Civil disobedience is a great tradition. Particularly in America, where we have Thoreau, who refused to pay a poll tax, because the money supported the Mexican War and the Fugitive Slave Law. Then, there’s Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. And the Viet-Nam War protester. But then, as philosophers, we must ask, what exactly is civil disobedience? Suppose Henry Thoreau and Henry Schmo both refuse to pay their poll tax. Thoreau does it for the noble reasons you mentioned, but Henry Schmo does it because he’d rather spend the money at the pub. They're both disobeying a civil law; they're both, in a literal sense, civilly disobedient. What’s the difference? Just that Henry has good intentions?

Thoreau was trying to influence policy; his non-payment a speech act. Is that the important difference? What if Thoreau’s grouchy uncommunicative cousin Larry Thoreau didn’t pay his poll tax, either. He also didn’t want to support the fugitive slave law and the Mexican war, but he didn’t tell anyone why. So it wasn’t really a speech act, no attempt at communication. The war and the slave act made him sick; he couldn’t bear to pay his taxes, so he didn’t. Still seems kind of admirable. But no speech was involved. Is that Civil Disobedience?

很明显，非暴力反抗不是一个科学上精确的概念。我不能给你一个定义。But I bet we can list some traits that aparadigmcase of civil disobedience will have. For one thing, it will be a refusal to obey or follow a law that is itself unjust, like the law against making salt that Gandhi broke, or a law that supports unjust policies, like the poll tax. That’s a start, but it doesn’t tell us the difference between famous Henry and grouchy Larry.

Gandhi and Thoreau weren’t justdisobeyingthe law, butprotesting通过公开这样做来制定法律和政策。他们的行为是言语的，也是不服从的。他们的行为是公开的，他们并没有试图逃避惩罚。同样的，还有那些在拒绝为黑人服务的商店里静坐的人。所以爱发牢骚的拉里·梭罗被淘汰了，至少作为一个典型的公民不服从者。但这并不意味着我们不能崇拜他。

继续我们的范例，通常我们会想到非暴力活动，比如静坐和游行。当然，我们的目的是要改变一些事情;废除法律或改变政策。

Putting it all together, a paradigm act of civil disobedience includes: Disobeying or refusing to follow a law or policy believed to be unjust, or supportive of injustice, publicly and non-violently, with the intent of drawing attention to the law and policy, and getting it changed.

That leads to the next question. We admire all those people we mentioned --- Thoreau, Gandhi, King, the student boycotters in the Civil rights movement, and so on. Does that mean that they wererightto break the law? How can it be right to break the law?

我们这些仰慕者认为这些法律或政策是不公正的。如果一群非暴力的人堵住了堕胎诊所的入口呢?我并不认为允许堕胎的法律是不公正的。但这些人知道。这就说明他们在道德上是正确的吗?

We admire those who protest the laws we think are unjust. But we're all part of a democracy full of people with very different values. We're supposed to settle things by voting, or having our representatives in legislatures and congress vote. But any law or policy on a controversial issue is going to go againstsomeone’sdeeply held beliefs. Does that give them the moral right to disobey it? That would create chaos.

在其他条件相同的情况下，在我们这样的社会中，似乎有其他补救措施，比如投票和诉诸法庭，这些方法应该首先尝试。但其他因素并不总是相同的。时间可能是纠正不公正的关键，但法庭需要时间和金钱。有时，非暴力反抗似乎必须是第一手段，而不是最后手段，因为这是唯一的方式，使任何人关心一个不公正的政策，及时采取任何行动。

这并不能完全解决所有问题或回答所有问题。幸运的是，肯和我将与曼彻斯特大学政治哲学教授金伯利·布朗利(Kimberley Brownlee)一起，帮助我们思考问题。希望你能加入我们!