This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal" ("Martin Luther King's Letter,' Internet). Dr. King's first point concerns unjust laws that appear to have been created to serve the needs of "power groups" at the expense of powerless groups, such as tax breaks on the federal Inheritance Tax which benefits the wealthy. His second point concerns just laws that were created to serve the needs of all citizens and which are obeyed by everyone regardless of social standing, such as laws forbidding murder. In essence, Dr. King is advocating civil unrest against those laws which he sees as unjust. In contrast to Dr. King's views on just and unjust laws as they relate to civil disobedience, Socrates, upon considering Crito's suggestion that he escape from prison (interestingly, both King and Socrates are in jail for almost the exact same reason, namely, civil disobedience), rejects Crito's proposal and then offers his personal opinions on the matter. First, Socrates declares that "to escape is neither just nor is it good" for himself, reference to his agreement with the officials in the Greek city of Athens to obey their laws at all times as a citizen. Socrates adds that escape is not to his benefit because "he who does wrong cannot live well" and "if one cannot live well, life is not worth living" ("Plato's...
However, since Socrates is imprisoned because of his civil disobedience, i.e., being an "irritant" to society as in the case with Dr. King, one would think that Socrates would be willing to escape. In essence, Dr. King's civil disobedience was for the good of the whole as was Socrates' decision to reject Crito's proposal on escaping, due to his agreement with the city of Athens to abide by their laws regardless if he thought they were unjust.
Civil Disobedience Thoreau's Disobedience Thoreau's essay on civil disobedience not only gives a startlingly strong argument against paying one's taxes (which is in itself a difficult task), it also gives a subtle but clear image of Thoreau himself. In this essay, the reader discovers a writer who is at once romantic and cynical, idealistically self-sacrificing and fiercely self-centered, areligious and mystical. It would be tempting to portray Thoreau as inconsistent or somehow
Civil Disobedience The Trial of Socrates The Athenians suffered a crushing defeat in 404 B.C.E. with the end of the Peloponnesian War. A Spartan occupation force controlled the city, and instituted the rule of the Thirty Tyrants to replace Athenian democracy. While a form of democracy was reinstated it lacked the acceptance of ideas and freedom of speech that had been such an integral part of Athenian society (Rogers). In Athens at this
John Locke's social theory not only permits disobedience but also a revolution if the State violates its side of the contract. Martin Luther King, Jr. says that civil disobedience derives from the natural law tradition in that an unjust law is not a law but a perversion of it. He, therefore, sees consenting to obey laws as not extending or including unjust laws. At present, a new and different form
Civil Disobedience: Thoreau's research on civil disobedience puts it as the refusal by the citizens to obey laws or even pay taxes in a country. The end result of the disobedience is normally war, especially when the citizens want to take laws into their hands. The decision by citizens to take the law into their hands forces the government to act forcefully, which results in the war. However, when proper procedures
Pharisaical practices are as popular today as they may be supposed to have been in the time of Christ -- and one of the biggest hypocrisies of our time is what Roosevelt called "the great arsenal of democracy," the shield-phrase with which the U.S. would pursue its policy of "manifest destiny" all over the globe (and an ideology it had been pursuing since the end of the 19th century when
Regardless, to condemn Brown to death in Thoreau's view demoted the far greater human destruction of life via the institution of enslavement Brown attempted to end. This does not seem so much to be a contradiction or a defense of violence but a tempering of the anger that Brown created in the hearts of many Americans, and an attempt to put the violent acts of Brown in the context
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