry David Thoreau Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, philosopher, and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government 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 Acquiescence is a legal term used to describe an act of a person in knowingly standing by without raising any objection to infringement of his rights, when someone else is unknowingly and honestly putting in his resources under the impression that the said rights actually belong to him. Consequently, the person whose rights are infringed cannot to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice. Thoreau was motivated in part by his disgust with slavery Slavery is a system in which people are the property of others. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand wages. In some societies it was legal for an owner to kill a slave. In others it was a crime to kill a slave and the Mexican-American War The Mexican–American War was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848 in the wake of the 1845 U.S. annexation of Texas, which Mexico considered part of its territory despite the 1836 Texas Revolution.
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In 1848, Thoreau gave lectures at the Concord Lyceum The lyceum movement in the United States was a trend in architecture inspired by Aristotle's Lyceum in ancient Greece. (The Lyceum was the school outside Athens where he taught, 335–332 BC.) that he titled "The Rights and Duties of the Individual in relation to Government."[1] This formed the basis for his essay, which was first published under the title Resistance to Civil Government in 1849 in a magazine called Æsthetic Papers.
That title was a way of distinguishing Thoreau's program from that of the "non-resistants Nonresistance is a philosophy and strategy for social change that discourages physical resistance to an enemy. It is considered as a subdivision of nonviolence. Practitioners of nonresistance may refuse to retaliate against an opponent or offer any form of self-defense. In the modern times, this has been used as a tool for social protest. A well" (anarcho Anarchism is a political philosophy which considers the state undesirable, unnecessary and harmful, and instead promotes a stateless society, or anarchy. It seeks to diminish or even abolish authority in the conduct of human relations. Anarchists may widely disagree on what additional criteria are required in anarchism. The Oxford Companion to-pacifists Pacifism is the opposition to war or violence as a means of settling disputes or gaining advantage. Pacifism covers a spectrum of views, including the belief that international disputes can and should be peacefully resolved, calls for the abolition of the institutions of the military and war, opposition to any organization of society through) who were expressing similar views. Resistance also served as part of Thoreau's metaphor which compared the government to a machine, and said that when the machine was working injustice it was the duty of conscientious citizens to be "a counter friction" (i.e., a resistance) "to stop the machine".[2]
In 1866, four years after Thoreau's death, the essay was reprinted in a collection of Thoreau's work (A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers) under the title Civil Disobedience, by which it is most popularly known today.
Today, the essay is also frequently seen under the title On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, perhaps to contrast it with William Paley William Paley was a British Christian apologist, philosopher, and utilitarian. He is best known for his exposition of the teleological argument for the existence of God in his work Natural Theology, which made use of the watchmaker analogy (also see natural theology)'s Of the Duty of Civil Obedience to which Thoreau was in part responding. For instance, the 1960 New American Library New American Library, NAL, based in New York and beginning in 1948, produced affordable paperback reprints of classics and scholarly works, as well as popular, pulp, and "hard-boiled" fiction. Non-fiction, original, and hardcopy issues were also produced Signet Classics edition of Walden included a version with this title. On Civil Disobedience is another frequently-encountered title.
The word civil has several definitions. The one that is intended in this case is "relating to citizens and their interrelations with one another or with the state", and so civil disobedience means "disobedience to the state". Sometimes people assume that civil in this case means "observing accepted social forms; polite" which would make civil disobedience something like polite, orderly disobedience. Although this is an acceptable dictionary definition of the word civil, it is not what is intended here. This misinterpretation is one reason the essay is sometimes considered to be an argument for pacifism or for exclusively nonviolent resistance. For instance, Mahatma Gandhi Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Hindi: मोहनदास करमचंद गाँधी, Gujarati: મોહનદાસ કરમચંદ ગાંધી, pronounced [moːɦən̪d̪aːs kərəmʨən̪d̪ ɡaːn̪d̪ʱiː] ; 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was the pre-eminent political and spiritual leader of India during the Indian used this interpretation to suggest an equivalence between Thoreau's civil disobedience and his own satyagraha Satyagraha is a philosophy and practice of nonviolent resistance developed by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (also known as "Mahatma" Gandhi). Gandhi deployed satyagraha in the Indian independence movement and also during his earlier struggles in South Africa. Satyagraha theory influenced Nelson Mandela's struggle in South Africa under.[3]
"That government is best which governs least"
An aphorism sometimes attributed to either Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson was the third President of the United States (1801–1809) and the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776). Jefferson was one of the most influential Founding Fathers, known for his promotion of the ideals of republicanism in the United States. Jefferson envisioned America as the force behind a great " or Thomas Paine Thomas "Tom" Paine was an author, pamphleteer, radical, inventor, intellectual, revolutionary, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He has been called "a corsetmaker by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination.", "That government is best which governs least", actually was first found in this essay.[4] Thoreau was paraphrasing the motto of The United States Magazine and Democratic Review: "The best government is that which governs least."[5]
