Can justice be forced on individuals and communities? The essays in this collection by Henry David Thoreau urge us to consider the difficult matter of how to counter the specific injustice manifested in the practice of buying and selling human beings and how to implement laws and practices that help establish justice. Of the many philosophical ideas Thoreau explores, the central concern is how to end slavery and provide justice for all. It is no surprise to find Thoreau defending the idea of civil disobedience, but his defense of John Brown, who used violence, including murder, commands our attention. The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s in the U.S. was heavily influenced by the rhetoric, the actions, and the overall philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr., who famously combined civil disobedience and nonviolent action under the strong influence of Mohandas K. Gandhi. Although Gandhi staunchly defends and promotes the use of nonviolence, he is quick to condemn inaction as an even greater evil than violence. If forced to choose between doing nothing and using violence, he would choose violence; but his many writings and speeches are designed to show that we almost always have a nonviolent alternative to oppose injustice and foster justice. The lives of more than a billion residents of India have been profoundly shaped by the ideas Gandhi presents and defends in these selections from MY NONVIOLENCE. The liberation of India from British colonialism and the establishing of what Gandhi called "home rule" is powerful evidence of the role nonviolence can play in bringing about justice and eliminating injustice. Gandhi addresses not only matters of race and skin color but also the caste system and the social stratification that currently pervade the entire globe. These works by Thoreau and Gandhi consider the best way to promote justice and goodness not in utopia but in the actual world where we live. The primary goal of Agora Publications is not to answer such controversial questions by taking sides but to provide access to philosophical works that promote such dialogue. Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 - May 6, 1862) was an American philosopher who wrote about nature, social and political issues, and human existence in general. He worked closely with other transcendentalist thinkers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller. Thoreau is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings; his essay "Civil Disobedience" offers arguments for disobedience to an unjust state. Mohandas K. Gandhi (October 2, 1869 - January 30, 1948) was an Indian philosopher who was formally educated as a lawyer. He initially taught and practiced nonviolent resistance in South Africa and then led the successful campaign for India's independence from British rule. His actions and his writings inspired movements for civil rights and freedom throughout the globe.

Judith Butler’s new book shows how an ethic of nonviolence must be connected to a broader political struggle for social equality. Further, it argues that nonviolence is often misunderstood as a passive practice that emanates from a calm region of the soul, or as an individualist ethical relation to existing forms of power. But, in fact, nonviolence is an ethical position found in the midst of the political field. An aggressive form of nonviolence accepts that hostility is part of our psychic constitution, but values ambivalence as a way of checking the conversion of aggression into violence. One contemporary challenge to a politics of nonviolence points out that there is a difference of opinion on what counts as violence and nonviolence. The distinction between them can be mobilised in the service of ratifying the state’s monopoly on violence. Considering nonviolence as an ethical problem within a political philosophy requires a critique of individualism as well as an understanding of the psychosocial dimensions of violence. Butler draws upon Foucault, Fanon, Freud, and Benjamin to consider how the interdiction against violence fails to include lives regarded as ungrievable. By considering how ‘racial phantasms’ inform justifications of state and administrative violence, Butler tracks how violence is often attributed to those who are most severely exposed to its lethal effects. The struggle for nonviolence is found in movements for social transformation that reframe the grievability of lives in light of social equality and whose ethical claims follow from an insight into the interdependency of life as the basis of social and political equality.

The Power of Nonviolence, written by Richard Bartlett Gregg in 1934 and revised in 1944 and 1959, is the most important and influential theory of principled or integral nonviolence published in the twentieth century. Drawing on Gandhi's ideas and practice, Gregg explains in detail how the organized power of nonviolence (power-with) exercised against violent opponents can bring about small and large transformative social change and provide an effective substitute for war. This edition includes a major introduction by political theorist, James Tully, situating the text in its contexts from 1934 to 1959, and showing its great relevance today. The text is the definitive 1959 edition with a foreword by Martin Luther King, Jr. It includes forewords from earlier editions, the chapter on class struggle and nonviolent resistance from 1934, a crucial excerpt from a 1929 preliminary study, a biography and bibliography of Gregg, and a bibliography of recent work on nonviolence.

DIVFine explanation of civil disobedience shows how great pacifist used non-violent philosophy to lead India to independence. Self-discipline, fasting, social boycotts, strikes, other techniques. /div

Thoreau advocates for nonviolent protest in his classic manifesto Motivated by his disgust with the US government, Henry David Thoreau’s seminal philosophical essay enjoins individuals to stand against the ruling forces that seek to erase their free will. It is the duty of a good citizen, he argues, not only to disobey a bad law, but also to protest an unjust government. His message of nonviolence and appeal to value one’s own conscience over political legislation have resonated throughout American and world history. Peppered with the author’s poetry and social commentary, Civil Disobedience has become a manifesto for civil dissidents, revolutionaries, and protestors everywhere. Indeed, originally so unpopular with readers that Thoreau was forced to buy back over half of the books from his publisher, this work has gone on to inspire the likes of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) was the major representative of the philosophical movement called “existentialism,” and he remains by far the most famous philosopher, worldwide, of the post–World War Two era. This book will provide readers with all the help they will need to find their own way in Sartre’s works. Author David Detmer provides a clear, accurate, and accessible guide to Sartre’s work, introducing readers to all of his major theories, explaining the ways in which the different strands of his thought are interrelated, and offering an overview of several of his most important works. Sartre was an extraordinarily versatile and prolific writer. His gigantic corpus includes novels, plays, screenplays, short stories, essays on art, literature, and politics, an autobiography, several biographies of other writers, and two long, dense, complicated, systematic works of philosophy (Being and Nothingness and Critique of Dialectical Reason). His treatment of philosophical issues is spread out over a body of writing that many find highly intimidating because of its size, diversity, and complexity. A distinctive feature of this book is that it is comprehensive. The vast majority of books on Sartre, including those that are billed as introductions to his work, are highly selective in their coverage. For example, many of them deal only with his early writings and neglect the massive and difficult Critique of Dialectical Reason, or they address only his philosophical work and ignore his novels and plays (or vice versa). The present book, by contrast, discusses works in all of Sartre’s literary genres and from all phases of his career. An introductory chapter provides an overview of Sartre’s life and work. The next chapter analyzes several of Sartre’s earliest philosophical writings. Each of the next six chapters is devoted to an in-depth examination of a single key book. Two of these chapters are devoted to philosophical works, two to plays, one to a biography, and one to a novel. These chapters also contain some discussion of other writings insofar as these are relevant to the topics under consideration there. A final chapter considers important concepts and theories that are not found in the major works discussed in earlier chapters, briefly introduces other important works of Sartre’s, and offers some final thoughts. The book concludes with a short annotated bibliography with suggestions for further reading. Central to all of Sartre’s writing was his attempt to describe the salient features of human existence: freedom, responsibility, the emotions, relations with others, work, embodiment, perception, imagination, death, and so forth. In this way he attempted to bring clarity and rigor to the murky realm of the subjective, limiting his focus neither to the purely intellectual side of life (the world of reasoning, or, more broadly, of thinking), nor to those objective features of human life that permit of study from the “outside.” Instead, he broadened his focus so as to include the meaning of all facets of human existence. Thus, his work addressed, in a fundamental way, and primarily from the “inside” (where Sartre’s skills as a novelist and dramatist served him well) the question of how an individual is related to everything that comprises his or her situation: the physical world, other individuals, complex social collectives, and the cultural world of artifacts and institutions.

MLK’s classic account of the first successful large-scale act of nonviolent resistance in America: the Montgomery bus boycott. A young Dr. King wrote Stride Toward Freedom just 2 years after the successful completion of the boycott. In his memoir about the event, he tells the stories that informed his radical political thinking before, during, and after the boycott—from first witnessing economic injustice as a teenager and watching his parents experience discrimination to his decision to begin working with the NAACP. Throughout, he demonstrates how activism and leadership can come from any experience at any age. Comprehensive and intimate, Stride Toward Freedom emphasizes the collective nature of the movement and includes King’s experiences learning from other activists working on the boycott, including Mrs. Rosa Parks and Claudette Colvin. It traces the phenomenal journey of a community and shows how the 28-year-old Dr. King, with his conviction for equality and nonviolence, helped transform the nation and the world. This book was published with two different covers. Customers will be shipped one of them at random.

The theory and practice of civil disobedience has once again taken on import, given recent events. Considering widespread dissatisfaction with normal political mechanisms, even in well-established liberal democracies, civil disobedience remains hugely important, as a growing number of individuals and groups pursue political action. 'Digital disobedients', Black Lives Matter protestors, Extinction Rebellion climate change activists, Hong Kong activists resisting the PRC's authoritarian clampdown...all have practiced civil disobedience. In this Companion, an interdisciplinary group of scholars reconsiders civil disobedience from many perspectives. Whether or not civil disobedience works, and what is at stake when protestors describe their acts as civil disobedience, is systematically examined, as are the legacies and impact of Henry Thoreau, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King.

The Encyclopedia of Diversity and Social Justice contains over 300 entries alphabetically arranged for straightforward and convenient use by scholars and general readers alike. This reference is a comprehensive and systematic collection of designated entries that describe, in detail, important diversity and social justice themes. Thompson, assisted by a network of contributors and consultants, provides a centralized source and convenient way to discover the modern meaning, richness, and significance of diversity and social justice language, while offering a balanced viewpoint. This book reveals the unique nature of the language of diversity and social justice and makes the connection between how this language influences—negatively and positively—institutions and society. The terms have been carefully chosen in order to present the common usage of words and themes that dominate our daily conversations about these topics. Entries range from original research to synopses of existing scholarship. These discussions provide alternative views to popular doctrines and philosophical truths, and include many of the most popular terms used in current conversations on the topic, from ageism to xenophobia. This reference covers cultural, social, and political vernacular to offer an historical perspective as well. With contributions from experts in various fields, the entries consist of topics that represent a wider context among a diverse community of people from every walk of life.