Civil Disobedience

My professor read my paper and made the following comments. Please follow accordingly. Thank you!

Some things to think about:

1) I pitched the Socrates of the Crito as offering a social contract theory of the legitimacy of political power, so include that line of attack on civil disobedience–why?  (I will spell it out more below, after these specific comments)  If we are not to live in a ‘state of nature’, we must consent to be governed as so avoid, by having laws, everyone running around following their own moral judgement in areas where people of good will disagree.  Chaos or Consent–that’s the social contract theory..

2) Those who object to a law that appears to them unjust shouldn’t just leave (Socrates argues that, being promise breakers, no other society would accept them) you say, as they are obliged to help the fellows.  This seems true, although on those grounds perhaps they should organize their fellows and secede to create their own country or engage in revolution? 

3) Mention Timothy McVeigh who bombed the federal building to help his fellows oppressed by the Federal Gov’s (in his view) unconstitutional taxes.  Examples of people who judged a law to be unjust when the majority view it as just, (King’s situation with the separate but equal’ laws of the deep south) are important–for exactly how is a state to function if people can ignore any laws they view as unjust or as violating their religion (by allowing women the vote, say)?  King definitely made the US a better place for all.  But should other’s consult their religion to disobey the laws that say women may vote or drive if their religion says this is bad for women?  McVeigh too felt he owed other Americans help, that is why he bombed the Fed. buildings. 

      Socrates, who believed that philosophizing was the best kind of life, tried to convince his state of this, failed, and agreed to abide by that ruling and allowed himself to be put to death.  Why, because he had promised to obey the laws, and this promise wasnt a promise to obey only laws that he liked, and it wasnt a promise to obey laws that struck him as applied in a perfectly fair way, for that is why we have lawto constrain our behavior about issues people disagree about, and that is why we have laws about how to create, amend or more fairly apply the laws, as these are issues people of good will can disagree about.

    To give ones consent to be governed, to make a moral promise to obey the laws, and commits one to democratic changing in laws, in the US social contract, and this is the common morality all who would leave a state of nature must share.  One might augment one’s morality with religious views, but not so as to undercut this common moral ground of promise keeping. To use force, to break the laws, is to break the promise upon which governmental force and order rests.  It is, in effect, to declare that ones own moral (religious?) judgement is better than the informed, freely considered judgement of the majority; for Socrates,  this a broken promise declares that chaos, or the state of nature, is better than a slow, legal evolution of laws.

    McVeigh mistakenly thought that he knew something, something that when the rest of us re-read our constitutions, would allow us all to see that he was right to be impatient and forceful.  But theres the rub: if the fact is so obvious that we can all see it easily, than what account can a rebel like McVeigh offer us as to why the rest of us, who supposedly equally wise, arent impressed by this supposed fact?  And if the fact ISNT so obvious, that nicely explains why the civil disobedient stands alone, but now she owes us an explanation of why she can spot hidden facts so much better than the rest of us.  (perhaps King, by virtue of being black, could know facts about what separate but equal schools and hospitals were like, facts once know he had good reason to believe would quickly change majority opinion?)       

  (4)  Did you sign a social contract?  At birth, when you were too young to make an informed choice?  By staying on, as Socrates did?  But where can one go to live in a state of nature nowadays?  (And, if one must go to another country, and all countries offer women a bad deal–that isn’t true consent if under duress, is it?)

 

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