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Role Of Civil Disobedience In Henry David Thoreau's State Of Social Contract

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Next, social contract is another way philosophers justify the legitimacy of a state and why it exists. Locke believed people naturally exist in a state of unrestricted liberty, whereby they are each allowed to exercise their rights to any extent they wish so long as they do not interfere with the liberties of another individual. People must give up a degree of their liberties to form a social structure and reap its benefits. In the end, most people join into societies for the sake of protecting the rights they have to their property. Rousseau another philosopher who thought very similar in thought to Locke in regards to the state of nature, which he argues is a state of perfect freedom that society only constrains and steals from its inhabitants. …show more content…

While citizens may have the right to leave their society/homeland in theory, in reality they are expected to observe a degree of obedience to the society and its leaders that raised and accepted such citizens. To abandon one’s home society would be seen as a breaking of a covenant made between it and the citizen, and therefore warranting punishment. With this idea Plato wants us to realize that it’s an obligation to have obedience for our society that we live in. Thoreau expressed that governments are generally inefficient and prone to vice and corruption. In such cases when a government abandons its moral obligations just citizens have a duty to resist the improper practices of their leaders for the sake of making these flaws apparent so that they can be corrected and the state’s purity restored. Civil disobedience has three conditions that have to be justified according to Rawls. These conditions include appeals to the concept of justice and infringements are major, attempts to correct the issue legally have stalled or failed, and if a group is engaging in this form of dissent, another group which has suffered under similar conditions is also justified in

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