The Moral Grounds of Civil Disobedience

Abstract

HARRY PROSCH'S article, Limits to the Moral Claim in Civil Disobedience,' confuses civil disobedience with defiance of law as such and consequently seems effectively to eliminate what has long stood as the last bastion of the individual against his society short of open rebellion. Prosch's reference to Socrates in the Apology is indicative of this confusion. True, Socrates' disobedience of the Thirty was disobedience to what he considered an illegal government-but it still was disobedience to the government in power, disobedience in the name of justice.2 The disobedience was civil, since Socrates did not attack or otherwise try to overthrow the Thirty; he simply went home and expected to be put to death for his act. Even more instructive, however, as to Plato's views on civil disobedience is Socrates' announcement to the jury and the citizens of Athens that they need not order him to cease his activities as a philosopher because he will not obey them but will continue to obey the god.3 Socrates' here is not defying unlawful rulers but the duly constituted voice of the laws of Athens. As he points out in the Crito, the laws have no voice of their own; they can speak only through men, and whatever the jury decides becomes the legal decision.4 There is no other source for determining what the law is or how it applies to particular cases. The subtle distinction between Socrates' position in the Apology and in the Crito is precisely that between civil disobedience and defiance of law. Socrates in the Apology says, shall not change my conduct even itf I am to die many times over.5 He does not deny that the jury has the authority to command him to cease his search for truth if such is their interpretation of the law and of his profession. But he claims the prerogative of accepting their penalty (even of death) rather than their law. Having made this claim, Socrates is bound to submit to the sentence imposed upon him (whether justly or unjustly) by the, jury. Hence, in the Crito, Socrates refuses to defy the laws of Athens by attempting to escape after he has been condemned to death. Socrates did not consider himself as a destroyer of the laws when he said that he would not obey any order to desist from his philosophic activities. He openly stated that there were certain things that, as a man, he would not do; yet, as a citizen, he stood prepared to undergo execution if so ordered. Had he tried to evade his punishment once he was sentenced, he would have been a destroyer of the laws. Men are, of necessity, social beings; they are not thereby automatically chattels of whatever sort of society they happen to find themselves in. Moral persuasion and orderly political processes are obviously the preferable means for a man to use to change those things he finds wrong in his society. But moral persuasion, to be effective, requires in those to be persuaded a special set of conditions which may be entirely beyond the control of the man attempting the persuasion. And use of the legal machinery for social change requires a certain amount of political power and a particular leverage in order to make that power felt in the right places. If the morally acceptable defenses of the individual citizen against laws he finds unacceptable are restricted to moral persuasion and legal processes, then the man who can find no audience and who has no power is left with no moral resource within the structure of the society, and his own recourse is violence-rebellion or crime. Moral persuasion is an empty phrase to the