/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.2995184]

Would someone like to discuss "Civil Disobedience" with me? I don't mind waiting a few minutes while you read it.
I wrote a paper on it this morning would like somebody's opinion of my analysis.
I'd post my essay, but I don't want it to end up on some free or paid essay site and then get expelled for plagiarism.

[Anonymous No.2995191]

>essay on essay

[Anonymous No.2995192]

Last time I read it was about a year ago. I enjoyed Life without Principle more, but Civil Disobedience is a classic. What would you like to discuss about it?

[Anonymous No.2995217]

Here are my thoughts:
There are a number of unsupported arguments that weaken the essay (yes I realize it was originally an orated lecture but he did take the time to revise it before publication). The first of these weak claims debases legislators by comparing them to mischievous railroad vandals for their support of trade barriers. He doesn't at all explain, however, why trade barriers are inherently bad.
I also don't think he makes a strong enough case against democracy and voting to warrant the sacrifice his audience is being asked to make for the sake of their consciences. He admits men fear the loss of security, belongs, and harassment of their families by the State if they dissent, but offers no path other than vagrancy.

The largest problem I found is that he deplores the majority as a creator of artificial and what he claims, wrong, policy and laws. He suggests that every man should follow his own conscience, especially if it conflicts with a policy of State. He then reasons, I think crossing the boundary of slippery slope, that a very relatively small group of dissidents refusing to pay taxes will non-violently sway the State to change its policy.
I disagree that the State will bend to such a small group (he claims 1,000 men, and then even goes as far as to claim one 'HONEST' man in jail could enact this change, which is ironic since he was in jail and no change happened).
I think it's more reasonable to assume a small number of dissidents will merely exact physical force (and create more violence) from the State to quell the dissension. In fact, I think such a large number of dissidents is necessary to enact change that is borders on a majority. And if this principle is merely enacting change through majority, is he not committing that which he deplores?
Cont...

[Anonymous No.2995233]

>>2995217
Basically, the problem I have is that Thoreau assumes moral warrants, suppositions, and the rightness of his minority's cause until it becomes majority policy. He never morally defines rightness or justice, and therefore his methods are an in-congruent tool at the whim of any minority.
Also, there's a major shift in tone when Thoreau finishes his jail narrative. Whereas before he had a very idealized and fairly judged naive view of his neighbors as good intentioned, intellectually mature, independent, rational thinkers, he then goes down a kind of submissive re-explanation of his argument.
Now he's conciliatory, offers more sympathetic reasons for his refusal to pay taxes, and there's a scathing undertone of involuntary acceptance of the real world where his idealistic society will never happen because he thinks he is better than most men in areas of morality and life.
He tries to claim once or twice that he doesn't see himself as better than those around him, but he fucking says he has drunk from the true source of human morality, gone further up the stream than the bible and the constitution, where so many of his peers stop.
I just don't think his argument will enact any policy or move any readers to action, it's merely a narrative of self-discovery and exploration, and conflict in a man unwilling to accept the true nature of man.

[Anonymous No.2995240]

Anybody agree?
I'm just second guessing myself because I remember reading Walden a few years ago in high school and really enjoying it. I went into this thinking very highly of Thoreau but his argument, I think, is pretty shit.
I just want to check I'm not being 'hurrr so edgy' and this is a somewhat legitimate criticism?

[Anonymous No.2995246]

>>2995233
>I just don't think his argument will enact any policy or move any readers to action

>Gandhi
>Martin Luther King jr.

[Anonymous No.2995262]

>>2995246
They used civil disobedience to raise public awareness and therefore create change through legitimate means of democracy.
No one stopped paying taxes (although they did go to jail)
But I'm talking about his foremost audience leading up to the Civil War.
You're right though I'll have to bring that up, thanks for the tip.

[Anonymous No.2995276]

>>2995262
Also, a lot of Gandhi's and King's followers were already vagrants or at least did not have much capital on the line when they risked being jailed.

[Anonymous No.2995294]

>>2995246
>>2995246
Aw man this is bothering me. The only way I can think to reconcile it is to do a cheap re-definition of the audience as those invested in the state with capital and family.