Walking is an essay on experiencing the natural world, focusing on relationship between nature and civilization. Walking. by Henry D. Thoreau. I wish to speak a word for Nature, for Overall, Thoreau’s essay on politics reveals American people’s natural desire to improve the existing system through nonviolent means. The ideology provided by Thoreau suggests that a Thoreau Essay example. Henry David Thoreau was man of simplicity, and if he were to experience life in Cary, he would not only be surprised, but disappointed in humanity itself.
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Resistance to Civil Governmentalso called On the Duty of Civil Disobedience or Civil Disobedience for short, is an essay by American thoreau essay Henry David Thoreau that was first published in In it, Thoreau argues that individuals should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciencesthoreau essay, 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 — InThoreau gave lectures at the Concord Lyceum entitled "The Rights and Duties of the Individual in relation to Government". Nonetheless, Thoreau was initially inspired by the Christian anarchist ideals espoused by Ballou and Garrison. Resistance also served as part of Thoreau's metaphor comparing the government to a machine: when the machine was producing injustice, it was the duty of conscientious citizens to be "a counter friction" i, thoreau essay.
Infour years after Thoreau's death, thoreau essay, 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, thoreau essay. Today, the essay also appears under the title On the Duty of Civil Disobediencethoreau essay to contrast it with William Paley 's Of the Duty of Civil Obedience to which Thoreau was in part responding. For instance, the New American Library Signet Classics edition of Walden included a version with this title. On Thoreau essay Disobedience is another common 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, thoreau essay. Thoreau essay this is an acceptable dictionary definition of the word civilit is not what is intended here. This misinterpretation is one thoreau essay the essay is sometimes considered to be an argument for pacifism or for exclusively nonviolent resistance. For instance, Mahatma Gandhi used this interpretation to suggest an equivalence between Thoreau's civil disobedience and his own satyagraha.
The slavery crisis inflamed New England in the s and s. The environment became especially tense after the Fugitive Slave Act of A lifelong abolitionistthoreau essay, Thoreau delivered an impassioned speech which would later become Civil Disobedience injust months after leaving Walden Pond. The speech dealt with slavery and thoreau essay the same time excoriated American thoreau essayparticularly the Mexican—American War. 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 inferior to the decisions of a political body or majority, and so "[i]t is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the thoreau essay. 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. 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 is "not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize".
Political philosophers have counseled caution about revolution because the upheaval of revolution typically causes a lot of expense and suffering. Such a fundamental immorality justifies any difficulty or expense to bring it to an end. Thoreau tells his audience that they cannot blame this problem solely on pro-slavery Southern politicians, but must put the blame on those in, for instance, Massachusetts"who are more interested in commerce and agriculture than they are in humanity, and thoreau essay not prepared to do justice to the slave and to Mexico, cost what it may There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them. He exhorts people not to just thoreau essay passively for an opportunity to vote for justice, because voting for justice is as ineffective as wishing for justice; what you need to do is to actually be just.
This is not to say that you have an obligation to devote your life to fighting for justice, but you do have an obligation not to commit injustice and not thoreau essay give injustice your practical thoreau essay. Paying taxes is one way in which otherwise well-meaning people collaborate in injustice. People who proclaim that the war in Mexico is wrong and that it is wrong to enforce slavery contradict themselves if they fund both things by paying taxes. Thoreau points out that the same people who applaud soldiers for refusing to fight an unjust war thoreau essay not themselves willing to refuse to fund the government that started the war. In a constitutional republic like the United States, people often think that the proper response to an unjust law is to try to use the political process to change the law, but to obey and respect the law until it is changed.
But if the law is itself clearly unjust, and the lawmaking process is not designed to quickly obliterate such unjust laws, then Thoreau says the law deserves no respect and it should be broken. In the case of the United States, thoreau essay, thoreau essay Constitution itself enshrines the institution of slavery, and therefore falls under this condemnation. Abolitionistsin Thoreau's opinion, thoreau essay, should completely withdraw their support of the government and stop paying taxeseven if this means thoreau essay imprisonment, or even violence. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison where the Thoreau essay places those who are not with her, but against her,—the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with thoreau essay Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.
A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose. If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be thoreau essay violent and bloody measure, thoreau essay, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible. Is there thoreau essay a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded?
Through this wound a man's real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death, thoreau essay. I see this blood flowing now. Because the government will retaliate, Thoreau says he prefers living simply because he therefore has less to lose. It costs me less in every sense to incur the penalty of disobedience to the State than it would to obey. I should feel as if I were worth less in that case. He was briefly imprisoned for refusing to pay the poll taxbut even in jail felt freer than the people outside. He considered it an interesting experience and came out of it with a new perspective on his relationship to the government and its citizens.
He was released the next day when "someone interfered, and paid that tax". Thoreau said he was willing to pay the highway tax, thoreau essay, which went to pay for something of benefit to his neighbors, but that he thoreau essay opposed to taxes that went to support the government itself—even if he could not tell if his particular contribution would eventually be spent on an unjust project or a beneficial one. Because government is man-made, not an element of nature or an act of GodThoreau hoped that its makers could be reasoned with. As governments go, he felt, the U, thoreau essay. government, with all its faults, was not the worst and even had some admirable qualities.
But he felt we could and should insist thoreau essay better. Is a democracy, such as we know it, thoreau essay, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards thoreau essay and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a really free thoreau essay enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. An aphorism often erroneously attributed to Thomas Jefferson[16] "That government is best which governs least Thoreau was apparently paraphrasing the motto of The United States Magazine and Democratic Review : "The best government is that which governs least" [17] which might also be inspired from the 17th verse of the Tao Te Ching by Laozi : " The best rulers are scarcely known by their subjects.
I heartily accept the motto,—"That government is best which governs least;" and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which Thoreau essay also believe,—"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. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi was impressed by Thoreau's arguments. Inabout one year into his first satyagraha campaign in South Africahe wrote a translated synopsis of Thoreau's argument for Indian Opinionthoreau essay, credited Thoreau's essay with being "the chief cause of the abolition of slavery in America", thoreau essay, and wrote that "Both his example and writings are at present exactly applicable to the Indians in the Transvaal.
Thoreau was a great writer, thoreau essay, philosopher, poet, and withal a most practical man, that is, he taught nothing he was not prepared to practice in himself. He was one of the greatest and most moral men America has produced. At the time of the abolition of slavery movement, he wrote his famous essay On the Duty of Civil Disobedience. He went to gaol for the sake of his principles thoreau essay suffering humanity, thoreau essay. His essay has, therefore, been sanctified by suffering. Moreover, it is written for all time. Its incisive logic is unanswerable. American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was also influenced by this essay. In his autobiography, thoreau essay, he wrote:.
During my thoreau essay days I read Henry David Thoreau's essay On Civil Disobedience for the thoreau essay time. Here, in this courageous New Englander's refusal to pay his taxes and his choice of jail rather than support a war that would spread slavery's territory into Mexico, I made my first contact with the theory of nonviolent resistance. Fascinated by the idea of refusing to cooperate with an evil system, I was so deeply moved that I reread the work several times. I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.
No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau. As a result of his writings and personal witness, we are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest. The teachings of Thoreau came alive in our civil rights movement; indeed, they are more alive than ever before. Whether expressed in a sit-in at lunch counters, a freedom ride into Mississippi, a peaceful protest in Albany, Georgia, a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabamathese are outgrowths of Thoreau's insistence that evil must be resisted and that no moral man can patiently adjust to injustice.
Existentialist Martin Buber wrote, of Civil Disobedience. I read it with the strong feeling that here was something that concerned me directly It was the concrete, thoreau essay, the personal element, the "here and now" of this work that won me over. Thoreau did not put forth a general proposition as such; he described and established his attitude in a thoreau essay historical-biographic situation. He addressed his reader within the very sphere of this situation common to both of them in such a way that the reader not only discovered why Thoreau acted as he did at that time but also that the reader—assuming him of course to be honest and dispassionate— would have to act in just such a way whenever the proper occasion arose, provided he was seriously engaged in fulfilling his existence as a human person.
The question here is not just about one of the numerous individual cases in the struggle between a truth powerless to act and a power that has become the enemy of truth. It is really a question of the absolutely concrete demonstration of the point at which this struggle at any moment becomes man's duty as man Author Leo Tolstoy cited Civil Disobedience as having a strong impact on his nonviolence methodology. Others who are said to have been influenced by Civil Disobedience include: Suffragist Alice PaulPresident John F. KennedySupreme Court Justice William O.
Be a Loser - The Philosophy of Henry David Thoreau
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Henry David Thoreau was a very well noted transcendentalism philosopher, whom was born to a small middle-class family in concord, From there he attended Harvard in ; leading Overall, Thoreau’s essay on politics reveals American people’s natural desire to improve the existing system through nonviolent means. The ideology provided by Thoreau suggests that a Thoreau Essay example. Henry David Thoreau was man of simplicity, and if he were to experience life in Cary, he would not only be surprised, but disappointed in humanity itself.
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