Desobediencia Civil - Spanish translation by Hernando Jiménez

While Walden can be applied to almost anyone's life, "Civil Disobedience" is like a venerated architectural landmark: it is preserved and admired, and sometimes visited, but for most of us there are not many occasions when it can actually be used. Still, although it is seldom mentioned without references to Gandhi and King, "Civil Disobedience" has more history than many suspect. In the 1940's it was read by the Danish resistance, in the 1950's it was cherished by people who opposed McCarthyism, in the 1960's it was influential in the struggle against South African apartheid, and in the 1970's it was discovered by a new generation of anti-war activists. The lesson learned from all this experience is that Thoreau's ideas really do work, just as he imagined they would.

"Civil Disobedience" in three parts: One - Two - Three

(Originally published as "Resistance to Civil Government")

"I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau. As a result of his writings and personal witness, we are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest." - Martin Luther King, Jr, from his Autobiography, Chapter 2

"when, in the mid-1950's, the United States Information Service included as a standard book in all their libraries around the world a textbook of American literature which reprinted Thoreau's 'Civil Disobedience,' the late Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin succeeded in having that book removed from the shelves — specifically because of the Thoreau essay." - Walter Harding, in The Variorum Civil Disobedience

Much more information: Links to other "Civil Disobedience" sites

"Civil Disobedience" originated as a Concord Lyceum lecture delivered by Henry on January 26, 1848. It was first published in May of 1849, in Aesthetic Papers, a short-lived periodical that never managed a second issue. The modern title comes from Yankee in Canada, with Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers, an 1866 collection of Thoreau's work.

Copyright © 2004 Richard Lenat, All Rights Reserved

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