全英文版建造美国MAKINGAMERICA美国的社会与风俗第四部分2

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1、MAKING AMERICAThe Society and Culture of the UNITED STAESPART FOUR Varieties of American Thought4. Civil Disobedience in American Political ThoughtBy John P.DigginsA common assumption holds that political authority and civil disobe- dience contradict one another. The first formulation of problem in

2、classi- cal antiquity seems to dramatize the contradiction. In The Apology Socra- tes urges civil disobedience to fulfill the demands of moral law; in The Crito he advocates submission to folkways to preserve social order. The conflict between the needs of the state and the right to disobey has re-

3、mained with us ever since. In American history the writings and actions of Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King, Jr.presume that conflict to be the first step in the struggle toward justice. Before examining their thoughts, let us first establish the nature of the problem between authority and

4、 disobedience.Ideas of Authority and Civil Disobedience If we consider the defining characteristics of the two principles, there does indeed appear to be a mutual antagonism. Authority has been de- fined in various ways: (a) the uncontested acceptance of anothers judg- ment;(b) the ability of an age

5、nt or institution to express its will;(c)the capacity to induce compliance either by offering rewards or threatening deprivations;(d)the claims of competence on the part of an expert whose knowledge is put to public service;(e)the aura of “charisma” on the part of an exceptional leader whose qualiti

6、es inspire admiration and awe;or (f) the existence of established rules that entitle the one or few to represent the many. Whatever the definition, authority is usually distinguished from power because it is based on the voluntary obedience of subjects who have presumably consented to its exercise o

7、ver themselves. Civil disobedience, in contrast, often rests on the assumption that the individual is the ultimate source of authority and that the self acts under the sanction of some principle that is “higher” than the state, society, or even the people under a system of democratic government. Its

8、 animating ethos is the feeling that one is morally bound to disobey some law or custom, for not to do so would betray the dictates of conscience. Civil disobedience can be either peaceful or violent, although the idea of non- violent, passive resistance has been the more frequent principle of actio

9、n. The expression “civil” also implies that the action is of a public and poli- tical nature, and thus disobedience to family, school, and other authorities does not constitute civil acts of protest. Civil disobedience, furthermore, is not necessarily revolutionary, for in encounters with the state

10、the pro- tester may accept the system of government, however imbecilic he or she regards its institutions. In engaging in openly announced defiance of part- icular laws or customs, the activist is not so much determined to trans- form the state as to withhold allegiance from it until its alleged abu

11、ses are corrected. The intellectual roots of civil disobedience can be traced not only to Anglo-American political ideas but also to Judeo-Christian traditions. Jesus expressed the conflict between religious conscience and social customs when he sought to purify the temple by chasing out the money c

12、hangers. In nineteenth-century America, abolitionists attacked the insti- tution of slavery by refusing to uphold the Fugitive Slave laws. In the twentieth century, Mohandas Gandhi subverted colonial rule in South Africa and India with acts of passive disobedience, a practice later adopted by Europe

13、ans resisting Nazi occupation, by American civil rights activists campaigning against segregation, and by students engaging in boycotts and “sit-ins” to protest the Vietnam War. Such courageous deeds were undertaken in defiance of existing sys- tems of political authority, whether totalitarian or de

14、mocratic. Yet the idea of political authority and the idea of civil disobedience, rather than con- tradicting one another, in many ways presuppose one another. The pro- blem of civil authority only arises when recalcitrant subjects question its legitimacy and demand reasons for obeying the laws of t

15、he land; and civil disobedience arises when subjects refuse to accept those reasons and in- stead offer counterarguments designed to undermine them. Thus, althou- gh civil disobedience often originates from the inner promptings of conscience, it inevitably expresses itself in a dialogue with externa

16、l authority, a dialogue that pits the mind against the state.Early American Thought and Civil Disobedience In American history the relationship between authority and disobedi- ence had its first political manifestation in the conflict between power and liberty at the time of the Revolution. The inte

17、llectual forces of that event can be traced to two sources that would continue to remain the touch- stone of resistance politics throughout American history: Protestantism and liberalism, specifically the teaching of John Calvin and of John Locke. The idea of the “covenant” practiced by seventeenth-

18、century New England Puritans carried both conservative and radical implications. In the first instance the idea called upon the people to submit to their rulers and to obey the laws of the land as the will of God. But inherent in Calvi- nist political philosophy was also the principle that the peopl

19、e had a right, indeed a duty, to disobey magistrates and rulers when they acted in ways that violated the covenant with God and thus forfeited their authority. If a wayward ruler were allowed to continue in office, the people would be disobeying God and rising his wrath by submitting to a government

20、 that had broken the covenant. Historians such as Edmund S.Morgan see the Puritan covenant as the intellectual seed of the American Revolution. To the extent that Americans indicted British rule for its moral leniency as well as political harshness, they believed that the only way America could arre

21、st corruption and backsliding was to resist, oppose, and defy the Stamp Act and other rules and regulations. The English philosopher and statesman Edmund Burke tried vainly to warn Parliament that Americans were, above all, Protestants who loved nothing so much as to protest, question, and deny auth

22、ority. When the colonists threw tea into Boston harbor, the American Revolution began, at least symbolically, in a dramatic act of civil disobedience. The second idea spiriting the Revolution derived from Locke. The sev- enteenth-century English philosopher developed a “social contract” the- ory of

23、government that made authority and obedience rest on interest and the primacy of self-preservation. The purpose of government was not so much to fulfill Gods will as to protect life, liberty, and property as the prerequisites of human happiness. Like the Puritans, however, Locke also emphasized the

24、limited nature of the rulers power. In Locke we have one of the clearest expressions of what Isaiah Berlin has called “negative liberty”, the individuals freedom from government and public authority. Locke offered Americans not only a rationale for the right of resistance, but even the right to revo

25、lution. To the extent that an existing regime violates the original compact by failing to protect peoples rights and safeguard their interests, Americans were entitled to break the “bonds of affection” with their mother country, as Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence. Thus in e

26、arly American history one can find the theoretical foundations for civil disobedience to government. The Calvinist covenant and the liberal contract embody both the legitimation of authority and the rationale for its resistance.Thoreau and His Predecessors But in liberal political philosophy the rig

27、ht of resistance presupposes the will of the majority as the sovereign agency of the people. In Lockes theory there is unanimous agreement that the majoritys decision shall be binding on everyone, and thus the decision to either perpetuate or dis- solve a government rests on popular consent. Civil d

28、isobedience, in contrast, implies that a small minority of citizens have rights that derive from conscience rather than consent. For Thoreau, as we shall see, dissent could mean even “a minority of one”, the solitary individual acting alone against a government that had allegedly abused its authorit

29、y. Thoreaus theory of civil disobedience also emphasized the right to act morally as well as individually. Here is where Thoreau and the framers of the Constitution posed antithetical views of human nature, that is, in the motives of political conduct. The theory of authority developed by the framer

30、s rejected the assumption that people are capable of acting morally as a self-contained ethical person. Instead of practicing virtue, exercising restraint, and working toward the public good, people would be moved by grasping “interests” and undisciplined “passions”. Thus the Federalist authors beli

31、eved that the controlling mec- hanisms of government must be brought to bear on all political conduct. In order to appreciate Thoreaus protest against government as a “mach- ine”, we need to examine the idea of authority and obedience in the cons- titutional theories of the framers. Only then can we

32、 understand why Thor- eau and the abolitionists turned to the Declaration of Independence, and not the Constitution, to find the political grounds for civil disobedience. The Declaration had articulated the colonists grievances against Eng- land in order to legitimate their right to overthrow a gove

33、rnment that had violated the social contract. The Constitution, however, aimed to do the opposite: to establish the right of a new government to rule and explain the peoples obligation to obey. The great promise of the Constitution was that it would preserve liberty by guaranteeing to the people all

34、 the rights and powers not explicitly granted to the new federal government. The Constitution would therefore not interfere with the rights that Jefferson had enunciated in the Declaration: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi- ness. Yet Jefferson and Thomas Paine remained skeptical of the- Cons-

35、 titution, believing that the framers, more preoccupied with citizens vices than their virtues, concentrated too much on controlling liberty instead of augmenting it. Jefferson and Paine feared the few(aristocracy); the framers feared the many(democracy). The former saw the potential for tyranny in

36、centralized power, the latter in the unruly behavior of aggres- sive masses. The former demanded a Bill of Rights so that individuals could protect themselves from the actions of government, the latter a sys- tem of “auxiliary precautions” so that government could protect itself from the threat of p

37、opular majorities. In other words, those who preferred the Declaration feared the actions of the state, those who valued the Con- stitution the actions of society. Theorists of civil disobedience often feel the threats of both state and society, and thus their protest of the laws of the state provid

38、es the means of changing the customs of society. But since civil disobedience activists have more in common with Jefferson and Paine than with the Federalist authors, it is worthwhile to distinguish the ideas and values of the Declarationists from those of the Constitu- tionalists. The American Revo

39、lution had been deeply influenced by the writings of Jefferson and Paine and the Constitution by the writings of John Ad- ams, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison. Since the Revolution had liberty as its object, and the Constitution had authority, it is not surprising that theorists of civil disob

40、edience often invoke the Declaration and the “spirit of 76”. The aim of the Revolution was to reduce the authority of an old government and to restrict and even eliminate its powers; the aim of the Constitution, in contrast, was to enlarge the authority of a new go- vernment and to legitimate the ex

41、ercise of centralized power. The Decla- ration emphasized such values as individual autonomy and reason, the right to pursue ones private concerns independently of government inter- ference. The Constitution focused on the weakness of man and the need for a stronger state to preserve liberty and pro

42、perty by juxtaposing faction to faction, a theory of countervailing power that has come to be called li- beral pluralism. Paine and Jefferson are the patron saints of the indivi- dualist, dissent tradition in American politics. In contrast to the framers, they believed that the problem of power coul

43、d be resolved to the extent that all authority came directly from the people themselves. Assuming that man was essentially good and rational and that the forces of oppress- sion derived mainly from the Old World, they believed they could use mind and pen to speak truth to power and thereby preserve

44、liberty simply by exposing tyranny. Adams and the Federalist authors, however, operat- ed from different assumptions. Convinced that the forces of oppression are rooted in the nature of social existence, they believed government was absolutely necessary to prevent individuals from harming one anothe

45、r, and that the new Constitution required an elaborate mosaic of mecha -nisms known as “checks and balances”.The Ultimate Individualist The critique of the American system of politics by Thoreau and the Transcendentalists was in part a reaffirmation of Jeffersonian individual- ism against Madisonian

46、 pluralism. But the critique went much deeper. It was not only that Thoreaus call for civil disobedience would transfer au- thority from the state to the individual or that he rejects the whole system of checks and balances. Thoreau departs from Jefferson as well as from Madison when he questions wh

47、ether the “pursuit of happiness” must be regarded as a materialist proposition and whether true liberty required property and the acquisitive impulses that alienate man and lead to “lives of quiet desperation”. Thoreau also departs from Locke when he demands that government relate to its subjects as

48、 moral rather than political crea- turesthat government touch the “soul” of citizens and not only their senses. To put it another way, Thoreau was trying to introduce into poli- tics precisely what the founders wanted to purge from it: the rage of moral passion. The framers believed, as did Paine an

49、d Jefferson, that politics and gov- ernment could be made a “science” to the extent that the foucus was kept on the economic wants and needs of Americans. What they feared was a politics that sprang from “zeal”, “passion”, and the “pride” of a presumed superior spiritual “conscience”. The Federalist

50、 authors likened political “factions” to religious “sects” in their common tendency to oppress and tyrannize others. Here they followed Machiavelli, Locke, and David Hume in believing that a politics prompted by moral righteousness threat- ened reason and civility. Adams, for example, appeared to be

51、 echoing Hume when he wrote to Benjamin Rush(June 19, 1789) to advise him that religion cannot cure the “inveterate evil” of factions, “for parties are always founded on some Principle, and the more conscientious Men are, the more determined they will be in pursuit of their Principle, System and Par

52、ty.” The framers believed that factions arising from “interests” were safer than the fanatical behavior that could often be seen in “parties of principle” composed of zealots hungering after righteousness. What wou- ld preserve the American Republic, then, would not be the moral passions of “patriot

53、s”, but the carefully balanced “machinery of government”. Thoreau would have presented a political nightmare to Adams and the Federalist authors. Here was that “conscientious” man they feared, the man who was determined to pursue some “principle” regardless of the consequences, a man who tried to sh

54、ow Americans why politics should be about truth and morality, not power and interests. Ralph Waldo Emerson said of Thoreau that his very presence “embarrassed” Americans. A close look at his now-famous treatise on civil disobedience helps explain why.“Civil Disobedience” “Civil Disobedience”(1849) w

55、as variously titled at different presenta- tions as “The Rights and Duties of the Individual in Relation to Govern- ment” or “Resistance to Government”. Its immediate historical context was Americas war with Mexico. In protest of that war, which Thoreau saw as a pretext for the expansion of slavery

56、into the Southwest, he re- fused to pay his taxes, a gesture that led to his spending a night in jail. The document, curiously, says very little about the war or about the institution of slavery. Perhaps this is why it has become a classic in the literature of civil resistance. Thoreau used the occa

57、sion to write in uni- versal terms about the individuals relation to politics, and “Civil Disobedience” may be one of the first documents in western political philosophy to suggest that neither genuine freedom nor authentic authority lies in the nature of government. This is not to suggest, as some

58、scholars have, that “Civil Disobed- ience” is essentially an anarchist text. Thoreau, it is true, carries Jeffer- sons suspicions of political power to a radical conclusion that would have made the framers shudder in horror: “That government is best which governs not at all.” But Thoreau immediately

59、 adds that people are not yet ready for life without a political state, and he openly admits that he him- self makes expedient use of some of the services the state provides, such as roads, schools, and libraries. What Thoreau wants to demonstrate is how unimportant government really is in the histo

60、ry of Americs. It was not the government that created the conditions for liberty, educated the people, settled the frontier, and made possible the beauties of nature. Nor should Americans be so nave as to believe that politics provided the means by which society could be reformed. “It is not a mans

61、duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong.” The regeneration of society, Thoreau and Emerson insisted again and again, must begin with self-regeneration, not political participation. Thus “Civil Disobedience” advises Americans not to look

62、to political leadership or to rely upon the electoral process. Nor does it advise them to return to the Republics “first principles”, for the Constitution allowed slavery to exist; hence American legislatures cannot follow “the men of 87” and still be moral leaders. Thoreau even departs from Paine a

63、nd Jefferson by evincing little faith in the will of the people. The majority does not guarantee justice, and although democracy may be based on the consent of the governed, we must recognize that “there is but little virtue in the actions of masses of men”. Although Thoreau, perhaps out of his disg

64、ust with the submissive masses, professes to “wash his hands” of political society and “sign off” from all institutions and their problems, he also recognizes that evil and injustice require citizens to act responsibly. Thus he advises all those who oppose slavery to exercise the honored right of re

65、volution and secede from the Union. More immediately, he calls upon the people of Massac- husetts to withdraw their allegiance from the national government. On what grounds is the rights of resistance justified? Thoreau appeals to individuals not as political citizens but as moral agents.Must the ci

66、tizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation I have a right to assume is to do any time what I think right. Thoreau makes the individual sovereign unto him