Civil Disobedience And Crito Analysis

Civil disobedience is defined as the refusal to obey the demands or certain laws of a government/ occupying power. Without resorting to violence or active events of conflict, it is typically used in the form of a peaceful protest. Civil disobedience has been seen in historical context as a main approach and philosophy of nationalist movements in Africa, India, and also in the American civil rights movement. It can also be a useful tactic in labor, anti-war, and other social movements occurring in numerous countries around the world. In both Sophocles’ Antigone and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, the author describes two very different displays of civil disobedience. Antigone disobeyed “man’s law” and buried her brother. Martin Luther King, Jr., on the other hand, fought to change the law for the rights of a large group of people. For this reason, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s efforts were more admirable than the efforts of Antigone.

Historian, playwright, and social activist, Howard Zinn expresses, “Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.” Even in a democratic government, injustices and hardships often arise. As a result of these problems citizens must find the power within themselves to make a change and start protest even if methods are thought to be unjust or unlawful. The idea that protest is crucial to a functioning society can be found in, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, The Crucible, and Civil Disobedience, which all demonstrate the effects of conforming to society's standards and letting the oppressed continue to undergo pain and misfortune. “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, was written by Martin Luther King jr. after he was arrested during a protest. The letter discusses his true feelings and thoughts towards members of the clergy and encourages them to support him further on his journey to end racial inequality. Henry David Thoreau was a recluse who tried to further himself from society and went as far to consider himself a martyr. In Civil Disobedience, Thoreau scolds the general population in an attempt to change their thoughts on social issues like slavery, and urge them to take a stand, and protest against the government. Around the time of the McCarthy Trials, famous playwright Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible, although the play takes place in the 1600s it is meant to relate to the McCarthy trials that happened in the 1950s. Throughout the piece Miller continuously explains what happens when a group of people blindly follow the government and refuse to take a stand. In the end, as seen in the works these influential people, as well as Howard Zinn, it is clear that without protest severe consequences occur and change does not happen. Overall Martin Luther King jr., Henry David Thoreau, and Arthur Miller all warn against the convenience of submitting to an unjust status quo, and argue that the only way to be a good citizen is to risk personal comfort and protest the injustice in defense of the greater good.

“To stand up for what you believe in is more important than to be scared of imprisonment or death.” – Socrates The Apology

In paragraph 26 of “Civil Disobedience,” Thoreau claims the state punishes people who aren’t deserving, therefore all people deserve to be punished. In fact, Thoreau writes, the only place to be true to who you are is in jail. Thoreau thinks that jail is the only place that your opinion matters, as you’re in jail because of an action, and once in jail those same actions are better accepted by your peers. Thoreau adds that it is difficult to fight for what is right if you don’t know what is

Civil disobedience is defined as the “refusal to obey civil laws in an effort to induce change in government policy or legislation, characterized by nonviolent means”; theories on this topic have been debated for centuries. (American Heritage Dictionary 3rd Edition pg161) Henry David Thoreau was well known for his refusal to participate in the political systems or activities of his era, not only by refusing to pay his poll taxes for six consecutive years, but also by announcing that he did not wish to be regarded as a member of any incorporated society. In Civil Disobedience, Thoreau stresses the need to prioritize one’s conscience over the dictates of laws. A person should not be obligated to devote his or her life to eliminating evils from the world, but is only obligated not to participate in such evils themselves. He argues that the government rarely proves itself useful and this derives from the power from the majority because they are the strongest group, not because they hold the most legitimate views. Justice is the quality of being just, impartial or fair. Thoreau doubted the effectiveness of reform within the government, and argued that voting and petitioning for change served useless. He felt that justice had different standards for each different group. Which raises the question, is justice fair for everyone? When a government is unjust, people should

As a defender of civic virtue, the significance of obligation and authority of one’s representative government epitomizes the magnitude of respect that Socrates had for Athenian Jurisprudence, irrespective of the fact that he was prosecuted against. In the accounts of the Apology and Crito, there exists a plethora of evidence that demonstrate Socrates’s adherence of institutionalized authority. His loyalty of the Athenian State derives from his notion that the obligation to surrender to the law manifests a just society. One may ask, “how is it possible for a persecuted man to continue to profess allegiance to a polity that sought his trial and execution”? Though many would not have the capacity to sustain such integrity, Socrates had his reasons in

Civil disobedience has been a common element in human behavior. From the time of antiquity to the present, people lash out in various ways against standards that society has placed upon citizens. Two ancient examples of disobedient actions come from different ages revered for standards that hold today and provide a basis for modern law; the Greek and ancient Roman empires. From the Greeks, we have come to know the story of Socrates as memorialized by Plato, and the Roman age was the time of Perpetua, an early Christian woman. The fate of those individuals is the same – a death sentence handed down by the society they lived in. Although the conclusion of their respective lives is the same,

Socrates argues that it’s unjust to break the law even if people think the law is wrong because those are merely opinions. He believes that one should never harm others and breaking the law is going against the government and compared it to a child disobeying his parents. He will never go against the foundation of the state and government. He provides three reasons to defend the state: “the state is responsible for the very existence of the individual, parents wouldn’t have met and children would never have been bored”, the state nurtures and aids in building one’s character by providing no education, books, writing or culture, the state establishes law and order and without it, there would be no justice”.

“Shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? (Thoreau 184).” The choice of acting upon unjust laws is up to the person whether they want to follow with what they believe is morally right no matter the consequences. Thoreau, for example, was arrested for not paying poll taxes for six years. Thoreau peacefully served his time in his night in jail, having known beforehand the consequences for his actions, yet he went along and committed the crime. Even though the crime Thoreau committed didn’t harm anyone, it made a general statement to what he stood for, that government cannot change his beliefs and make him follow laws that are unjust to him. “When I meet a government which says to me, "Your money or your life," why should I be in haste to give it my money? It may be in a great strait, and not know what to do: I cannot help that. It must help itself; do as I do. It is not worth the while to snivel about it. I am not responsible for the successful working of the machinery of society.(Thoreau

Although Socrates was wrongly imprisoned and waiting the death penalty, which he acknowledges, he, according to his argument, is not permitted to act unjustly in return, or break the law. Pertaining to justice, the laws to Socrates are the most important and in order to keep the city functioning as he states in the dialogue, “in comparison with [one’s] mother and father and all [one’s] forebears, [the] fatherland is more precious and venerable, more sacred and held in higher esteem among gods, as well as among human beings who have any sense” (Plato 39). Again, Martin Luther King Jr. departs from Socrates’ view in that he argues that those laws that are unjust need to be broken in a civil way, in order to direct consideration of their shortcomings. According to King, “one has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws [and] one has a

Civil disobedience spawns a major and widely debated issue by many who established by well-known intelligent scholars and many examples of civil disobedience become displayed. The acts of civil disobedience can be noted in major works such as Sophocles?s Antigone, King?s ?Letter from Birmingham Jail?, or even from Plato?s ?from Crito?. A specific claim exemplified throughout these works make that civil disobedience races in gaining popularity and should remain allowed, and continued to be seen as a solution to reform poorly established laws. A claim represented is, civil disobedience is right. Rhetorically, appeals such

Have you ever felt a rule you had to follow was unjust? Have you ever felt your moral instinct tell you not to follow it? Prominent figures in American history, Martin Luther King Jr. and Henry David Thoreau, felt this way and decided to not follow the rules imposed on them by indulging in “civil disobedience”. Civil disobedience is the act of peacefully disobeying laws or customs with the purpose of combating moral injustice. This form of protest has proven to be quite effective in making change in history. In “Civil Disobedience” and the “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, both Thoreau and King Jr. write their justification for their actions as well as their feelings regarding the particular disputed

Socrates was a former infantryman, having fought in three campaigns during the war with Sparta, so it is no surprise that he believed justice should not be invoked by the citizens’ pleading. He

In Plato’s works Apology and Crito there is an attempt by Socrates to defend himself in court and defend his choice to receive the death penalty when found guilty. Although he makes very valid and strong arguments throughout one can only wonder why such a wise person would choose death over life. The following essay will analyze three quotes from Apology and Crito, find the correlation between them, and reveal any flaws that may exsist inside these arguments made by Socrates.

In most circumstances ending the life of a criminal as their punishment usually reflects the magnitude of the crimes that they committed, crimes that often involve the deaths of others or equally heinous actions, yet one historical example stands out for not following this rule. In 399 BC, in Athens, Greece, two men put a meek philosopher named Socrates on trial for two crimes he purportedly committed: not following state gods and corrupting the youth. These charges alleged against Socrates reflected the general sentiment of Athenians regarding Socrates; namely that he was an atheistic charlatan. The jury found Socrates guilty of these crimes and executed, a punishment that does not logically befit the supposed crimes that he committed. No sane or logical jury would find him guilty of such vague claims, especially in such a vehemently democratic polis as Athens, and they would never have executed Socrates for such meager offenses, nonetheless he was. Execution was especially unnecessary because Socrates himself was on the verge of death; he was in his seventies in the Greek era, so he was bound to die soon anyways. The central focus, then, is of understanding how on Earth the birthplace of democracy could have gone so awry and when they tried, convicted, and executed Socrates. Athens sentenced Socrates to death because his beliefs were against the flow of the changing Athenian ideological landscape, people regarded him as a pompous, elitist charlatan who impugned their core