Understanding Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience

Bern Cesar A. Diola

I. Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to explain and understand Henry David Thoreau’s

philosophy Civil Disobedience. I found an interest to write this paper about Henry

David Thoreau’s philosophy because what he did was a brave thing to do for a citizen

who is concerned with justice and fairness. I am interested with the way that Thoreau

gave an importance to the following of one’s own conscience and with his act of

standing up against the unjust government. For me it is very hard to show bravery and

commitment to the things that you stand for. That is why Thoreau’s act to push for

the obedience to conscience is very admirable. Personally I have an attitude of always

complaining with the things which may seem to me as unjust. More often I always

want to seek justice and fairness, no matter how big or small a thing or a situation

might be. This is because I believe if I will follow what my conscience tells me as the

fair thing to do; it will benefit not just me but the majority.

Through the course of this paper I will try to provide the background of Henry

David Thoreau and put my understanding of his philosophy on what Civil

Disobedience means. Then, I will ponder on civil disobedience as a means for the

improvement of the unjust system and a means to gain freedom and the common

good.
II. Context Setting

This philosophy of Henry David Thoreau adheres to the branch of political

philosophy. This philosophy calls for a non-conformist type of approach. In 340

BCE, Aristotle claims that the city-state is more important than the individual. In

1651, Thomas Hobbes says that society without strong government reverts to

anarchy. In 1762, Jean-Jacques Rousseau proposes government by the will of the

people in The Social Contract. Then in 1849, Henry David Thoreau proposes in his

Civil Disobedience the citizen’s right to conscientious objection and non-cooperation

and non-violent resistance. He believed it was the individual’s duty to protest against

unjust laws and argued that passively allowing such laws to be enacted effectively

gave them justification. In 1907, Mahatma Gandhi cites Thoreau as an influence on

his campaign of passive resistance in South Africa. His campaign of Civil

Disobedience against British rule in India included the Salt March of 1930,

undertaken in protest against unjust laws controlling salt production. In 1964, Martin

Luther King is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his campaign to end radical

discrimination through civil disobedience and non-cooperation.

III. Who is Henry David Thoreau?

Henry David Thoreau was an American essayist, poet, and practical philosopher.

He was born on July 12, 1817, in Concord, Massachusetts. He began writing nature

poetry in the 1840s, with poet Ralph Waldo Emerson as a mentor and friend. In 1845
he began his famous two-year stay on Walden Pond, which he wrote about in his

master work, Walden. He also became known for his beliefs in Transcendentalism

and civil disobedience, and was a dedicated abolitionist. A bright student, Thoreau

eventually went to Harvard College (now Harvard University). There he studied

Greek and Latin as well as German. According to some reports, Thoreau had to take a

break from his schooling for a time because of illness. He graduated from college in

1837 and struggled with what do to next. At the time, an educated man like Thoreau

might pursue a career in law or medicine or in the church. Other college graduates

went into education, a path he briefly followed. With his brother John, he set up a

school in 1838. The venture collapsed a few years later after John became ill. Thoreau

then went to work for his father for a time.

After college, Thoreau befriended writer and fellow Concord resident Ralph

Waldo Emerson. Through Emerson, he became exposed to Transcendentalism, a

school of thought that emphasized the importance of empirical thinking and of

spiritual matters over the physical world. It encouraged scientific inquiry and

observation. Thoreau came to know many of the movement's leading figures,

including Bronson Alcott and Margaret Fuller.

In 1845, Thoreau built a small home for himself on Walden Pond, on property

owned by Emerson. He spent more than two years there. Seeking a simpler type of

life, Thoreau flipped the standard routine of the times. He experimented with working

as little as possible rather than engage in the pattern of six days on with one day off.

Sometimes Thoreau worked as a land surveyor or in the pencil factory. He felt that

this new approach helped him avoid the misery he saw around him. "The mass of
men lead lives of quiet desperation," Thoreau once wrote. His schedule gave him

plenty of time to devote to his philosophical and literary interests. Thoreau eventually

started writing about his Walden Pond experiment as well. Many were curious about

his revolutionary lifestyle, and this interest provided the creative spark for a

collection of essays. Published in 1854, Walden; or, Life in the Woods espoused

living a life close to nature. The book was a modest success, but it wasn't until much

later that the book reached a larger audience. Over the years, Walden has inspired and

informed the work of naturalists, environmentalists and writers.

While living at Walden Pond, Thoreau also had an encounter with the law. He

spent a night in jail after refusing to pay a poll tax. This experience led him to write

one of his best-known and most influential essays, "Civil Disobedience" (also known

as "Resistance to Civil Government"). Thoreau held deeply felt political views,

opposing slavery and the Mexican-American War. He made a strong case for acting

on one's individual conscience and not blindly following laws and government policy.

"The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think

is right," he wrote.

Since its publication in 1849, "Civil Disobedience" has inspired many leaders of

protest movements around the world. This non-violent approach to political and

social resistance has influenced American civil rights movement activist Martin

Luther King Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi, who helped India win independence from

Great Britain, among many others.

Thoreau also remained a devoted abolitionist until the end of his life. To support

his cause, he wrote several works, including the 1854 essay "Slavery in
Massachusetts." Thoreau also took a brave stand for Captain John Brown, a radical

abolitionist who led an uprising against slavery in Virginia. He and his supporters

raided a federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry to arm themselves in October 1859, but their

plan was thwarted. An injured Brown was later convicted of treason and put to death

for his crime. Thoreau rose to defend him with the speech "A Plea for Capt. John

Brown," calling him "an angel of light" and "the bravest and humanest man in all the

country."

In his later years, Thoreau battled an illness that had plagued him for decades. He

had tuberculosis, which he had contracted decades earlier. To restore his health,

Thoreau went to Minnesota in 1861, but the trip didn't improve his condition. He

finally succumbed to the disease on May 6, 1862. Thoreau was heralded as "an

original thinker" and "a man of simple tastes, hardy habits, and of preternatural

powers of observation" in some of his obituaries.

While other writers from his time have faded into obscurity, Thoreau has endured

because so much of what he wrote about is still relevant today. His writings on

government were revolutionary, with some calling him an early anarchist. Thoreau's

studies of nature were equally radical in their own way, earning him the moniker of

"father of environmentalism." And his major work, Walden, has offered up an

interesting antidote to living in the modern rat race.

IV. What is Civil Disobedience?

Civil Disobedience is the answer for Henry David Thoreau to the unjust ways or

system of laws that governments impose. This came about when Thoreau realized

that he was living in a time when the administration governed unjustly by means of

using the taxes paid by the American people to finance the war against Mexico, and

the rise of slavery in America in 1845. According to Thoreau, true patriots were not

those who blindly followed their administration, they were those who followed their

own consciences. In disagreement to the movement of the government, Thoreau

refused to pay his taxes as a form of resistance to the system that he believed to be

governing unjustly. As a result of his action, he was arrested and spent a night in jail.

Despite being imprisoned Thoreau never saw anything undignifying about it as he

said, “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man

is a prison.” He did not mean to make a rule his act of non-payment of taxes, for he

just shows it as an example of the many ways to resistance in non-violent means. For

Thoreau, the answer is to follow one’s own conscience and to break the law under

moral grounds. A person must make himself be the counter friction to stop the

machine, rather than being a cog that is part of the unjust system.

V. Can the engagement of Civil Disobedience be a way to improve an unjust system and

gain freedom as a result?

 Thoreau contends that “the people's first obligation is to do what they

believe is right and not to follow the law dictated by the majority. When a

government is unjust, people should refuse to follow the law and distance

themselves from the government in general. A person is not obligated to devote

his life to eliminating evils from the world, but he is obligated not to participate in

such evils. This includes not being a member of an unjust institution.” He implies

that a citizen should think first if what the government is telling him is just or

unjust. For if it is just and fair, it should be followed for the sake of the common

good. If it is unjust, then a citizen should act upon it according to what his or her

own conscience tells him as the thing to do that is good and fair.

According to Michael Stratford, there are themes to which Henry David

Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience revolves, which can be found in Mahatma Gandhi’s

philosophy of non-violence which is also inspired by Thoreau, “Resistance to

Civil Government”. The themes clarify Thoreau’s implication on the meaning of

being an individual, what a citizen's duties actually are and why governments will

never rule effectively.

The first theme is the theme of harmful government. Thoreau's first major

theme is that governments do more harm than good, that "most governments ...

are inexpedient," and that good intent and ideas are crushed even by democracy.

He holds that a democratic union in which "the majority rule in all cases cannot

be based on justice." Thoreau further reasons that majorities may be deemed right,

but they do not gain special wisdom or powers because they are greater in
number. In short, Thoreau prefers no rule but, in the absence of that possibility,

asks for "at once a better government" where conscience rules above the majority.

What I understand with Thoreau’s theme of harmful government is that

governments are ineffective in carrying out the duty of leadership in the society.

In the present context, those who are placed in the highest position are going to

act according to their interests. This means that if the rulers think of something to

implement which they believe to be greatly beneficial to them, they implement it.

If things come up in the drawing board and the rulers’ regard of them as useless or

not good, they forget about the particular thing. The problem with this is that what

is not good for them is commonly the thing that is very beneficial to the masses.

This is why governments will never rule effectively.

The second theme is the theme of necessary revolution. Thoreau expands

his argument to include the citizen's duty of necessary lawbreaking, a theme he

made clear when he was arrested for failure to pay taxes and spent a night in jail;

that event prompted the essay itself. Thoreau takes the view that a man under the

American government "cannot without disgrace be associated with it" and, since

"all men recognize the right of revolution," a man finding himself at odds with the

democracy realizes that "it is his duty to wash his hands of it." Far from civilly,

Thoreau's second theme advocates justifiable rebellion.

What I understand with Thoreau’s theme of necessary revolution is that to

stop cooperating with the unjust system is a just act. As he said, “let your life be a

counter-friction to stop the machine,” it is just and fair to be opposed to the

system which does not bring the justice and fairness that the society needs. To
seek the justice and fairness that everyone needs by means of non- cooperation is

what must be done for it calls all the citizens to wake up and to make stand for

what the majority truly deserves.

The third theme is the theme of individuality. A third theme that flies

arrow-like through the work, stabbing into the governmental bull's-eye at the end,

is that of esteem for individuality above the state. Thoreau argues that a

government made up of fellow humans must hone itself into a lesser-ruling body,

"from an absolute to a limited monarchy ... to a democracy," in order to show a

"true respect for the individual." He adds that the individual is a "higher and more

independent power" and that the only possible worthwhile government is one that

"treats him accordingly."

What I understand with Thoreau’s theme of individuality is that the

individual is the most important for it makes up the majority. Though

outnumbered by the majority, the individual is more powerful for it has its own

thought and agreement to conscience. What this means is that the majority’s

actions are the instructions of the leadership that orders the majority what to do, a

kind of obedience that is blind; for the sake of obeying and not breaking the laws

which impose a great consequence as implemented by the governing body. The

individual, with a good moral conviction, tends to go astray from the dictates of

laws and the actions of the majority and does what is right according to his

conscience. The thought and the act of a conscientious individual is a more clear

obedience than the one that is blinded which is done by the majority.
VI. Conclusion

Civil Disobedience is one of the works of the American poet and

philosopher Henry David Thoreau that was published in 1849. Thoreau's Civil

Disobedience calls for the need to prioritize one's conscience over the dictates of

laws. It criticizes American social institutions and policies that were present

during his time, most prominently slavery and the Mexican-American War. This

essay was the result of his refusal to cooperate with the government that he

believed to be unjust. Thoreau proposes a citizen’s right to conscientious

objection through non-cooperation and non-violent resistance which he put into

practice by refusing to pay taxes that supported the war in Mexico and

perpetuated slavery. Thoreau’s ideas contrasted sharply with those of his

contemporary Karl Marx, and with the revolutionary spirit in Europe at the time,

which called for violent action. But they were later adopted by numerous leaders

of resistance movements, such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

VII. Bibliography

 Blanco, Janell. “What Is Civil Disobedience? - Definition, Acts & Examples.”<

https://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-civil-disobedience-definition-acts-

examples.html>

 Biography.com Editors. Henry David Thoreau Biography.

https://www.biography.com/people/henry-david-thoreau-9506784
 Stratford, Michael. “What are the Major Themes in Civil Disobedience?”

<https://www.theclassroom.com/major-themes-civil-disobedience-33651.html>

 History and types of Civil Disobedience <https://www.compassionate-

revolution.net/history-and-types-civil-disobedience.html>

 Thoreau, Henry David. “On the duty of civil disobedience” 1849