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Dictionary of the History of Ideas

Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas
  
  
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I

The phrase “civil disobedience” now used so widely
for all cases of individual or group dissent from civil
law appeared on the scene quite late. Henry David
Thoreau is usually credited with coining the term,
though it is not known for certain that he did or why
he changed the title of his essay, later to become world
famous, from “Resistance to Civil Government” to
“Civil Disobedience.”

The concept of civil disobedience, as distinct from
the phrase, has a long and notable history, appearing
already as the Antigone theme in Greek drama and
in the antiwar motif of Lysistrata, where the women,
in addition to deserting their men, seize the Acropolis
and the Treasury of Athens. The conflict between civil
law and conscience was sharply featured when the Jews
passively resisted the introduction of icons into Jerusa-
lem by Pilate, procurator of Judaea, and by Jesus in


435

his dramatic purification of the temple, when he over-
turned the tables of the money changers and the seats
of those who legally sold pigeons. The conflict has been
highlighted in the history of English-speaking countries
many times, though rarely more forcefully than when
Milton refused to obey the licensing and censorship
laws of seventeenth-century England and when the
Abolitionists attacked the institution of slavery in
nineteenth-century America. The most widely known
cases of the conflict in the twentieth century are
Gandhi's campaigns against colonial rule in South
Africa and India, passive resistance campaigns against
Nazi occupation governments during World War II,
and the civil rights campaign against segregation in
the United States starting in 1954. Civil disobedience
attitudes and techniques also spread into attacks against
the Vietnam War, draft laws, poverty, and the authori-
tarian structure of colleges and universities in the
1960's.

As the examples of it make clear, the concept of
civil disobedience is extremely rich and diverse, not
at all precise and specific—the way it is with most
terms or ideas outside of a formal system. Yet much
can be done to analyze and clarify the concept, though
not formally define it, if attention is paid to recurring
themes in the rich context of historical examples. An
appreciation of these themes, without fixation on any
one case, will, hopefully, make it possible to avoid the
emotionally persuasive definitions of what civil disobe-
dience “really” is, so popular at times as different
groups try to put the phrase to work for them.

The concept of civil disobedience presupposes, first
of all, some formal structure of law, enforced by estab-
lished governmental authorities, from which an indi-
vidual cannot dissociate himself except by change of
citizenship. (Disobedience in the contexts of family,
clan, church, lodge, or business does not count as civil
disobedience.) It is not necessary, however, that an
individual ultimately accept the governmental frame-
work in which he acts disobediently; he may be ac-
cepting it only conditionally at a given time as a nec-
essary but temporary fact of life or as a step in the
direction toward the framework he ultimately accepts.
To insist on the ultimate acceptance of the framework
in which the act occurs, as some authors do, has the
absurd consequence of denying that Thoreau, Tolstoi,
and Gandhi engaged in acts of civil disobedience, since
Thoreau and Tolstoi were anarchists and Gandhi was
protesting colonial rule.

Civil disobedience, then, consists in publicly an-
nounced defiance of specific laws, policies, or com-
mands of that formal structure which an individual or
group believes to be unjust and/or unconstitutional.
The defiance may also take the form of disobedience
of just laws if such disobedience appears to be an
effective way to focus public attention on unjust laws.
The defiance must be publicly announced, since the
point of it is to bring the unjust and/or unconstitutional
laws, policies, or commands to the attention of the
public, for the purpose either of stirring its conscience
or of frightening it into helping repeal the laws, change
the policies, or mitigate the commands; or to get the
attention of the courts so that their constitutionality
can be judged. The defiance may take the form of doing
what is prohibited (say, burning a draft card) or of
failing to do what is required (say, refusing to report
for induction). The defiance, moreover, must be a pre-
meditated act, understood to be illegal by the perpe-
trator, and understood to carry prescribed penalties.
Willingness to accept such penalties is a crucial part
of that sort of civil disobedience which hopes to stir
the public conscience, while eagerness to escape pun-
ishment is perfectly compatible with that sort of civil
disobedience which aims to pressure and frighten the
public. The defiance, finally, may be either nonviolent
or violent and still count as civil disobedience. To
restrict the concept of civil disobedience to nonviolent
acts, as some authors do, ignores the difficulty of finding
a precise dividing line between “nonviolence” and
“violence” (Is rigidly blocking a doorway nonviolent?)
as well as the facts of usage. Defiant acts of a violent
sort, if they are focused, at least for the present, on
specific laws, policies, or commands (and hence are
short of unrestricted defiance of the whole government)
and meet the above criteria, are in fact called acts of
civil disobedience just as much as those which meet
the same criteria but are nonviolent.