![]() ![]() It is no surprise then that many have interpreted “Civil Disobedience” along the lines William Earle has construed it: as an appeal for “the withdrawal of allegiance from government and law in favour of the final accreditation by each man of his own solitary and ultimate conscience” (308 my italics).īut such an interpretation is dangerous, and as this paper will argue, not wholly accurate. ![]() As Heinz Eulau declares, Thoreau’s entire political thought is built on “the theoretical premise of individual conscience as the only true criterion of what is politically right and just” (510). In “Civil Disobedience”, Thoreau seems quite plainly to be advocating a State in which the individual, through his conscience, is a higher authority to which even the law should be subject. ![]() “Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience?” (2) “There will never be a really free and 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.” (18) ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |