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 2ParkSquare,MiltonPark,Abingdon,OxonOX144RN andbyRoutledge 711ThirdAvenue,NewYork,NY10017 RoutledgeisanimprintoftheTaylor&FrancisGroup,aninformabusiness ©2015BobPeppermanTaylor TherightofBobPeppermanTaylortobeidentifiedasauthorofthisworkhasbeen assertedbyhiminaccordancewithsections77and78oftheCopyright,Designs andPatentsAct1988. Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedorreproduced orutilisedinanyformorbyanyelectronic,mechanical,orothermeans, nowknownorhereafterinvented,includingphotocopyingandrecording, orinanyinformationstorageorretrievalsystem,withoutpermissionin writingfromthepublishers. Trademarknotice:Productorcorporatenamesmaybetrademarksor registeredtrademarks,andareusedonlyforidentificationand explanationwithoutintenttoinfringe. BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData 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