What does Thoreau mean by resistance to civil government?
“Resistance to Civil Government” is Henry David Thoreau’s literary effort at grappling with the limitation and control that the government, and occasionally, the people themselves, impose. But what Thoreau is trying to do is illustrate that the government can and should be better than it is.
What is the meaning of resistance to civil government?
"Resistance to Civil Government" is viewed by many as the source for modern passive resistance, but even in this essay he acknowledges the need for violence in extreme cases. He points out the hypocrisy of praising the American Revolution, a violent rebellion, while refusing to acknowledge violence to remedy contemporary injustices such as slavery.
What is Thoreau's Reform Papers?
Thoreau, Henry David. Reform Papers. Edited by Wendell Glick. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1973. Includes "Resistance to Civil Government," "Slavery in Massachusetts," and "A Plea for Captain John Brown."
What was Thoreau's theory of resistance?
There were several theories about "resistance" and "nonresistance" known to Thoreau. The issue of how best to resist injustice was of particular interest to abolitionists, who were split into several groups. One group, led by Nathaniel P.
What is the main idea of Resistance to Civil Government?
Henry David Thoreau states in his essay, “Resistance to Civil Government,” that the reaction to an unfair government is to remove oneself from office if the government violates the moral human law.
What was Thoreau's purpose in writing Resistance to Civil Government?
Thoreau's purpose for writing the essay was to impel people to not support or accept the government's stance on situations if they disagreed with the government's position. In Thoreau's case one of these issues was The Mexican-american war. His opposition to the war was one of the main ideas in Thoreau's essay.
What is the purpose of Henry David Thoreau's Resistance to Civil Government quizlet?
He believed that the government system steals the right to an individual life and personal experience. Because of this opinion, Thoreau came to the conclusion that the government is/can be abused before the people can willfully act through it.
What is Thoreau's main purpose?
He states his purpose in going to Walden: to live deliberately, to confront the essentials, and to extract the meaning of life as it is, good or bad. He exhorts his readers to simplify, and points out our reluctance to alter the course of our lives.
What is the purpose of Civil Disobedience?
civil disobedience, also called passive resistance, the refusal to obey the demands or commands of a government or occupying power, without resorting to violence or active measures of opposition; its usual purpose is to force concessions from the government or occupying power.
What kind of government does Thoreau describe in Civil Disobedience?
Terms in this set (5) Thoreau envisions the best kind of government as on that does not govern. He supports laissez-faire (free enterprise, free trade, noninterfering).
What is the purpose of civil disobedience quizlet?
A form of political participation that reflects a conscious decision to break a law believed to be immoral and to suffer the consequences.
What type of government Thoreau prefers at the beginning of civil disobedience?
laissez-faire governmentMAIN POINT 1: Thoreau prefers a laissez-faire government, but he does not call for abolishing government. Rather he wants a better government. “… I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government.”
What is Thoreau's first thought upon being imprisoned in civil disobedience quizlet?
What is Thoreau's first thought upon being imprisoned in "Civil Disobedience"? He considers the prison a foolish institution. Considering "Civil Disobedience," which best describes how Thoreau and Martin Luther King, Jr.
What is the overall message of Thoreau's solitude?
Thoreau is writing “Solitude” to persuade his audience that living alone in close communion with nature is good for the body, mind, and soul. Using simile, Thoreau compares his serenity to a lake's calm surface and compares the friendliness he feels from Nature to an atmosphere that sustains him.
What is Thoreau's purpose for writing where I lived and what I lived for?
Thoreau's purpose in the text is to convince readers on what an ideal life is. As mentioned before, Thoreau believes that life must be simple in order to enjoy.
What is the main theme of Thoreau's Walden economy?
The Value of Simplicity Simplicity is more than a mode of life for Thoreau; it is a philosophical ideal as well. In his “Economy” chapter, Thoreau asserts that a feeling of dissatisfaction with one's possessions can be resolved in two ways: one may acquire more, or reduce one's desires.
Why does Thoreau use ethos in Resistance to Civil Government apex?
Answer and Explanation: Henry David Thoreau use ethos in ''Resistance to Civil Government'' to establish his credibility to discuss the topic.
What rhetorical devices are used in Resistance to Civil Government?
In the short story "Resistance to Civil Government" by Henry David who uses literary devices such as Pathos, Ethos, and Logos to identify injustice that the government is applying to the people in paying taxes.
What kind of government is Thoreau most supportive of what motto does the heartily accept?
in his campaign for racial equality in the 1950s and 1960s. I heartily accept the motto,—"That government is best which governs least;" and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically.
What is Thoreau's last thought about the state before he loses respect for it?
In "Civil Disobedience," what is Thoreau's last thought about the state before he loses respect for it? He thinks the state can't tell its friends from its enemies.
What did Thoreau believe?
Henry David Thoreau, born in 1817 in America, was a writer and a thinker who strongly believed in the injustice of governments, the rights the individual had to follow his/her conscience over the belief of the majority (states) and even in the uselesness of democracy and any other form of government, to the point of believing in anarchy, even though many times he proposed that he did not want to abolish government, only improve it. But he did believe that government was a source of corruption, and that when governments existed, they tended to allienate the individual conscience of people, who he believed, were capable of self-government. He strongly believed this because of what he saw in his own government; the Fugitive Slave Law, the Mexican-American War, which he completely opposed, and many other events that were taking place at the time in the U.S led him to oppose the impositions of a government over the will of the individual. Thoreau´s strong beliefs and principles were put into writing and published later on and although many disliked his views, after his death, he was recognized as one of the best writers of his time in America. This is why, the correct answer to the question would be A.
Can protests disrupt traffic?
However, a protest can disrupt traffic or other normal activities. A city must provide extra police protection to keep people safe. Therefore, the city has the right to require permission in advance for a protest. Government must make laws to balance the rights of individuals and different groups of people.
What did Thoreau complain about?
Thoreau was often impatient with reform movements and utopian communities. In A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849) he complains: "It is a great pleasure to escape sometimes from the restless class of Reformers. What if these grievances exist? So do you and I" (p. 126). In his last years even the Civil War could not convince him that the ideal of self-culture should give way to social action. As he wrote to his friend Parker Pillsbury (1809–1898) about the war, "I do not so much regret the present condition of things in this country (provided I regret it at all) as I do that I ever heard of it" ( Letters, p. 195). Despite his clinging to the ideal of self-culture, however, when such issues came closer to home, he was sometimes forced to conclude that effective reform might depend on numbers. A crucial event was the night he spent in the Concord jail.
Why did Thoreau refuse to pay taxes?
Thoreau's refusal to pay the tax was intended as a direct protest against an unpopular tax and as an indirect protest against the government's condoning of slavery. He also linked slavery to the Mexican-American War because Mexico refused to cede ownership of Texas, which had nonetheless been admitted to the Union as a slave state. Staples had until then chosen to ignore Thoreau's tardiness as not being worth his trouble, but Thoreau probably hoped that his refusal would lead to imprisonment so that he could dramatize his protest. So when Staples reminded him that his refusal to pay might lead to jail, Thoreau embraced martyrdom and volunteered for immediate incarceration.
What river did Thoreau protest?
In A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, published the same year as "Resistance to Civil Government," Thoreau protests the effects of a dam near Billerica on the fish and farmers along the Merrimack River.
What is Thoreau's ideal program of social action?
Paradoxically, Thoreau's ideal program of social action requires no direct action on society. Thoreau was often impatient with reform movements and utopian communities.
What was Henry David Thoreau's most famous essay?
Next to Walden (1854), Henry David Thoreau 's (1817–1862) essay "Resistance to Civil Government " (1849) is his most famous work. Its influence on later writers and reformers such as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. has ensured that Thoreau's views on social issues would be not only controversial but misunderstood.
What is Walden's highest duty?
These concerns occur throughout his writings and are rooted in the same transcendentalist self-culture that he espouses in Walden: an individual's highest duty is to perfect the spiritual connection to God within. By striving for personal perfection, one leavens the whole loaf of humanity.
What book did Martin Luther King Jr. write about civil disobedience?
In America, Martin Luther King Jr. listed Thoreau's "Essay on Civil Disobedience" as one of the books that most influenced his thinking. He viewed Thoreau's philosophy as a "spiritual strategy" of nonviolence that provided a valuable supplement to the NAACP's strategies of legal resistance.
What is Thoreau's right of revolution?
Thoreau introduces the right of revolution, which all men recognize, and reflects on the American Revolution, the origins of which he finds less morally compelling than the issues at hand. Having developed the image of the government as a machine that may or may not do enough good to counterbalance what evil it commits, he urges rebellion. The opponents of reform, he recognizes, are not faraway politicians but ordinary people who cooperate with the system. The expression of opposition to slavery is meaningless. Only action — what you do about your objection — matters. Wrong will be redressed only by the individual, not through the mechanism of government. Although Thoreau asserts that a man has other, higher duties than eradicating institutional wrong, he must at least not be guilty through compliance. The individual must not support the structure of government, must act with principle, must break the law if necessary.
What does Thoreau say about civil disobedience?
Thoreau opens Civil Disobedience with the maxim "That government is best which governs least," and he speaks in favor of government that does not intrude upon men's lives. Government is only an expedient — a means of attaining an end.
What was Thoreau's main topic in his lecture?
Having spent one night in jail in July of 1846 for refusal to pay his poll tax in protest against slavery and the Mexican War, Thoreau lectured before the Concord Lyceum in January of 1848 on the subject "On the Relation of the Individual to the State." The lecture was published under the title "Resistance to Civil Government" in Elizabeth Peabody's Aesthetic Papers, in May 1849. It was included (as "Civil Disobedience") in Thoreau's A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers, published in Boston in 1866 by Ticknor and Fields, and reprinted many times. The essay formed part of Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers as edited by British Thoreau biographer Henry S. Salt and issued in London in 1890. "Civil Disobedience" was included in the Riverside Edition of 1894 (in Miscellanies, the tenth volume), in the Walden and Manuscript Editions of 1906 (in Cape Cod and Miscellanies, the fourth volume), and in the Princeton Edition (in Reform Papers, the third volume) in 1973. One of Thoreau's most influential writings, it has been published separately many times (Walter Harding's The Variorum Civil Disobedience, for example, appeared in 1967), included in volumes of selections from Thoreau (among them the 1937 Modern Library Edition of Walden and Other Writings of Henry David Thoreau, edited by Brooks Atkinson), and translated into European and Asian languages.
What does Thoreau say about the universe?
Thoreau asserts that he does not want to quarrel or to feel superior to others. He wants to conform to the laws of the land, but current laws are not honorable from a higher point of view. Politics and politicians act as though the universe were ruled by expediency.
Why does Thoreau say that government is an institution?
Thoreau asserts that government as an institution hinders the accomplishment of the work for which it was created. It exists for the sole purpose of ensuring individual freedom. Denying an interest in abolishing government, he states that he simply wants a better government.
What is Thoreau's ultimate responsibility?
In Civil Disobedience as throughout his other writings, Thoreau focuses on the individual's ultimate responsibility to live deliberately and to extract meaning from his own life; overseeing the machinery of society is secondary.
How can abolition be achieved?
Abolition can be achieved by withdrawing support from the government, which may be accomplished practically through the nonpayment of taxes. If imprisonment is the result, there is no shame in it — prison is the best place for a just man in an unjust society.
What is resistance to civil government?
“Resistance to Civil Government” is Henry David Thoreau’s literary effort at grappling with the limitation and control that the government, and occasionally, the people themselves, impose. But what Thoreau is trying to do is illustrate that the government can and should be better than it is. His argument stresses that the state should be controlled less by the ideals of a select few that have found themselves at the top spots and more as the average man, insignificant in himself, but the veritable backbone of the state, would have it run.
What is Thoreau's civil duty?
Thoreau argues it to be their civil duty that “if you proclaim yourself independent, live the independent life.”. In conforming and so failing to fulfill their civil duty, Americans let themselves be controlled.
What does Thoreau say about acorns and chestnuts?
Thoreau says, “I perceive that, when an acorn and a chestnut fall side by side, the one does not remain inert to make way for the other, but both obey their own laws, and spring and grow and flourish as best they can, ‘til one, perchance, overshadows and destroys the other. If a plant cannot live according to its own nature, it dies; and so a man.”.
What is the army Thoreau describes?
The armies are of men that have been subjected to a stripping of their conscience. They know that they are engaged in terrible events for men are not inherently prone to fight. As Thoreau describes them, “Men at all? Or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man of power”.
What is Thoreau's main motive?
Then there is the issue of taxes as being the primary motive, as it is the one motive that Thoreau is most familiar, to “resist” the civil government.
What is Thoreau's view on democracy?
But Thoreau does not see the democracy as conducting itself in any sort of idyllic fashion. He argues that we are dependent on the government for nothing. “It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in the way.“ It seems, therefore, that the government is dependent upon the American people to function properly. The American people should be allowed to let it be known what type of government they would be happy with and those wishes should be quickly granted.
What is Thoreau's argument about government?
He says “government is at best an expedient”.
Is a government an expedient?
Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government. The standing army is only an arm ...
Is it desirable to cultivate a respect for the law?
It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience.
