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Bedau’S Introduction Sets out the Issues and Shows How the Various Authors Shed Light on Each Aspect of Them

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Bedau’S Introduction Sets out the Issues and Shows How the Various Authors Shed Light on Each Aspect of Them CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE in focus How can civil disobedience be defined and distinguished from revolution or lawful protest? What, if anything, justifies civil disobedience? Can nonviolent civil disobedience ever be effective? The issues surrounding civil disobedience have been discussed since at least 399 BC and, in the wake of such recent events as the protest at Tiananmen Square, are still of great relevance. By presenting classic and current philosophical reflections on the issues, this book presents all the basic materials needed for a philosophical assessment of the nature and justification of civil disobedience. The pieces included range from classic statements by Plato, Thoreau, and Martin Luther King, to essays by leading contemporary thinkers such as Rawls, Raz, and Singer. Hugo Adam Bedau’s introduction sets out the issues and shows how the various authors shed light on each aspect of them. Hugo Adam Bedau is Austin Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University. ROUTLEDGE PHILOSOPHERS IN FOCUS SERIES General Editor: Stanley Tweyman York University, Toronto GÖDEL’S THEOREM IN FOCUS Edited by S. G. Shanker J. S. MILL: ON LIBERTY IN FOCUS Edited by John Gray and G. W. Smith DAVID HUME: DIALOGUES CONCERNING NATURAL RELIGION IN FOCUS Edited by Stanley Tweyman RENÉ DESCARTES’ MEDITATIONS IN FOCUS Edited by Stanley Tweyman PLATO’S MENO IN FOCUS Edited by Jane M. Day GEORGE BERKELEY: ALCIPHRON IN FOCUS Edited by David Berman ARISTOTLE’S DE ANIMA IN FOCUS Edited by Michael Durrant WILLIAM JAMES: PRAGMATISM IN FOCUS Edited by Doris Olin JOHN LOCKE’S LETTER ON TOLERATION IN FOCUS Edited by John Horton and Susan Mendus CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE in focus Edited by Hugo Adam Bedau London and New York First published 1991 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002. Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 1991 Routledge, collection as a whole; © 1991 respective contributors for individual contributions All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 0-415-05055-3 (Print Edition) ISBN 0-203-00365-9 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-20243-0 (Glassbook Format) CONTENTS Acknowledgements vi Introduction 1 1CRITO 13 Plato 2CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 28 Henry David Thoreau 3CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE AND PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR INJUSTICE 49 H. A. Bedau 4LETTER FROM BIRMINGHAM CITY JAIL 68 Martin Luther King, Jr 5THE CASE AGAINST CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 85 Herbert J. Storing 6DEFINITION AND JUSTIFICATION OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 103 John Rawls 7DISOBEDIENCE AS A PLEA FOR RECONSIDERATION 122 Peter Singer 8THE JUSTIFIABILITY OF VIOLENT CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 130 John Morreall 9CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE AND NON-CO-OPERATION 144 Vinit Haksar 10CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 159 Joseph Raz 11 JUSTIFYING NONVIOLENT DISOBEDIENCE 170 Kent Greenawalt 12 DEFINING CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 189 Brian Smart Bibliography 212 Index 214 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to the following publishers for their permission to reprint material as follows: Plato, Crito, from G. M. A. Grube, trans., Plato: Five Dialogues, 1981, by permission of Hackett Publishing Co., Indianapolis, IN. H. A. Bedau, ‘Civil Disobedience and Personal Responsibility for Injustice,’ The Monist, 54 (1970), pp. 517–35, by permission of the editor. Martin Luther King, Jr., ‘Letter from Birmingham City Jail,’ © 1963 Martin Luther King, Jr. Copyright renewed 1991 by Corretta Scott King. Reprinted by arrangement with The Heirs to the Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr. c/o Joan Daves Agency as agent for the proprietor. Herbert J. Storing, ‘The Case Against Civil Disobedience,’ in Robert A. Goldwin (ed.), On Civil Disobedience: Essays Old and New, Rand McNally, 1969, pp. 95–106, 114–20, reprinted by permission of Kenyon College, Gambier, OH. John Rawls, ‘Civil Disobedience,’ reprinted by permission of the publishers from sections 55, 57, and 59 of A Theory of Justice, by John Rawls, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1971 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved. Peter Singer, ‘Disobedience as a Plea for Reconsideration,’ © Oxford University Press 1973. Reprinted from Democracy and Disobedience, pp. 84–92, by Peter Singer (1973) by permission of Oxford University Press. John Morreall, ‘The Justifiability of Violent Civil Disobedience,’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 6 (1976), pp. 35–47, reprinted by permission of the editor. Vinit Haksar, ‘Civil Disobedience and Non-Cooperation,’ from Vinit Haksar, Civil Disobedience, Threats and Offers, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1986, pp. 29–41, by permission of the publisher. Joseph Raz, ‘Civil Disobedience,’ © Oxford University Press 1979. Reprinted from The Authority of Law by Joseph Raz (1979), pp. 266–75, by permission of Oxford University Press. Kent Greenawalt, ‘Justifying Nonviolent Disobedience,’ from Conflicts of Law and Morality, pp. 226–43, by Kent Greenawalt. Copyright © 1987 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Brian Smart, ‘Defining Civil Disobedience,’ Inquiry, 21 (1978), pp. 249–69, reprinted by permission of the editor. vi INTRODUCTION I Civil disobedience – disobeying the law in a good cause – is as old as Prometheus’ disobedience of Zeus in order to give fire to mankind and Antigone’s defiance of Creon’s edict denying proper burial to her brother Polynices. It is as current as these recent headline events: 1In the United States, Operation Rescue organizes trespass actions at abortion clinics. 2 In China, university students in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square stage a sit-in to protest on behalf of freedom and democracy. 3In South Africa, opponents of apartheid and the brutal policy tactics used to enforce it march in downtown Cape Town. The problem of the individual’s relation to the state and its government – its authority and its laws – and the appropriate response to offensive or unjust laws – meek compliance, protest, disobedience, rebellion – has been debated at least since 399 BC, when Crito argued that Socrates should flee from prison to avoid an undeserved death penalty. Jews and Christians, at the risk of their lives, disobeyed the demands of Roman law and its claims of supreme authority by refusing to place a pinch of incense on the altar of Caesar. Religious consciousness, with its doctrine of ‘passive obedience,’ has a long history of conscientious refusal when faced with arrogant secular demands.1 The theory of civil disobedience, freed from its religious setting, does not emerge as a distinctive subject for secular thought until 1 See David Daube, Civil Disobedience in Antiquity (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1972). 1 H.A.Bedau the middle of the last century. It is introduced (along with the term, ‘civil disobedience,’ itself) in the nonpareil essay by the American naturalist Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau’s refusal in the 1840s to pay his poll tax was intended to be symbolic of his objections to the federal government’s aggressive war against Mexico, support for chattel slavery in the southern states, and continued violation of the rights of the native Indian population. Thoreau’s disobedience had no discernible effect on these injustices, but his ideas were none the less a good example of how actual practice can yield a reflective theoretical product.2 Half a century later Thoreau’s ideas were brought to international attention first through the writings of Leo Tolstoy and subsequently by Mohandas Gandhi. Tolstoy defended the right to refuse to bear arms, and his counsels were addressed to conscientious objectors and their critics on both sides of the Atlantic. Gandhi’s concern was quite different. He realized that carefully planned mass nonviolent resistance, in conjunction with other political and moral pressures, could advance the cause of Indian nationalism and bring the British Raj to its knees. After a struggle that lasted four decades, foreign rule in India came to an end in 1947 – and Gandhi was assassinated in the following year.3 Despite its historic American origin in Thoreau’s practice and writings, civil disobedience did not become a household term or a topic of interest to political and legal philosophy until the early 1950s. In the United States, the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955) became the opening salvo in a decade-long struggle by black Americans to achieve civil rights under law equal to those of white Americans. In England, the Committee for Nonviolent Action advocated ‘nuclear pacifism’ and under the leadership of the ageing Bertrand Russell used civil disobedience mainly in order to secure publicity for its cause.4 In the United States, the leading figure in the Civil Rights Movement was Martin Luther 2 See Walter Harding and Michael Meyer, The New Thoreau Handbook (New York: NYU Press, 1980), pp. 41–2, 80–1, 135–9; Walter Harding, The Variorum Civil Disobedience (New York: Twayne, 1967). 3 See Mohandas K. Gandhi, Non-Violent Resistance (New York: Schocken, 1961). 4 See Bertrand Russell, ‘Civil Disobedience and the Threat of Nuclear Warfare,’ in Clara Urquhart (ed.), A Matter of Life (London: Jonathan Cape, 1963), pp. 189–96, and reprinted in H. A. Bedau (ed.), Civil Disobedience: Theory and Practice (New York: Pegasus, 1969), pp. 153–9. See also his essays, ‘Civil Disobedience,’ New Statesman (Feb. 17, 1961), 245–6, and ‘On Civil Disobedience,’ in Arthur and Lila Weinberg (eds.), Instead of Violence (Boston: Beacon, 1965), pp. 51–7. 2 Introduction King, Jr. He and his associates taught the nation the power of nonviolent disobedience to change the law.
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