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A History of Ideas: Civil Disobedience
Stephen Fry on Civil Disobedience
What do you do if your society has unjust laws? Simply put up with them? Start a revolution to smash the state? Philosopher Henry David Thoreau put forward the idea of civil disobedience to change unjust laws. From Mahatma Gandhi to Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, to the present day, find out how Thoreau’s thinking has been put into practice to find justice for all.
Want to hear more on this topic?
Here’s the whole episode from A History of Ideas - Criminologist David Wilson on Thomas Hobbes and Civil Disobedience.
How can we protect individual freedom and ensure that Governments cannot hold people without charge?
The Lex Talionis, or law of ‘an eye for an eye’, sounds brutal, but is it in fact a way of keeping retribution in proportion?
What would be your blueprint for a just society? Would it simply reflect the needs of your current social position? But what if you drew up the blueprint for a society with no idea what position you might hold in it?
What do you do if your society has unjust laws? Simply put up with them? Start a revolution to smash the state? Philosopher Henry David Thoreau put forward the idea of civil disobedience to change unjust laws.