“Civil Disobedience” (also known as “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience” and “Resistance to Civil Government”) is an essay published in 1849 by American writer and philosopher Henry David Thoreau. In this essay, Thoreau puts forward the argument each of us has an obligation to resist obedience to a government that acts unjustly lest we become agents of those same injustices. Using slavery and the Mexican-American war in his examples, Thoreau combines philosophical argument with sharing his own personal experiences to encourage all to act according to their consciences in living their day-to-day life, especially when it comes to complying with government edicts.
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Civil Disobedience
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Duration:
- 21 pages
Language:
English
Categories:
- 216 books
Henry David Thoreau
American essayist, poet, and practical philosopher, best-known for his autobiographical story of life in the woods, WALDEN (1854). Thoreau became one of the leading personalities in New England Transcendentalism. He wrote tirelessly but earned from his books and journalism little. Thoreau's CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE (1849) influenced Gandhi in his passive resistance campaigns, Martin Luther King, Jr., and at one time the politics of the British Labour Party. Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts, which was center of his life, although he spent several years in his childhood in the neighboring towns and later elsewhere. He died of tuberculosis, and he is buried in his family's plot near the graves of his friends Hawthorne, Alcott, Emerson, and Channing on Author's Ridge in Concord's Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.
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