Philosophy Compass 11/11 (2016): 681–691, 10.1111/phc3.12354 Civil Disobedience Candice Delmas * Northeastern University Abstract Many historical and recent forms of protest usually referred to as civil disobedience do not fit the standard philosophical definition of “civil disobedience”. The moral and political importance of this point is explained in section 1, and two theoretical lessons are drawn: one, we should broaden the concept of civil disobedience, and two, we should start thinking about uncivil disobedience. Section 2 is devoted to the main objections against, and theorists’ defenses of, civil disobedience. Henry David Thoreau famously protested slavery, the war against Mexico, and the atrocious treatment of Native Americans by refusing to pay the poll tax for seven consecutive years in the 1840s. Shortly after World War I, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, confessing his debt to Thoreau, organized a noncooperation campaign by Indian peasants against British landlords and revenue officials in the Champaran and Kheda districts. Gandhi led his most successful campaign against British colonial rule in 1930, as thousands of Indians joined his 241-mile Salt March to protest Great Britain’s Salt Acts, which prohibited Indians from collecting or selling salt. Twenty-five years later, Martin Luther King, Jr., inspired by both Thoreau and King, led a year-long boycott of buses in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest racially segregated seating. Although usually referred to as civil disobedience, these actions do not fit the standard phil- osophical definition of “civil disobedience”. The moral and political importance of this point will be explained in section 1. That section also ref lects on recent forms of protest—from Pussy Riot to Anonymous—and draws two theoretical lessons from these protests: one, we should broaden the concept of civil disobedience, two, we should start thinking about uncivil disobedi- ence. Section 2 is devoted to the main objections against, and theorists’ defenses of, civil disobedience. 1. The Concept of Civil Disobedience Philosophical ref lection on civil disobedience in the Anglo-American tradition began in the 1960s, against the backdrop of Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War protests, with Hugo Bedau (1961), Richard Wasserstrom (1961), Carl Cohen (1966), Michael Walzer (1970), and, most prominently, John Rawls (1969). In Rawls’s seminal account, civil disobedience is a conscien- tious, public, politically motivated, nonviolent breach of law undertaken in order to persuade the majority to change a law or policy in a nearly just, legitimate society. 1 In addition, agents of civil disobedience are to appeal to the community’s shared conception of justice in their pleas, and to demonstrate their overall “fidelity to law” by accepting, or even seeking out, the legal consequences of their actions (Rawls, 1999: 322). It is helpful to distinguish civil disobedience from other types of political action, including lawful protest, conscientious objection, armed resistance, and revolution. Both lawful protest and civil disobedience aim to reform policy or law, but civil disobedients try to achieve their © 2016 The Author(s) Philosophy Compass © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd