michael walzer oblogation to disobey

8/12/2019 Michael Walzer Oblogation to Disobey

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The Obligation to DisobeyAuthor(s): Michael WalzerSource: Ethics, Vol. 77, No. 3 (Apr., 1967), pp. 163-175Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2379683

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E T H I S AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OFSOCIAL, POLITICAL, AND LEGAL PHILOSOPHYVolume77 APRIL1967 Number 3

THE OBLIGATION TO DISOBEY'MICHAEL WALZER

ACCORDING to liberalpoliticalthe-ory, as first formulatedby JohnLocke, any individual citizen,oppressedby the rulers of the state, hasa right to disobey their commands,break their laws, even rebel and seekto replace the rulers and change thelaws. In fact, however, this is not aright often claimed or acted upon byindividuals. Throughout history, whenmen have disobeyed or rebelled, theyhave done so, by and large, as membersor representatives of groups, and theyhave claimed, not merely that they arefree to disobey, but that they are obli-gated to do so. Locke says nothingabout such obligations,and, despite thefact that Thomas Jeffersonclaimed onbehalf of the American colonists thatit is their right, it is their duty, tothrow off [despotism], the idea thatmen can be obligatedto disobeyhas notplayed much part in liberal politicaltheory.Here I stand; I can do no other -MartinLuther's bold defiance-is hard-ly an assertion of freedom or a claim torights. It is the acknowledgmentof anew but undeniable obligation. Nor isthis obligationoften asserted, as it wasby Luther, in the first-personsingular.In a recent article on civil disobedience,Hugo Bedau has denied the validity of

such an assertion, unless it is supple-mented by arguments which reach be-yond the moral feelings of the individ-ual. The force of saying, 'I ought todisobey this law' cannot be derivedfrom 'Obeying this law is inconsistentwith my moral convictions.' Perhapsit cannot, and then we must wait uponLuther's further defense before wejudgehis defiance.But the first sentenceis, in practice, rarely derived from thesecond. Generally it follows from anassertion of a very different sort:Obeying this law is inconsistent withour moral convictions (on behalf ofwhich we have made significant com-mitments, organized, worked togetherfor so many months or years, etc.).And it can be argued that, having saidthis, one can then go on, without offer-ing additional reasons, to say, There-fore I ought to disobey. This, at anyrate, is the form that disobediencemostoften takes in history, even though ad-ditional reasons are usually offered.Men rarely break the law by them-selves, or if they do they rarely talkabout it. Disobedience, when it is notcriminally but morally, religiously, orpolitically motivated,is almost always acollective act, and it is justified by thevalues of the collectivity and the mu-tual engagements of its members. In

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164 ETHICSthis paper I want first to describe thesocial processes by which men incur,or come to believe that they have in-curred, the obligation to commit suchacts. And then I want, very tentatively,to say something about the status ofthe obligationsthus incurred.

The process by which obligationsareincurredand the process by which theycome to be felt are obviously not thesame, or not necessarily the same. Theyare similar,however,in at least one re-spect: they are both social processes.3They occur in groups, and they canboth occur simultaneously in differentgroups of different shapes and sizes.The duty to disobey arises when suchprocesses are more successful (havegreater moral and emotional impact)in parties, congregations, sects, move-ments,unions,or clubs than in states orchurches.This happensoften in humanhistory, but precisely what is involvedwhenit doesneedsto be carefullystated.Obligations can arise in groups oftwo, between friends, partners, or lov-ers. But I am chiefly concerned withthose which arise in groups of three ormore, groups of a more general social,political, or religious nature. These canbe obligations to the group as a whole(including oneself), or to the othermembers, or to the ideal the groupstands for or claims to embody.In prac-tice, none of these occur in pure form;obligations are generally, perhaps nec-essarily, admixtures of the three. Butthey are often described exclusively interms of the last. Thus men announcethat they are boundby Godor the high-er law, and bound in conscience,which commonly means as morallysensitive individuals rather than asmembers. In fact, however, the very

word conscience implies a sharedmoral knowledge, and it is probablyfair to argue not only that the individ-ual's understandingof God or the high-er law is always acquired within agroup but also that his obligation toeither is at the same time an obligationto the groupand to its members. To be'true to one's principles, ' Robert PaulWolffhas written, is either a metaphoror else an elliptical way of describingloyalty to other men who share thoseprinciples and are relying upon you toobserve them. 4 Perhaps this is exag-gerated; clearly people feel that theirprinciples embody what is right, andthere is nothing odd or metaphoricalabout saying that one ought to do whatis right (though it is not clear whetherthis ought implies an obligation).5All I want to suggest is that commit-ments to principles are simultaneouslycommitmentsto other men, from whomor with whom the principleshave beenlearnedand by whomthey are enforced.This becomes clear, I think, if oneexamines cases in which ideals are re-nounced or sold out. For in all suchcases it is individualsor groupsof indi-viduals who feel, and can plausibly besaid to have been, betrayed. To sellout is to renounceheretical ideals forthe sake of orthodoxones (but actually,it is generallysuggested, for the sake ofmaterial gain) or to desert a small non-conformistgroup and join or rejoin so-ciety at large. Most likely, as the com-mon descriptions of this common phe-nomenonsuggest, it is to do both. Anaffrontto Godand an injuryto His con-gregation -this is the way one's for-mer colleaguesdescribea conversiontoreligious orthodoxy. And if God alonecan judge the affront, they can rightlyweigh the injury, taking into accountthe kind of commitment which had


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THE OBLIGATION TO DISOBEY 165been made, the expectations which hadbeen aroused,the ridiculeto which theyare (or are not) subjected, the possibleweakening of their community, and soon.6 Similarly, but more loosely, anartist who sells out by going com-mercial is not merely giving up anideal; he is giving up an ideal to whichothersstill adhere,and those others arehis former colleagues. His offense, intheir eyes, is not only his betrayal ofArt but also his betrayal of them. Heinjures the cause of Art, they wouldclaim, both in its ideal form and in itsconcrete social manifestation.The individual involved, of course,may be doing or think he is doing nosuch thing. He may have changed hismind for good reasons.And he may be-lieve (rightly, I think) that there is orought to be some due process wherebyhe can announce this change of mind,explain its reasons, and so escape thecharge of betraying his former col-leagues. But however far his obliga-tions extend, insofar as he is obligatedat all it is to other men as well as toideals. Indeed, to think of the effectof his actions upon the ideal he onceespoused, which is surely a necessarypart of any due process of renunciationor withdrawal, is also to think of itseffect upon those who still hold fast tothat ideal.Obligation, then, begins with mem-bership,but membershipin the broad-est sense, for there are a great varietyof formal and informal ways of livingwithin a particularcircle of action andcommitment. Membership itself canbeginwith birth.Then the sense of obli-gation is acquired simply through so-cialization; it is the product and mostoften the intended product of religiousor political education, of incessant andunrelentingcommunalpressure,of elab-

orate rites of passage, periodic cere-monial communions, and so on. Onedoes not acquire any real obligations,however, simply by being born or bysubmitting to socializationwithina par-ticular group.These come only when tothe fact of membershipthere is addedthe fact of wilful membership.Differentgroups, of course, define wilfulness indifferent ways, some in such minimalways that wilful membership becomesnothing more than continued member-ship after a certain age, some in suchmaximal ways that even formal ad-herence by an adult is inadequate with-out a public profession of the faith ora period of intensive participation inspecifiedgroupactivities.Sixteenth-andseventeenth-centuryprotestsagainst in-fant baptism depended upon a maxi-mumdefinitionof individualwilfulness,as did Lenin's attack upon the Men-shevik view of party membership.Andwilfulness can be carried even further.Elaborate tests of would-be members,frightening initiation ceremonies, sol-emn oaths: these mechanisms of thesecret society and the revolutionarybrotherhoodraise to the highest levelthe individual's sense of having madea choice of enormous personal signifi-cance and thereby assumed the mostprofoundobligations.7In general, well-established groups,especially those like the state, whichclaim to be coterminouswith society asa whole, are likely to defend the mini-mum definition, assume the commit-ment of their members, and punishthose who disobey. Radical or non-con-formist groups, precisely because theycannot make the assumption or guar-antee the punishment,are likely to re-quire that commitments take the formof explicit and public professions oracts. Throughsuchprofessionsand acts


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THE OBLIGATIONTO DISOBEY 167monly called secondary associations,less useful (though by no means of nouse at all) in discussing larger groupslike states and established churches orvague and inclusive entities like hu-manity. Indeed, if the contract is takenat all seriously, it is difficult to avoidthe conclusionthat groupsin which wil-fulness is heightened and maximizedcan rightfully impose greater obliga-tions upon their members than canthose catholic religiousand political as-sociationswhere membershipis, for allpracticalpurposes, inherited.Of course,inherited membership s often secondedby voluntary participation; in suchcases the sense of obligation, as well asthe obligationitself, is probably strong-est of all. But even participationis like-ly to be more active and wilful and soa more satisfactory token of continu-ing consent in non-conformist than inestablished and socially orthodoxgroups. Day-to-day procedureswill beless conventionalized, he modes of par-ticipationand communion ess habitual.In short, it is possible to conclude fromcontracttheory, as Jean Jacques Rous-seau did, that small societies are (gen-erally) morally superior to large ones.For is it not the case that obligationsincurred within some Protestant sect,derived from an explicit covenant, andsustained by a continual round of ac-tivity ought to take precedence overobligations incurredin society at large,derived from a largely mythical tacitconsent, and sustained by mere resi-dence or occasional, largely passive,participation?I do not want to attemptan answer to that question immediate-ly; perhaps there are good reasons forthe negative answer conventionallygiven. But I do want to make twopoints: first, that obligationsare in factincurred within groups of these differ-

ent sorts; second, that the convention-ally assigned relative weights of thesedifferent obligations are not obviouslyaccurate.The duty to disobey (as well as thepossibility of selling out) arises whenobligations incurred in some smallgroup come into conflict with obliga-tions incurred in a larger, more inclu-sive group, generally the state. Whenthe small group is called a secondaryassociation, it is being suggested thatthere is no point at issue here. Second-

ary associations ought to yield withoutargument,conflict, or moral tension toprimary ones. This is true only of as-sociations clearly secondary, that is,with purposes or ideals which do notbring them into conflict with the largersociety. Rotarianscannotsell out. 2Butthere exist in every society groupswhich may be called secondaryassoci-ations with claims to primacy. Seriousconflict begins when groups of this sortare formedand their claims announced.But here a crucial distinction must bemade: these claims can be of two verydifferent kinds. Some groups announcewhat are in effect total claims. Theirmembers are obligated, whenever com-manded, to challenge the whole estab-lished legal system, to overthrow andreplace one government with another,to attack the very existence of the larg-er society. These are revolutionarygroups. There are others, however,which make only partial claims. Theydemand that the larger society recog-nize their primacy in some particulararea of social or political life and solimit its own. They require of theirmembers disobedience at certain mo-ments, not at every moment,the refusalof particular legal commands, not ofevery legal command.It is worth insisting upon the great


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168 ETHICSdifferencebetweensuch groupsand be-tween the assertions they make, for de-fenders of state sovereignty often con-fuse them, arguing that any challengeto constituted authority is implicitlyrevolutionary and any group whichclaims to authorizesuch challengesnec-essarily subversive. They thus assignthe labels rebel and subversive toall sorts of people who explicitly rejectthem. When this is done by officials ofthe state, the labels often turn out tobe accurate, since the men who origi-nally chose not to revolt are eventuallyforced to do so in self-defense. Butthere is considerable evidence to sug-gest that the state can live with, even ifit chooses not to accommodate,groupswith partial claims against itself. Thedisobedience of the members of suchgroupswill be intermittentand limited;it is unlikely to be conspiratorial n anysense; it does not involve any overt re-sistance to whatever acts of law en-forcement the public authorities feel tobe necessary (unless these are radicallydisproportionateo the offense ).Suchdisobediencedoes not, in fact, challengethe existence of the larger society, onlyits authority in this or that case or typeof case or over persons of this or thatsort. It does not seek to replace onesovereign power with another, only tocall into question the precise rangeandincidence of sovereignty. This is notrevolutionbut civil disobedience,whichcan best be understood,I think, as theacting out of a partial claim.Limited claims against larger socie-ties can themselves be of two kinds.They can involve assertions that thelargersociety cannot make demandsofa certain sort against anyone, or theycan involve claims for exemptions forthe members (and the future members)of the smaller society. When a man re-

fuses to register for military service,without challenging state authority inany othersphere,he may be saying thatthe state cannot requireanyone to fighton its behalf or to fight this or that par-ticularsort of war, or he may be sayingthat people like himself cannot be sorequired.The second statement gener-ally accompanies acts of conscientiousobjection, which represent only onekind of civil disobedience.The larger society can always recog-nize the claims of smaller groups andso relieve their membersfrom the bur-dens and risks of disobedience.Indeed,the historical basis of liberalism is inlarge part simply a series of such recog-nitions. Thus the limited disobedienceof religious sectarianswas transformedinto mere non-conformity when thestate decided to tolerate the sects. Tol-erance requireda limit on the power ofthe state, a recognitionthat with regardto religious worshipany churchor sectcould rightfully claim primacy. Con-temporary conscientious objectors arealso toleratednon-conformists,but herethe tolerance is of a differentsort. It isa recognitionof the claims of a partic-ular type of person (or of particulargroups of people) rather than of theclaims of any person (or group) in aparticular area. There is no necessarylogical restriction on either type of tol-eration: the state could withdrawall itsclaims froman infinitenumberof areas,or it could add to every one of its lawsa provision specifying that conscien-tious disobediencecannotbe punished. 3But few states seem likely to move veryfar in either of these logically possibledirections,doubtlessfor good reasons.What is the situation of men whojoin groups with limited claims to pri-macy in states where such claims arenot recognized?It is a situation which


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THE OBLIGATION TO DISOBEY 169political philosophershave never ade-quately described-though Rousseausurely understoodthe possibility of di-vided allegiance and divided men andbent all his effortsto avoid both. Lockeprovides a convenient outline of thepossibilities more generally thought tobe available: (1) A man can be a citi-zen; this involves a full recognition ofthe primacy of his society and its gov-ernment. Certain areas are set beyondthe reach of the government, but insuch a way as to bar any possible obli-gationsagainst it. There are only rightsand ultimately, so far as action goes,only one right, the right of rebellion.Hence, (2) a man can be a rebel, seek-ing to overthrow and replace a par-ticular governmentand its laws. Theseare the only two possibilities availableto members of the larger society. ButLocke suggests two further optionsfor those persons who do not wish tobe members: (3) A man can be an emi-grant, wilfully withdrawing from thelarger society and physically leavingits territory. Emigration is the onlydue process through which social obli-gations can be renounced,for the rebelis still bound, if not to his government,then to society itself. Finally, (4) aman can be an alien who, having leftthe society of his fathers, fails to com-mit himself to any other and lives hereor there at the discretionof the publicauthorities. An alien, for Locke, hasobligations, for he is afforded protec-tion within some particularsociety andtacitly consents in return to obey itslaws. He presumably has rights, atleast in theory, since rights are natural.But he does not possess, as citizens do,the practical right to rebel. It is a cu-rious feature of Locke's thought thatthis appears to be the single most im-

portant difference between aliens andcitizens.Now the member of a group withpartial claims to primacy falls intonone of these categories. His loyaltiesare divided, so he is not in any simplesense a citizen. He refuses to call him-self a rebel, and with good reason, forhe seeks no total change in the govern-ment, no transformation of state orsociety (though he would surely claimthe right to rebel, in Locke's sense,given the conditionsunderwhichLockepermits rebellion). He is not an emi-grant, since he does not leave, thoughjoining such a group may well consti-tute a kind of internal emigration. Heis not an alien, for while an alien canalways leave, he cannot demandto stayon conditions of his own choosing.Yet the situation of such a man-obligated to obey because of his mem-bership in a larger society, obligatedto disobey (sometimes) because of hismembership in a smaller one-is, forall its tensions, very commonin historyand has often been fairly stable overlong periods of time. It is the situa-tion of any person who, like Sophocles'Antigone, retains strong tribal or clanloyalties while becoming a member ofsome (almost any) political order. 4It is virtually institutionalizedin feudalsystems.15 It was lived through withextraordinaryintensity by early mod-ern Protestants and has been livedthroughsince with greater or lesser in-tensity by a considerable variety ofreligious groups (including RomanCatholics, for Rousseau the visible em-bodiments of double obligation andmoral division)-even in liberal socie-ties,which have recognizedsomebut notall the claimsof piousbrethrenof this orthat persuasion.It was the situation ofEuropean socialists during the period


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170 ETHICSwhen their parties and movements hadceased to be revolutionary but hadnot yet accepted the status of second-ary associations. (Otto Kircheimerdescribes German Social-Democracyas a loyalty-absorbingcounterorgan-ization. 16)It is often the situation oftrade unionists, especially when theircountry is at war. It is the situationtoday of all those persons who objectto military service on other than thepermitted religious grounds. It is, de-spite considerable confusion, increas-ingly the situation of many membersof the Americancivil-rightsmovement.What all these oddly assorted peoplehave in common is this: none of themadmits without qualification the po-litical sovereignty or moral supremacyof the larger society of which they aremembers.None of them absolutely de-nies that sovereignty or supremacy.They are, then, partial members; theyare simultaneously partial emigrants,partial aliens, partial rebels. The veryexistence of such people-even more,their obvious moral seriousness-oughtto call into question the conventionaldefinition of citizenship as involvingan absolute commitment (it is some-times said, under God ) to obey thelaws. Surely such a commitment willnever be found among every one ofthose persons who consider themselves,with reason, citizens of the state. Forthe processes throughwhich men incurobligations are unavoidablypluralistic.Even in a liberal society, which allowsconsiderableroom for divergentgroupsand recognizes many of their claims,what might be called the incidence ofobligation is bound to be uneven, theobligations themselves at least some-times contradictory.Unless the state de-liberately inhibits the normalprocessesof group formation, and does so with

greater success than has ever yet beenachieved, it will always be confrontedby citizens who believe themselves tobe, and may actually be, obligated todisobey. As J. N. Figgis wrote: Thetheory of sovereignty . . . is in realityno more than a venerable superstition.... As a fact it is as a series of groupsthat our social life presents itself, allhaving some of the qualities of publiclaw and most of them showing clearsigns of a life of their own. '7

IIMany political philosophershave in-sisted that there exists a prima facieobligationto obey the laws of the mostinclusive organized society of whichone is a member,that is, for most men,the state.'8 This is not unreasonable,so long as the state provides equallyto all its members certain essentialservices. It is not unreasonable even

though the state maintains a monopolyof such services and tolerates no com-petition, for it may be that the monop-oly is itself essential to the provisionof the services. But the existence of aprima facie obligation to obey meansno more than that disobedience mustalways be justified. First explanationsare owed to those of one's fellow citi-zens who do not join in, who remainobedient. I think it can be argued thatmembership (i.e., morally serious mem-bership) in groups with partial claimsto primacy is always a possible expla-nation.But I want to attempt a strongerargument than this, loosely derivedfrom the preceding discussion of theuneven incidence of obligation in anylarger society. I want to suggest thatmen have a prima facie obligation tohonor the engagements they have ex-plicitly made, to defend the groupsand


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THE OBLIGATIONTO DISOBEY 171uphold the ideals to which they havecommitted themselves, even againstthe state, so long as their disobedienceof laws or legally authorizedcommandsdoes not threaten the very existence ofthe larger society or endanger the livesof its citizens. It is obedience to thestate, when one has a duty to disobey,that must be justified. First explana-tions are owed to one's brethren, col-leagues, or comrades.Their usual formis an argument that personal securityor public health or some other suchnecessity of the common life-whichthe smaller groups cannot supply,which is actually supplied by the state-is being threatenedor is likely to bethreatened by particular acts of dis-obedience,however limited their scope.This, of course, is precisely what isasserted (usually by an official of thestate) in every case of disobedience,but it is not necessarilyassertedrightly.Indeed, there is very little evidencewhich suggests that carefully limited,morally serious civil disobedience un-derminesthe legal system or endangerspersonal security.19 One can imaginesituationsin whichthe actingout of par-tial claims might encourage or inspirethe acting out of total claims. But thetwo sorts of action remain distinct. Itmay be necessaryfor a mancontemplat-ing civil disobedienceto worryaboutthepossibilities of revolutionary violence,but only if suchpossibilities actuallyex-ist. It is by no means necessaryfor himto reflect upon the purely theoreticalpossibility that his action might be uni-versalized,that all men might breakthelaws or claim exemptions from them.For his action implies nothing morethan that those men ought to do sowho have acquiredobligationsto do so.And the acquiring of such obligationsis a serious, long-term business which

if undertaken by everybody wouldsimply obviate the necessity for disobe-dience: if all men joined the sect, itwould become the church; if all menjoined the movement, there would beno state to resist; if all men joined dif-ferent sects and movements, tolerancewould not be the claim of this or thatgroup but a commonnecessity.The state can thus be describedas apurely external limit on group action,but it must be added that the precisepoint at which the limit becomes ef-fective cannot be left for state officialsto decide. For them, the law must bethe limit. At the same time, it must bethe claim of the disobedient membersthat the law is overextended, that itssphere ought to be restricted in somefashion, that this activity or this typeof person should be exempted, at thisparticular moment or for all time.There can be no possible judge of thisdisagreement.All that can be said isthat the moral seriousness of the dis-obedient members is evidenced in partby their respect for those genuinegoods the state provides not only tothemselves but to everyone. To arguethat the state does not provide suchgoods at all, or that it denies them en-tirely to particularsections of the pop-ulation, is to justify unlimited and un-civil disobedience. Revolution alwaysrequires (and generally gets) somesuch special justification.There are two other ways of describ-ing the state which appear to argueagainst the claim that disobediencecanever be a prima facie obligation. Thefirst is to insist that the state is itselfa group,that its memberstoo are wilfulmemberswho have incurredobligationsof the most serious kind. It was theoriginalpurpose of social-contract the-ory to uphold just this conception of


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172 ETHICSthe state. But there are serious prob-lems here. Since for most men there isno real alternativeto state membership,the wilfulness of that membershipdoesnot seem to have even the most min-imal moral significance.20A theory likeLocke's requires the argument that onecan always leave the state; therefore,mere residence can meaningfully bedescribed as a choice. Whatever thevalue of that description in Locke'stime, it has very little today. But thereis, I think, another way of describingthe wilfulness of state membership:this is to take very seriously the possi-bility of joining secondary associationswith limited claims to primacy. Suchengagements represent, as has alreadybeen suggested, a kind of internal emi-gration or partial alienation, and aslong as the processes of group forma-tion are not controlled or repressed,they offer real alternatives to full statemembership.Thus, the possibility of be-coming a conscientious objector estab-lishes the possibility of incurring anobligation to military service. One in-curs such an obligation by not becom-ing an objector (though perhaps thealternative must bulk somewhat largerin our common life than conscientiousobjection presently does if it is to havethis effect). The obligationis real evenif it is incurred for no other reasonthan that conscientious objection in-volves penalties, thoughthis is not so ifthe penalties are unlimited or withoutproportionor if the state interferes inany way with the groups within whichthe duty to object is both learned andincurred. The state can only be re-gardedas a choice, then, if the possiblelegitimacy of countergroupsof a lim-ited sort is admitted.But the obligations of citizens tothe state can be derived in yet another

way: not fromtheirwilfulnessbut fromits value. If all communities aim atsome good, wrote Aristotle, the stateor political community, which is thehighest of all, and which embraces allthe rest aims, and in a greater degreethan any other, at the highest good. 'Obviously, groups which aim at thehighest good take priority over groupswhich seek lower or partial goods.There are two major difficulties, how-ever, with Aristotle's description. Firstof all, it is not the case that the statenecessarily embraces all other commu-nities. A state with an establishedchurch and no legal provision for re-ligious toleration obviously excludes adissenting sect. Groups with univer-salist or internationalpretensions, likethe Catholic churchor any early twen-tieth-century socialist party, necessar-ily exclude themselves. Political or re-ligious communities which oppose warare in no simple sense embraced bystates which fight wars. It is preciselythe nature of secondary associationswith claims to primacy that they can-not and do not exist wholly within theestablished political or legal frame.Second, while the state may well pro-vide or seek to provide goods for allits members, it is not clear that theseadd up to or include the highest good.Perhaps they are goods of the lowestcommon denominatorand only for thisreason available to all, for it may bethat the highest good can be pursuedonly in small groups-in pietist sectsor utopiansettlements, for example,or,as Aristotle himself suggested, in phil-osophic dialogue. In any case, men donot agree as to the natureof the highestgood, and this fact is enormously sig-nificant for the processes of group for-mation. Groupsare formed for a greatvariety of reasons, but one of the chief


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THE OBLIGATION TO DISOBEY 173reasons is to advocate or act out ( with-out tarrying for the magistrate, as alate sixteenth-century Puritan ministerwrote) a new conception of the highestgood, a conception at which the statedoes not aim, and perhaps cannot. Toform such a group or to join one is toreject Aristotle's argument and re-nounce whatever obligation is impliedby it. I fail to see any reason why thisis not an option available to any mor-ally serious man.In the argument thus far, a greatdeal of weight has been attached to thephrase morally serious. Obviously,the term is not easy to define, nor thequality easy to measure. Yet frivolousor criminal disobediencecannot be jus-tified by membership n a group. Thereare obligations among thieves, but notprima facie obligations against thestate. This is true, first of all, becausethe activities of thieves endanger thesecurity of us all. But it is also truebecause a robbers'gang does not makeclaims to primacy. Thieves do not seekto limit the authority of the sovereignstate; they seek to evade it. But thereis nothing evasive about civil disobe-dience: a public claim against the stateis publicly acted out. This willingnessto act in public and to offer explana-tions to other people suggests also awillingness to reflect upon and worryabout the possible consequences of theaction for the publicas a whole. Neitherof these by themselves legitimate theaction; but they do signal the moralseriousness of the group commitmentwhich legitimates it.22Frivolous disobediencecan also neverbe a duty, and so groups that do notencouragean awareness in their mem-bers of the purposes and actions towhichthey may become committedcan-not commit them. Awareness of this

sort would appear to be required bysocial-contract theory; even the notionof tacit consent implies that thereexists some knowledge of the dutiesbeing incurred. Nor, it seems to me,are the requirementsof the theory en-tirely satisfied if such knowledge isbut glimpsed at one brief moment intime. Continued awareness, a kind ofshared self-consciousness, is necessarybefore the consent and participationof individuals carry sufficient moralweight to establish obligations-or, atany rate, to establish such obligationsas I am trying to defend. A morallyserious member of a group with partialclaims may, then, be described as fol-lows: he joins the group voluntarily,knowing what membership involves;he devotes time and energy to its innerlife, sharingin the making of decisions;he acts publicly in its name or in thename of its ideals. Such a person-notany person-is obligated to act as hedoes, unless he is given good reasonswhy he ought not to do so.

IIIThe problem of civil disobedienceneeds to be placed squarely in the con-text of group formation, growth, ten-sion, and conflict. There is a sociology

of disobedience,which has greater rele-vance for philosophy than has general-ly been thought; it helps establish theproper units of analysis. Now theseunits doubtless have their limits, forit is true that there come momentswhen individuals must make choicesor sustain actions alone-or rather,and this is not at all the same thing,when they must endure the anguish ofloneliness. The state always seeks toisolate its disobedient citizens, becauseit is far more likely to bend their willsto its own if it can break the cohesion


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174 ETHICSof the group which initially plannedthe disobedienceand convinceits mem-bers that they are members no longer.But this only suggests that the menwho run prisons are always very muchaware of the sociology of disobedience.Surelyphilosophersshouldbe no less so.The heroic encounterbetween sover-eign individual and sovereign state, ifit ever took place, wouldbe terrifyinglyunequal. If disobedience depended up-on a conscience really private, it mightalways be justified and yet never occur.Locke understood this very well, foreven while he proclaimed the right ofindividuals to rebel, he recognizedthatthe right to do so will not easily en-gage them in a contest, wherein theyare sure to perish. 23 Rebellion, hethought, is only possible when it en-gages the whole body of the people.But clearly, rebellion and, even more,civil disobedience are most often thework of groups of much more limitedextent. Clearly, too, it is not the mereindividual right to rebel, unchangedingroups large or small, which sustainsthe enterprise but, rather, the mutualundertakingsof the participants.With-out this mutuality, very few menwould ever join the contest -not be-cause of the fear of being killed but

because of the greater fear of beingalone. This is what is most difficult,wrote Jean Le Meur, the young Frencharmy officer who was imprisoned forrefusing to fight in Algeria, being cutoff from the fraternity, being lockedup in a monologue, being incompre-hensible. And then: Do tell the oth-ers that this is not a time to let medown. 24All this is not to suggest that there isanything unreal about individual re-sponsibility. But this is always respon-sibility to someone else and it is alwayslearned with someone else. An individ-ual whose moral experiences neverreached beyond monologue wouldknow nothing at all about responsibil-ity and would have none. Such a manmight well have rights, including theright to rebel, but his possession of theright to rebel would be purely theoreti-cal; he would never become a rebel.Nopolitical theory which does not movebeyond rights to duties, beyond mono-logue to fraternal discussion, debate,and resolution, can ever explain whatmen actually do when they disobey orrebel, or why they do so. Nor can ithelp us very much to weigh the right-ness or wrongnessof what they do.HARVARD UNIVERSITY

NOTES1. This essay was first read as a paper before theAmerican Political Science Association's 1966 con-vention in New York City. It will be publishedlater this year in a book of essays edited by DavidSpitz for Atherton Press.2. Hugo Bedau, On Civil Disobedience, Jour-nal of Philosophy, LVII (October 12, 1961), 663.3. The best description of these processes is prob-

ably still Emile Durkheim's LEducation morale(Paris, 1925).4. R. P. Wolff, An Analysis of the Concept ofPolitical Loyalty, in Wolff (ed.), Political Manand Social Man (New York, 1966), p. 224.5. See Alexander Sesonske, Value and Obligation(New York, 1964), pp. 20 ff. and passim.

6. Where such judgments cannot be made at all,there is no obligation. And this means that obliga-tions are always shared among men, who mustjudge one another. The only obligation which Ihave a right to assume, wrote Thoreau, is to doat any time what I think right. But when, in jail,he greeted the visiting Emerson with the famousquestion, What are you doing out there? heclearly implied the existence of a common obliga-tion. Common to whom? Common at least to NewEngland philosophers, one of whom was failing tomeet it. Emerson believed the same thing when hespoke in his lecture on the Fugitive Slave Law ofthe disastrous defection of the men of lettersfrom the cause of freedom (The Complete Essays


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THE OBLIGATION TO DISOBEY 175and Other Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson [NewYork, 1940], p. 867).7. Eric Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels (NewYork, 1963), chap. ix; for some examples of secretoaths, see Appendix 13.8. Sesonske, op. cit., p. 107.9. Henry L. Mason, The Purge of Dutch Quis-lings (The Hague, 1952), chap. ii.10. See Guillain de Benouville's defense of capi-tal punishment in the French Resistance: in theMaquis each man had chosen his own lot, fash-ioned his destiny with his own hands, picked hisown name. Everyone had accepted in advance andwithout question all possible risks (The UnknownWarriors [New York, 1949], p. 220).11. S. I. Benn and R. S. Peters, The Principles ofPolitical Thought (New York, 1965), chap. xii.12. People who accuse trade-union leaders ofselling out are, in effect, accusing them of actinglike leaders of secondary associations, the implica-tion of their accusation being that the union (or thelabor movement generally) is something more thansecondary.13. Bedau, op. cit., p. 655.14. The conflict in Sophocles' play is, of course,between primary groups. In general, conflicts be-tween groups of relatives or friends and the statetake forms similar to those described above, espe-cially in modern times when such alliances tendincreasingly to be voluntary. E. M. Forster's state-ment that if I had to choose between betraying mycountry and betraying my friend, I hope I shouldhave the guts to betray my country is roughlyanalogous to the sorts of assertions sometimes madeon behalf of groups. But it is an extreme statementand has reference to exceptional cases. Most often,the choice is between betraying one's friend (orcolleagues) and disobeying the laws of one's coun-try. Antigone's act is not treason, on any usual in-terpretation of that tricky term (Forster, TwoCheers for Democracy [New York, 1951], p. 78).

15. See Marc Bloch, Feudal Society (Chicago,1961), chaps. ix-xvii.16. Kircheimer, Political Justice (Princeton, N.J.,1961), p. 9.17. Figgis, Churches in the Modern State (Lon-

don, 1914), p. 224. See also G. D. H. Cole, Con-flicting Social Obligations and Loyalties, Pro-ceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vols. XV(1915) and XXVI (1926), N.S.18. See, e.g., W. D. Ross, The Right and theGood (Oxford, 1930), pp. 27-28; and discussion inRichard Wasserstrom, Disobeying the Law, Jour-nal of Philosophy, LVII (October 12, 1961), 647.19. It is often enough said that disobedienceeven of bad laws undermines the habit of lawabidance and so endangers that fundamental orderupon which civilized life depends. But I have never

seen this argued with careful attention to some par-ticular body of evidence. In the absence of such anargument, I would be inclined to agree with DavidSpitz that there are clearly some laws obedienceto which is not required for the maintenance ofsocial order. Even more important, perhaps, thereare many laws which can be disobeyed by somemen, without prejudice to social order (Spitz, De-mocracy and the Problem of Civil Disobedience,Essays in the Liberal Idea of Freedom [Tucson,Ariz., 1964], pp. 74-75).20. Wolff, op. cit., pp. 227-28.21. Aristotle Politics I. 1; see discussion in Bennand Peters, op. cit., pp. 315 ff.22. Secret societies, if they are not criminal, areimplicitly revolutionary; the moral seriousness oftheir members must be signaled differently.23. Locke, The Second Treatise of Government,

par. 208.24. Jean Le Meur, The Story of a Responsible

Act, in R. P. Wolff (ed.), Political Man and SocialMan (New York, 1966), pp. 204, 205.

michael walzer oblogation to disobey

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