OPPapers.com Essay Index >> Social Issues >> Civil Disobedience
We have many free term papers and essays on Civil Disobedience. We also have a wide variety of research papers and book reports available to you for free. You can browse our collection of term papers or use our search engine.
Civil Disobedience. Thoreau was once sent to jail for refusing to pay his taxes
and I support this episode of civil disobedience as justified. ...
Thoreau's Civil Disobedience. ... Civil Disobedience inspired the Civil Rights Movement,
the Vietnam War protest and the student unrest of the sixties. ...
Civil Disobedience. Civil Disobedience During the time of slavery in the United
States many opposed the government’s persistence in slavery. ...
Civil Disobedience. Critically evaluate Dworkin's and Habermas's approach
to civil disobedience. The following essay will attempt ...
civil disobedience. The ... taxes. Situations exist where civil disobedience
and breaking the law is necessary and morally imperative. ...
Submitted by chicojunior on May 9, 2007
Category: Social Issues
Words: 704 | Pages: 3
Views: 199
Popularity Rank: 61,313
Average Member Grade: N/A (Add a Comment / Grade this Paper)
The influence of Civil Disobedience
[edit] Mohandas Gandhi
Indian independence leader Mohandas Gandhi was very impressed by Thoreau's arguments. In 1907, about one year into his first satyagraha campaign in South Africa, he wrote a translated synopsis of Thoreau's argument for Indian Opinion, credited Thoreau's essay with being "the chief cause of the abolition of slavery in America", and wrote that "Both his example and writings are at present exactly applicable to the Indians in the Transvaal."[5] He later concluded:
Thoreau was a great writer, philosopher, poet, and withal a most practical man, that is, he taught nothing he was not prepared to practise in himself. He was one of the greatest and most moral men America has produced. At the time of the abolition of slavery movement, he wrote his famous essay "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience". He went to gaol for the sake of his principles and suffering humanity. His essay has, therefore, been sanctified by suffering. Moreover, it is written for all time. Its incisive logic is unanswerable.[6]
[edit] Martin Luther King, Jr.
American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was also influenced by this essay. In his autobiography, he wrote:
During my student days I read Henry David Thoreau's essay On Civil Disobedience for the first time. Here, in this courageous New Englander's refusal to pay his taxes and his choice of jail rather than support a war that would spread slavery's territory into Mexico, I made my first contact with the theory of nonviolent resistance. Fascinated by the idea of refusing to cooperate with an evil system, I was so deeply moved that I reread the work several times.
I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau. As a result of his...
You must Login to view the entire paper.
If you are not a member yet, Sign Up for free!