This dissertation examines the moral character of civil disobedience. The discussion begins with a conceptual analysis of civil disobedience which eschews standard definitions in favour of a paradigm case approach, highlighting a parallel between the communicative aspects of civil disobedience and the communicative aspects of lawful punishment by the state. Foundations for a moral evaluation of civil disobedience are then laid down through, first, an examination of the nature of wrongdoing and justification, and second, a critique of contemporary defences of political obligation. The absence of political obligation, it is argued, does not immediately justify civil disobedience even in reprehensible regimes because, in all contexts, adherence to the law and disobedience of the law must be judged on the basis of their character and consequences. Various considerations relevant to the justifiability of civil disobedience are then examined before the discussion turns to the three principal claims defended in this thesis. The first is that people have a moral right to engage in civil disobedience irrespective of both the political regime and the merits of their cause. The second is that the reasons for which people engage in civil disobedience may be understood in terms of a pursuit of ideals. When motivated by a deep commitment to the genuine ideals of their society, disobedients may be said to demonstrate responsible citizenship. The third claim is that the law should treat disobedients differently from other offenders. When civil disobedience is morally justified, and sometimes when it is not, the law has reason to be lenient to its practitioners. In defending these claims, this discussion critiques not only the 'classical' narrow conception of civil disobedience as a public, non-violent, conscientious breach of law for which disobedients are willing to be punished, but also broader conceptions of civil disobedience which take a modest view of its justifiability and accord it limited status as a moral right.

Resumé in English In the first chapter, author of the thesis focused on history and creation of the term "civil disobedience" Second chapter was focused on different views on what term civil disobedience actually means and how some of the famous legal theorethics as John Rawls, Hannah Arendt and Ronald Dworkin understand it. In the third chapter, there was specification of the term civil disobedience in all its theorethical aspects in context of polemics with all the different views in previous chapter. Fourth chapter was focused on civil disobedience in democracy and its role, specifics arising from the nature of democracy. In the fifth chapter autor was focused on specifics and nature of civil disobedience in non-democratic states together with mentioning a few examples from history. Sixth chapter compared effects and mutual influence of violent or non-violent civil disobedience and its effectivity. In the seventh chapter, author described in more detail one of the examples of civil disobedience in the Czech Republic which was decided by court, for describing how the process works in real life situations.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Alberta, 2010. / Title from pdf file main screen (viewed March 9, 2010) "A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, Dept. of Drama." Includes bibliographical references.

The Community Charge (poll tax) was seen by both its supporters and opponents alike as an attempt to promote the British New Right's concept of responsible active citizenship in local politics. The reaction of different groups of citizens to the tax is explored through a detailed case study of events in the London Borough of Ealing, an archetypal London suburb. Here, as in most urban areas, organised anti-poll tax protestors clashed with MPs, councillors and the local magistracy, who played a large role in enforcing the measure. It shows how the protestors attempted to mobilise a 'moral community' built around the idea of 'fair' taxation and promote a campaign of civil disobedience to force abolition. This in turn compelled local actors to make principled choices about the enforcement of a law of which many of them strongly disapproved. The protestors' tactics seemed to strike a popular chord and at least a fifth of all Ealing charge-payers (and eight million people nationally) failed to pay the tax in 1990/91. However, the detailed evidence also suggests that non-payment can best be seen as a mass expression of bloody mindedness, rather than a concerted and organised campaign of civil disobedience. Nevertheless the protests had important implications for the practise of left-wing citizenship in contemporary Britain and served to highlight growing divisions between the mainstream and radical Left. Previously published academic accounts have addressed the 'high' politics of the poll tax. The thesis explores instead the 'popular' politics of the poll tax crisis in a suitably local setting and so redresses an imbalance in the literature. It therefore makes an original contribution to knowledge and understanding of the relationship between conventional means of political participation, radical popular protest movements and competing concepts of citizenship.

Despite its ubiquity in debate over the justifiability of civil disobedience and conscientious objection, “conscience” remains an opaque concept. The attempt to define and employ it properly is not a purely academic exercise. The political language and behavior we associate with conscientiousness are empty to the point of being vulnerable to co-option by manifestly non-conscientious, violent, and reactionary movements. My argument is that the ease with which political actors adopt the language of conscience is due, not poor public understanding of the concept of “conscience,” but to the concept itself. In modern philosophical interpretations of conscience, such as that of Martin Luther and John Locke, the conscience is reified as a moral faculty or interior conversation of the individual. This is a departure from classical views of conscientiousness (for instance, Augustine’s), which emphasize the shared, fragile and habitual nature of conscience. Once “conscientiousness” is reified as “conscience,” it becomes difficult to characterize, except in negative terms, as an inner space free from tradition and force. My thesis is that the co-option of the language of conscience stems, in part, from the empty and conflicted characterization of philosophy in modern contract theory. One example of this conflicted characterization of conscience is the abortive project of distinguishing civil disobedience and conscientious objection. In law, politics, and philosophy, it is difficult to offer sound reasons for distinguishing these latter categories, despite frequent attempts to do so. The attempt fails on conceptual as well as practical grounds. I criticize two prominent treatments of civil disobedience and conscientious objection in evidence of this claim (John Rawls and Michael Walzer). When it comes to the language of conscience, modern American culture has committed the philosophic fallacy (John Dewey). We have substituted the clear divisions and images created by conscientious movements for the process that created them. I argue that “conscience” is best seen as a quality of healthy debate between adversaries—debates over problems so fundamental that they will be carried on in extra-legal and even illegal spheres. Conscience is a not a language that just any political actor can speak at will. It is a series of decisions that indicate to a public that we are not political enemies but political adversaries, seeking a political future together (Chantal Mouffe).

Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This dissertation argues that there is an agreed upon commonsense view of violence, but beyond this view, definitions for kinds of violence are essentially contested and non-neutrally, politically ideological, given that the political itself is an essentially contested concept defined in relation to ideologies that oppose one another. The first chapter outlines definitions for a commonsense view of violence produced by Greene and Brennan. This chapter argues that there are incontestable instances of violence that are almost universally agreed upon, such as when an adult intentionally smashes a child’s head against a table, purposefully causing harm. It is also claimed that, because political, ideological distinctions between kinds of violence arise from the creation of moral equivalences to the commonsense view of violence, political ideology is the source of disagreement. The second chapter argues that the concept of violence and of the political are essentially contested concepts. Gallie’s criteria for what counts as an essentially contested concept are utilized in order to argue that violence is an essentially contested concept at the level of the political, though not at the level of the commonsense view of violence. In fact, the paradigmatic cases that the commonsense view of violence pertains to serve as the core cases that are then interpreted as kinds of violence at the ideological level. To define violence as altogether wrong, or to define kinds of violence as acceptable and others as wrong is itself a politically ideological move to make, such as when liberalism defines its own uses of violence as justified and legitimate, and its enemy’s violence as unjustifiable and illegitimate. The World Health Organization and Bufacchi’s definitions for violence are presented, as are the definition for terroristic violence defined by Nagel. Erlenbusch’s critique of a liberal view, such as that of Nagel and the World Health Organization, is addressed as a reflection on the fact that, beyond the commonsense view of violence, violence is an essentially contested concept for which an ideologically, politically non-neutral definition is unlikely. The third chapter outlines numerous definitions produced by various philosophers, historians, and theorists, such as Machiavelli, Arendt, Hobbes, Kant, Treitschke, Weber, Bakunin, Sorel, Žižek, and Benjamin. The definitions produced by each demonstrates that person’s political ideological assumptions. Their definitions demonstrate an ongoing disagreement, in the sense of Rancière’s formulation for what counts as a disagreement in that each theorist defines kinds of violence under the yoke of their own political ideology. They all might agree that a single act is violent, under the commonsense view of violence, but they disagree concerning what kind of violence it is. So, though they may point to the same events and actions as examples of violence, what they mean fundamentally differs, and this means that they disagree. Their disagreement arises due to their respective political ideologies. This disagreement shows that there is no neutral justification for the neutrality of a state, particularly if a neutral state must defend itself. The state is instead defined in historically contextual terms of how the state relates to kinds of violence, and the distinctions between kinds of violence are not themselves politically, ideologically neutral. So, the concept of violence, beyond the commonsense view, is an essentially contested concept for which a non-neutral definition is unlikely. Beyond the commonsense view, political ideology is inextricably bound up within distinctions between kinds of violence. The fourth chapter then examines arguments on the question of whether nonviolence counts as a kind of violence. If distinctions between kinds of violence are essentially contested and non-neutrally defined, and nonviolence is defined as distinct from violence, then it follows that nonviolence is an essentially contested concept for which no non-neutral definition is possible, at least beyond a commonsense view of nonviolence. A commonsense view of nonviolence is defined as the assumption that nonviolence is not violent in the way that the commonsense view defines violence. That is, nonviolence occurs when there is no action or event that most people would define as a violent one. Definitions for nonviolence, civil disobedience, nonviolent political actions, and nonviolent direct actions are then outlined. These definitions aim at showing that the doctrine of nonviolence does not merely refer to nonviolent acts, but to a strategy that is a means to defeating violence. Given that what counts as the nonviolence that defeats violence is ideologically a matter of disagreement, nonviolence, in this sense, can count as a kind of violence. The fifth chapter concludes, raising questions concerning how violence can be valued, the degree to which a state cannot neutrally justify its neutrality, and the degree to which, beyond the commonsense view of violence, there ever could be agreement concerning what counts as kinds of violence. 1 In this dissertation, I draw on a number of ideas/passages that appeared earlier in my paper “The Efficacy of Scapegoating and Revolutionary Violence," in Philosophy, Culture, and Traditions: A Journal of the World Union of Catholic Philosophical Societies, ed. William Sweet, 10(2014), 203-219. I am grateful to the editors of the journal for permission to draw on this material here.

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Communities of resistance are increasingly turning to radical tactics, including acts of civil disobedience, to fight back against encroaching fossil fuel infrastructure. The fight against the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) is no exception. The MVP is a 303-mile long proposed fracked gas pipeline in Virginia and West Virginia. I apply radical flank effect (RFE) theory and the theory of movement dynamism to understand the role of civil disobedience, as a radical flank, in the MVP resistance movement. I contribute to the literature on RFEs by focusing primarily on how the radical flank of this movement has affected within-movement social dynamics, like trust, unity, and interpersonal relations. I rely on 15 semi-structured interviews with pipeline fighters, both those who have and have not participated in acts of civil disobedience, to gain insight into the use of civil disobedience, as a radical flank in the movement. This movement has used diverse tactics to challenge construction of the MVP, making it a strong case for understanding the role of radical tactics, and their relationship to moderate tactics. I find several positive RFEs (energizing effects, connecting effects, engaging effects, uniting effects, and movement outcome effects) and some potential negative RFEs (conflict/alienation, fear of consequences and organizational risks). I also find evidence of movement dynamism in the form of an ecosystem of tactics which emerged in the MVP resistance movement. Movement actors kept moderate and radical flanks publicly separate for strategic reasons while overlapping membership bridged the social dynamics of the movement, encouraging cohesion and collective movement identity. / Master of Science / Communities concerned about climate change are increasingly breaking the law in order to make their voices heard and stop dangerous coal, oil and natural gas projects. These actions are called civil disobedience and they have been used for decades in the United States, most prominently in the Civil Rights Movement. One such example in the fight against climate change is the resistance to the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a 303-mile long proposed natural gas pipeline in Virginia and West Virginia. I use social movement theories to understand the role that civil disobedience has played in the Mountain Valley Pipeline resistance movement. Specifically, I look at how the use of civil disobedience in this movement has affected the social dynamics of the movement, like trust, unity, or relationships in the movement. I spoke with 15 community members who have been active in fighting this pipeline to learn more. This movement has involved a wide range of different tactics, including civil disobedience, so it is a strong example to study for this research. My interviews with the community members revealed several positive effects as a result of the use of civil disobedience in the movement as well as a few potential risks/dangers. I also found that civil disobedience was able to work together with other types of tactics in a vibrant ecosystem that included mutual benefit. At the same time, I find that community members sought to keep some of the illegal tactics separate from more moderate tactics, like lawsuits or public comment submissions, in order to keep the moderate tactics safe. Despite this separation, I find that significant overlap of community members across different types of tactics was able to maintain a cohesive, common identity and unify people who were participating in different tactics, but fighting the same pipeline.

This thesis examines the concept of civil disobedience, and the role the latter can play in a democratic society. It aims to offer a moral justification for civil disobedience that departs from consequentialist or deontological considerations, and focuses instead on virtue ethics. By drawing attention to the notion of civic virtues, the thesis suggests that, under some circumstances, an act of civil disobedience is the very act displaying a virtuous disposition in the citizen who disobeys. Such disposition is interpreted in light of a duty each individual has to respect her fellow citizens as autonomous agents. This grounds, in turn, a moral obligation to respect the law. The central claim of the thesis is that the obligation towards the law is fulfilled not only through acts of obedience but also, under different circumstances, through acts of disobedience. The status of non-violence as a necessary component of civil disobedience is questioned, and it is argued that a degree of force or violence may be permissible in civil disobedience, when it is compatible with the duty to respect others’ autonomy. Subsequently, the thesis offers an analysis of ‘reasonableness’ as a civic virtue, and by comparing three different approaches to the issue of reasonable disagreement among democratic citizens, it defends the deliberative approach as the most suited for treating fellow citizens as autonomous agents. The last two chapters focus on the importance, for an act of civil disobedience, of the agent’s willingness to accept the legal consequences of her law-breaking behaviour. It is argued that a civil disobedient has an obligation to face the prospect of being punished for the breach of the law. However, in considering the behaviour of a virtuous civil disobedient who appears at her criminal trial, it is also claimed that she should plead not guilty and aim to persuade her fellow citizens that she does not deserve to be punished, because what she did does not constitute a criminal wrong. In doing so, this thesis depicts civil disobedience not as a merely permissible form of behaviour, but as a morally praiseworthy conduct within a democratic community.