History Of Civil Disobedience

There were many times in history when breaking the law has been justified. Great men like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King broke the law and changed the world to a better one. However, there are numerous philosophers that have argued that because it involves breaking the law, civil disobedience needs special justification. In this paper I will argue how an act of civil disobedience would be valid when a person goes against their country’s laws to do the right thing. First I will discuss what Socrates says about civil disobedience in Plato’s Crito and what I think about it. Second, I will say and clarify why civil disobedience is justifiable when doing the right thing. I will also explain what civil disobedience is as I understand it, …show more content…
For instance, when the government allows a wrong law to go by and this law is against our ethics and what we believe, are we supposed to just let this pass? Don’t we have the right to do something about it? We can take a few examples from history. We have learned from history that in the past there were laws against women, such as the law that said that women were not permitted to vote. Laws like this one were unjust and unfair against women. The same happened with the laws that allowed slavery, and segregation. These laws were all against someone or a specific group of people, and all together they were morally wrong. Civil Disobedience corrected these laws that were unfair and brought justice not only to the United States of America, but also to the entire world. As a result, we can see why civil disobedience is absolutely appropriate when other methods do not seem to work as one wants to do the right thing and correct the …show more content…
Many great philosophers like Socrates where against civil disobedience since it involved breaking the law, which caused Socrates to die for an unfair cause and left his family without a father and his country without a great and wise man. Throughout history we have seen how great man like Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi made acts of civil disobedience for the sake of stopping the unjust. Even though these men lives ended in tragedy, the result of their acts were beneficial to entire nations and to the whole world. Civil disobedience is a peaceful act, and is not intended to harm but to undo what is wrong in order to make our society a better one. Disobeying an unjust law is justifiable as long as it is in a non-violent way. We have no obligation to obey a law that violates our rights, and we have the right to act against it if is necessary in order to do what is