On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, Essay Example

Thoreau’s “On the Duty of Civil Obedience” presents a radical critique of the existence and function of government. Thoreau essentially structures his text according to the dichotomal opposition of people and the government. Thoreau’s political decision is clear: he is to emphasize the liberty of the populace against the government, insofar as the latter is thought of in its most common manifestation as an institution that obstructs such liberty. Accordingly, Thoreau’s political theory is to displace the centrality of government institutions within traditional political approaches, instead emphasizing a minimalist account of government that will not inhibit the overall autonomy and creativity of the people. The realization of such a political theory is, moreover, to be found in the autonomous practice of the individual, as this is the true site of resistance to such authority.

The author recognizes the political centrality of government as the seat of authority within society. The traditional democratic political model therefore functions according to elections, in which the people essentially bestow such authority to government officials. Thoreau is concerned with how this act of bestowal denotes a betrayal of the liberty of the people themselves. What occurs in this gesture is that the free become the governed, and in its worst cases, as Thoreau makes clear, such a gesture misrepresents the entire point of the democratic process. As Thoreau writes, the authority of the government “must have the sanction and consent of the governed.” (2004) The misrepresentation of this authority is thus the construal of this authority as belonging entirely to the government: For Thoreau, this authority, paradoxically, must remain the authority of the governed as opposed to the governing itself, in order to secure the sanctity of the democratic process.

It is therefore in cases in which government distorts this relationship that individual liberties are compromised. Thoreau’s concept of the people is primarily a concept of individuality. When the government reverses the aforementioned relationship of authority, a restriction of individual liberty emerges. In this regard, the unjustness of the government must be met with an absolute rejection of the authoritative displays of said government. For example, Thoreau notes that, “Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.” (2004) The just man is therefore the one who deliberately engages in struggle against the unjust government. Accordingly, insofar as the unjust government is necessarily the propagator of unjust laws, to break these very laws themselves becomes a movement towards justice. Furthermore, the individual thereby becomes a fundamental site of resistance to governmental authority, to the extent that for Thoreau, this individual, according to his or her autonomy, necessarily exists in tension with the authoritative prescriptions of government. Thoreau’s inclination here is a certain call to action, in which his politics based on individual freedoms, liberty and autonomy must not only be theoretically posited, but moreover, that this theoretically positing depends entirely upon a practical action. This is because the very emphasis in Thoreau’s political theory is the individual and the individual’s autonomy: this not a broader theoretical description of individual as a genus, but the notion of the individual itself.

Thoreau’s text provides a unique means by which to consider political theory. Insofar as the notion of government can be read as central to politics itself, Thoreau’s ideas call for a radical revision of politics, since he is essentially anti-governmental. In this regard, therefore, we can say that Thoreau is anti-political to the extent that he views the potential authoritative dangers of any exclusively political organization. Thoreau’s political thought thus recalls various forms of radical libertarianism and anarchism, in which the state is primarily posited in clear-cut negative terms. Accordingly, the terrain of political and non-political engagement is precisely defined by the struggle between the individual and the State.

Works Cited

Thoreau, Henry David. On the Duty of Civil Obedience. 2004. accessed at: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/71/71-h/71-h.htm