Talk: Civil disobedience

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The distinction between Gandhi's and Thoreau's ideas of civil disobedience may be worth mentioning. Gandhi focused very much on that resistance should be active, whereas Thoreau, although he had great faith that C.D could change the world, primarily did it for reasons of conscience, it was the right thing to do, the changing the world part was just a bonus. Chaining yourself to something can not be supported by the book C.D. The difference is that Thoreau advocates resistance from a duty ethic, while Gandhi primarily advocates it from a consequence ethic - although his belief in karma complicates things a bit.

Vintermann

Thoreau refused to pay taxes that were going to pay for drilling of soldiers for the war. His aunt(?) paid the taxes against his will. There is a famous story of Ralph Waldo Emerson asking at the jail, "Henry, why are you here?" The response, "The more important Question is: why you aren't?"

I changed the link to Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" to the text from WikiSource to help increase use of and interest in that project. biggins 06:27, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)