Audiobook · read by volunteers
On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
Read by Gord Mackenzie · 2 chapters · 1 h 21
About the book
In 1846 Henry David Thoreau spent a night in jail for refusing to pay a tax he believed supported injustice. Out of that experience came one of the most quoted essays in American literature. Thoreau asks what we owe to a government that makes laws we cannot in conscience obey, and he answers with a challenge: the individual must not hand over his conscience to the legislator. He argues that people have a duty to refuse participation in wrongdoing, even at personal cost, and that quiet, principled resistance can be a powerful force. Short, sharp and often startlingly modern, the essay has inspired readers from the nineteenth century to the present day. It is an invitation to think hard about citizenship, responsibility and moral courage.
Introduction
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was an American writer, naturalist and philosopher from Concord, Massachusetts. He is best known for Walden, his account of living simply beside a pond, but his essay on civil disobedience has had at least as wide an influence. It was first published in 1849 under the title Resistance to Civil Government, and was later reissued under the name by which we know it today.
Thoreau wrote the essay after his night in jail in 1846, at a time when he objected to American slavery and to the war with Mexico. His central argument is that people should not allow governments to overrule or weaken their consciences, and that individuals have a duty to avoid being the agents of injustice. The essay is not a call to violence. It is rather an appeal to personal responsibility, written in a lively style that mixes plain statement with irony.
Its later reputation is remarkable. Readers in many countries have found in it a source of encouragement, and it is often cited in discussions of nonviolent protest. Leaders such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King are among those who have been linked to its ideas.
The recording is in two parts and lasts about an hour and twenty minutes. It is read by a LibriVox volunteer. It is a compact text, and a worthwhile one to hear. The text is short enough to hear in one sitting, and rich enough to deserve a second listening. Whatever your own view of its arguments, it offers a clear and forceful statement of a question that every generation must answer for itself: what do we owe our consciences?
Public domain
Henry David Thoreau died in 1862: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text