The Great Dangers of Civil Disobedience
Jack Sparrow
Mr Reffot Intellectual revolutions can often have a deep impact on society. Henry David Thoreau was looking to make such an impact by publicizing his transcendentalist beliefs and going a step further with his concept of civil disobedience. Lewis H. Van Dusen 's essay entitled Civil Disobedience: Destroyer of Democracy was published in 1969 and opposes greatly the beliefs of Thoreau. Van Dusen essentially deems civil disobedience as the assumption that you can be above the law should it not tailor to your beliefs. Van Dusen explicitly refutes the concepts of Thoreau suggesting that they, as the title of his work suggests, destroy democracy. Van Dusen feels that when man disobeys the law and separates from the democratic society he feels has failed, he simply pushes democracy further towards failure. While the ends laid out by Thoreau in Walden and Civil Disobedience, and Martin Luther King Jr. in Letter From Birmingham Jail, may be completely valid, the mean by which they chose to try and attain them, civil disobedience, is acted upon without true understanding of its detrimental impact to democratic society according to Lewis H. Van Dusen.
While Henry David Thoreau seems to feel he is presenting the ideals for how one should live their life and how government should function, in reality he is conveying an impractical message with detrimental effects. In his work Walden, Thoreau outlines the basic ideas of transcendentalism and keeps an account of his time spent living in the Walden woods. It is in the Walden woods that Thoreau concludes, "If we do not…forge rails, and devote days and nights to the work, but go to tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will build railroads?...who will want railroads?"(1). Thoreau is conveying the message that within American society man has becomes so consumed with his own life that he has forgotten about striving towards progression. Thoreau feels that if every man spends his time concerned
Mr Reffot Intellectual revolutions can often have a deep impact on society. Henry David Thoreau was looking to make such an impact by publicizing his transcendentalist beliefs and going a step further with his concept of civil disobedience. Lewis H. Van Dusen 's essay entitled Civil Disobedience: Destroyer of Democracy was published in 1969 and opposes greatly the beliefs of Thoreau. Van Dusen essentially deems civil disobedience as the assumption that you can be above the law should it not tailor to your beliefs. Van Dusen explicitly refutes the concepts of Thoreau suggesting that they, as the title of his work suggests, destroy democracy. Van Dusen feels that when man disobeys the law and separates from the democratic society he feels has failed, he simply pushes democracy further towards failure. While the ends laid out by Thoreau in Walden and Civil Disobedience, and Martin Luther King Jr. in Letter From Birmingham Jail, may be completely valid, the mean by which they chose to try and attain them, civil disobedience, is acted upon without true understanding of its detrimental impact to democratic society according to Lewis H. Van Dusen.
While Henry David Thoreau seems to feel he is presenting the ideals for how one should live their life and how government should function, in reality he is conveying an impractical message with detrimental effects. In his work Walden, Thoreau outlines the basic ideas of transcendentalism and keeps an account of his time spent living in the Walden woods. It is in the Walden woods that Thoreau concludes, "If we do not…forge rails, and devote days and nights to the work, but go to tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will build railroads?...who will want railroads?"(1). Thoreau is conveying the message that within American society man has becomes so consumed with his own life that he has forgotten about striving towards progression. Thoreau feels that if every man spends his time concerned
Cited: King Jr., Martin L. "Letter from a Birmingham Jail [King, Jr.]." African Studies Center- University of Pennsylvania. Ed. Ali B. Ali-Dinar. Web. 18 Oct. 2010. <http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html>.