The Routledge Guidebook to Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience

233 Pages·2015·1.82 MB·English

by  Bob Pepperman Taylor

Routledge Guides to the Great Books
The Routledge Guidebook to
’
Thoreau s Civil Disobedience
Sinceitspublicationin1849,HenryDavidThoreau’sCivilDisobediencehas
influenced protestors, activists and political thinkers all over the world.
Including the full text of Thoreau’s essay, The Routledge Guidebook to
Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience explores the context of his writing, analyzes
different interpretations of the text and considers how posthumous edits
to Civil Disobedience have altered its intended meaning. It introduces the
readerto:
(cid:1) Thecontext ofThoreau’sworkandthebackgroundtohis writing
(cid:1) Thesignificance ofthe referencesandallusions
(cid:1) Thecontemporaryreception ofThoreau’sessay
(cid:1) The ongoing relevance of the work and a discussion of different
perspectives onthework.
Providing a detailed analysis which closely examines Thoreau’s original
work,thisisanessentialintroductionforstudentsofpolitics,philosophyand
history,andallthoseseekinga fullappreciation ofthisclassic work.
Bob Pepperman Taylor is based in the Department of Political Science at
theUniversity ofVermont.
ROUTLEDGE GUIDES TO THE
GREAT BOOKS
Series Editor: Anthony Gottlieb
TheRoutledgeGuidestotheGreatBooksprovideidealintroductionstotheworkofthe
mostbrilliantthinkersofalltime,fromAristotletoMarxandNewtontoWollstonecraft.
At the core of each Guidebook is a detailed examination of the central ideas and
argumentsexpoundedinthegreatbook.Thisisbookendedbyanopeningdiscus-
sion of the context within which the work was written and a closing look at the
lasting significance of the text. The Routledge Guides to the Great Books therefore
provide students everywhere with complete introductions to the most important,
influentialandinnovativebooksofalltime.
Available:
Hobbes’LeviathanGlenNewey
Galileo’sDialogueMauriceA.Finocchiaro
Aristotle’sNicomacheanEthicsGerardJ.Hughes
Hegel’sPhenomenologyofSpiritRobertStern
Locke’sEssayConcerningHumanUnderstandingE.J.Lowe
Wollstonecraft’sAVindicationoftheRightsofWomanSandrineBergès
Wittgenstein’sPhilosophicalInvestigationsMarieMcGinn
Heidegger’sBeingandTimeStephenMulhall
Plato’sRepublicNickolasPappas
Forthcoming:
Descartes’MeditationsonFirstPhilosophyGaryHatfield
DeBeauvoir’sTheSecondSexNancyBauer
Mill’sOnLibertyJonathanRiley
Routledge Guides to the Great Books
The Routledge Guidebook to
’
Thoreau s Civil Disobedience
Bob Pepperman Taylor
FirstpublishedinTheRoutledgeGuidestotheGreatBooksseriesin2015
byRoutledge
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©2015BobPeppermanTaylor
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Taylor,BobPepperman.
TheRoutledgeGuidebooktoThoreau’sCivilDisobedience/BobPeppermanTaylor.
(RoutledgeGuidestotheGreatBooks)
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
1.Thoreau,HenryDavid,1817-1862.Civildisobedience.2.Thoreau,
HenryDavid,1817-1862--Politicalandsocialviews.3.Politicsandliterature--United
States--History--19thcentury.4.Civildisobedience.I.Title.
PS3051.C5T392014
818’.309--dc23
2014023181
ISBN:978-0-415-81860-5(hbk)
ISBN:978-0-415-81859-9(pbk)
ISBN:978-1-315-73935-9(ebk)
TypesetinGaramond
byTaylor&FrancisBooks
C
ONTENTS
Series editor’s preface vii
Acknowledgements viii
1 Introduction 1
2 Reading Civil Disobedience 16
Section 1 21
Section 2 24
Section 3 40
Section 4 42
Section 5 45
Section 6 46
Section 7 50
Section 8 52
3 Contexts 54
Emerson and transcendentalism 54
Abolitionism 64
The Mexican American war 74
Thoreau’s own work 80
vi CONTENTS
4 Interpretations 101
Civil Disobedience as irrelevant to contemporary
political life 102
Civil Disobedience as incoherent 109
Civil Disobedience as anti-democratic 114
Civil Disobedience as a contribution to democratic
theory 122
5 Civil Disobedience and political philosophy 133
Individual conscience 135
Consent 142
Obligation 149
The moral claims of democratic participation 154
The morality of political action 160
Capitalism and alienation 166
Nature 171
6 Postscript 179
Appendix: Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau 189
Bibliography 216
Index 221
S ’
ERIES EDITOR S PREFACE
“Thepastisaforeigncountry,”wroteaBritishnovelist,L.P.Hartley:
“they do things differently there.” The greatest books in the canon
of the humanities and sciences can be foreign territory, too. This
series is a set of excursions written by expert guides who know
how to make such places become more familiar.
All the books covered in this series, however long ago they
were written, have much to say to us now or help to explain the
waysinwhichwehavecometothinkabouttheworld.Eachvolume
is designed not only to describe a set of ideas, and how they devel-
oped, but also to evaluate them. This requires what one might
call a bifocal approach. To engage fully with an author, one has to
pretend that he or she is speaking to us; but to understand a text’s
meaning, it is often necessary to remember its original audience,
too. It is all too easy to mistake the intentions of an old argument
by treating it as a contemporary one.
The Routledge Guides to the Great Books are aimed at students in
the broadest sense, not only those engaged in formal study. The
intended audience of the series is all those who want to understand
the books that have had the largest effects.
Anthony Gottlieb
Series editor Anthony Gottlieb is the author of The Dream of
Reason: A History of Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance.
A
CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It has been a pleasure to work with Andy Humphries, Iram Satti,
Siobhan Poole, and everyone at Routledge involved with the
development and completion of this book. Patricia Mardeusz of
the University of Vermont Bailey/Howe library deserves many
thanks for her boundless enthusiasm and helpfulness. Once again,
IamindebtedtoPatrickNealandFranPeppermanTaylorfortheir
thoughtful and generous readings of the manuscript.
11
INTRODUCTION
In the summer of 1846, Henry David Thoreau was arrested in
Concord, Massachusetts, for not paying his poll tax, a tax levied
on each eligible voter in the state. He spent one night sharing a
cell with one other inmate, an arson suspect, in the local jail.
During the evening of his arrest, some unnamed individual paid
Thoreau’s tax. In the morning he was released and resumed his
normal affairs.
By any measure, this was not at the time a significant political
event. Indeed, it looked more than anything else like an eccentric
interaction between Thoreau and the constable, Sam Staples.
Thoreau had come to Concord village from his cabin on the shore
of Walden Pond. He was on an errand to pick up a repaired shoe
from the cobbler when Staples confronted him about the unpaid
tax. It is likely that Staples, who was responsible for collecting the
localtaxes,waspersonallyliableforthe$1.50(andperhapsthree or
four years’ worth of unpaid tax as well) regardless of whether or
not he collected what Thoreau owed. It appears, nonetheless, that
Staples offered, as an act of friendship and neighborliness, either to
loan Thoreau the money or just pay the tax himself in the event
that Thoreau was short on funds. Thoreau rejected the offer (none