On the Duty of Civil Disobedience: Premium Edition

Written by Henry David Thoreau

Narrated by Jack Shelly

On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1848) is an essay from a speech by Henry David Thoreau, a lifelong abolitionist. The slavery crisis inflamed New England in the 1840s-1850s. The speech dealt with slavery, but at the same time criticized American imperialism, particularly the Mexican–American War. Thoreau asserts that because governments are typically more harmful than helpful, they therefore cannot be justified. Democracy is no cure for this, as majorities simply by virtue of being majorities do not also gain the virtues of wisdom and justice. The judgment of an individual's conscience is not necessarily inferior to the decisions of a political body or majority, and so "[i]t is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right... Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Audioliterature
• Release date: Feb 28, 2019

Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau was born in 1817 in Concord, Massachusetts. He spent time as a school teacher after attending Harvard College but was dismissed for his refusal to administer corporal punishment. In 1845, wanting to write his first book, he moved to Walden Pond and built his cabin on land owned by Ralph Waldo Emerson. It was during his time at Walden that Thoreau was imprisoned briefly for not paying taxes; this experience became the basis for his well-known essay "Civil Disobedience." He died of tuberculosis in 1862 at the age of 44.