Civil Disobedience

Ken Taylor
Welcome to Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

John Perry
…except your intelligence. I’m John Perry.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. We’re coming to you from the studios of KALW San Francisco.

John Perry
Continuing conversations that began at philosophers corner on a Stanford campus.

Ken Taylor
Today: civil disobedience

John Perry
Ken, civil disobedience is a great tradition, particularly in America. We have Henry Thoreau who refused to pay a poll tax because the money supported the Mexican War and the fugitive slave law. Then there’s Rosa Parks who refused to sit in the back of the bus and Martin Luther King and the Vietnam War protesters.

Ken Taylor
John, I certainly admire all those civil disobeyers. But tell me exactly what is civil disobedience. Suppose Henry Thoreau and Henry smoll Both refuse to pay their poll taxes. Thoreau does it for the noble reasons you just mentioned, but schmoe does it because he’d rather spend the money at the pub. Frankly, they’re both disobeying a civil law. They’re both, in a literal sense, civilly disobedient. But what’s the difference? Just that Henry, Henry Thoreau had good intentions and schmo didn’t?

John Perry
Well is, is good intentions are part of the mix, but, but it specifically he was trying to influence policy and he was trying to influence by exercising free speech. I mean, his his disobeying the law was it was a speech act, an attempt at communicating his feelings about the unjustness of the law.

Ken Taylor
Okay, does, but does it have to involve a protest? What if Thoreau’s grouchy cousin, his grouchy, uncommunicative cousin, Larry Thoreau, didn’t pay his poll taxes either, and he also didn’t want to support the fugitive slave law and the Mexican War, but he didn’t go around boasting about it, didn’t go around telling anybody about it. Would that be civil disobedience?

John Perry
Well, Ken, you know, civil disobedience isn’t a scientifically precise concept. I can’t give you a definition with no holes in it. I think it’s better to list some traits that a paradigm case of civil disobedience has. Let’s try to do that. I mean, for one thing, it will be a refusal to obey or follow a law that is itself unjust or believed in, just like the law against making salt that Gandhi broke, or the law that supports unjust policies like the poll tax. That’s a start. I admit it doesn’t tell us the difference between famous Henry and grouchy Larry.

Ken Taylor
Well, but here’s the way to think about the difference between Larry and Henry. Gandhi and Thoreau weren’t just disobeying the law, but protesting the law and policy, and they were doing so publicly. Their acts were speech acts as well as acts of disobedience. They were done openly and they didn’t attempt to escape punishment. Same for draft card burners and those who sat in at shops that refused to serve black so that eliminates grouchy Larry because he’s not doing any of those other things.

John Perry
Well, okay, so that contributes to our paradigm. In addition, usually we have in mind non violent activities like sit ins and marches. The intent is to change things, to get the law repealed or the policy changed.

Ken Taylor
So now we have a paradigm act of civil disobedience, disobeying or refusing to follow a law or policy believed to be unjust or supportive of unjust injustice, doing so publicly and non violently, with the intent of drawing attention to the law, law or policy, and with the intention of getting it changed.

John Perry
Okay, so that’s our paradigm. Now that leads to the next question. We admire all those people we mentioned, Thoreau, Gandhi King and the student boycotters in the 60s, but does that mean that they were right to break the law? How can it be right to break a law?

Ken Taylor
Well, in those cases, we the admirers, think that the laws or policies were unjust. But how about a crowd, non violently blocking the entrance to an abortion clinic in in contravention of the law? I don’t happen to think that laws that allowing access to abortion or to abortion clinics are unjust, but these people do. Does that make them morally right?

John Perry
Well, that raises a more extensive problem. We admire those who protest the laws we think are unjust, but we’re part of a democracy full of people with very different values. We’re supposed to settle things by voting or having our representatives in legislatures, in Congress, vote, but any law or policy on a controversial issue is likely to go against someone’s deeply held beliefs. Does that give them the right, the moral right, to disobey? It? It sounds like that’s going to lead to chaos.

Ken Taylor
Well, it seems to me that you’re suggesting that in a society like ours, where there are other remedies, like the one, like voting and taking things to court, those methods should be tried first, and civil disobedience should be a last resort.

John Perry
Well, maybe, maybe that’s ideal, but if there’s time, it might be a pressing issue. There’s not time to go to court. You might not have the money to hire a lawyer or or a congressman. Sometimes it seems like civil disobedience has to be the first resort, not a last resort, because it’s the only way to make anybody care about the issue.

Ken Taylor
Well, you know, we’ve got plenty to talk about for the next hour. John.

John Perry
And we’ve got a guest to help us, Kimberly Brownlee, Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Manchester.

Ken Taylor
And we want our listeners in the mix too. One, 805 to 59917, that’s 1-800-525-9917

John Perry
But first, our roving philosophical reporter, Julie Napolin, talks to a civilly disobedient protester in that city known for Civil Protest, Berkeley, California. She files this report.

Julie Napolin
It’s hard to think of UC Berkeley without thinking of civil disobedience in 1964 when the university banned all political activity on campus, Mario Savio took his famous stand against censorship before a crowd of 4000 people, just before being arrested,

Mario Savio
When the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can’t take part, you can’t even passively take part.

Julie Napolin
The Berkeley campus has changed over the years, and so have the machines today. Most students milling around campus listen to iPods or talk on cell phones. This makes it hard to hear the Free Speech coming at them from one local street performer, Stoney Burke.

Stoney Burke
You know they say this is the melting pot where the scum rises to the top. IPod person. IPod person. Come back. Her iPod is more important.

Julie Napolin
In 1977 Stoney started yelling about politics in daily life on the campus plaza.

Stoney Burke
I didn’t really get radicalized until I got arrested for doing it.

Julie Napolin
He began performing each week, and was arrested more times than he can count. While he was just being uncivil and disruptive, the police continued to arrest him.

Stoney Burke
In the beginning, it would be something like vagrancy or begging, or, you know, just some kind of hassle thing. And it just kind of reinforced, I think, something very fundamental in me and all of us, that you have to have a person out there talking, no, not blogging, not making a giant movie, not, you know, brandishing a gun, but just somebody talking outside. There’s no security guards, there’s no ticket to get in. You know, it sort of breaks the codes.

Julie Napolin
When people with headphones walk by, he blows his whistle just outside class windows that and his bellows disturb classes. The noise is not just disruptive. For Stoney, it’s about breaking social codes to demonstrate their injustice.

Stoney Burke
Whether you’re playing a folk song or whether you’re juggling or whether you’ve got a three person comedy group or a women pop singer, whatever it is, on the street, there’s so many restrictions. People are really discouraged from doing it.

Julie Napolin
Sometimes students crowd around Stoney and he creates a temporary community free from those restrictions. He hopes students will get so annoyed, they might become more disruptive, too.

Stoney Burke
My whole concept of just get them in a circle. Once you do that, it’s all over. They’ve created their community.

Woody Guthrie
If you’ll gather around me children, a story I will tell.

Stoney Burke
I guess Woody Guthrie is the closest thing I’ve ever seen that. If you could ever get Woody Guthrie into a comedic satiric box and get that’s what he do. He’d travel around. He’d sing his songs about the rights of people.

Woody Guthrie
Here’s Christmas dinner for the family’s on relief.

Julie Napolin
Stoney says His job is to just keep ranting about the rights of people and being as loud as possible until conditions change.

Stoney Burke
It’s a slow thing, you know, it’s definitely not a mass media thing. It’s something where even in the first time you look at me, you go, Oh, who’s the homeless guy yelling? This is just what they warned me about in Berkeley. And I think it gives them courage to see one people go on a rant about something that they feel passionate about. You know, we’re always told to keep it under control. With what little credibility I have flowing through my veins like the Rio Grande. I’ll tell you right here, we need to recall all the politicians That’s right. Round them up.

Julie Napolin
Stoney continues to rant and rave these days, officers walking by pause to give him a stern look and then saunter away.

Stoney Burke
I’m not invited here. No one said, Stoney, you can be here. A list of arrests would back up the fact that they really don’t want you here on the other side, I try to train myself to get you know the dream of having a revolution.

Julie Napolin
For Philosophy Talk, I’m Julie Napolin.

John Perry
I’m John Perry, and with me is Ken Taylor.

Ken Taylor
And our guest today is Kimberly Brownlee, Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Manchester, co editor of disability and disadvantage, and she writes on various topics in moral, political and legal philosophy, including philosophy, including the topic of civil disobedience. Kimberly, welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Kimberley Brownlee
Hello, Ken, Hello John. Thank you very much for inviting me.

John Perry
Well, thanks for coming now, Kimberly, you wrote a very fine article for the Stanford Encyclopedia on civil disobedience. It’s clearly a topic you care deeply about. What What led you to this interest? Can you tell us briefly?

Kimberley Brownlee
I think one reason I became interested in the topic was it started in an admiration when I was studying my in my undergraduate work on philosophy, I was very enamored with characters who were willing to sort of expose themselves to the judgment of their community, to accept censure, you know, someone like a Socrates or Burton Russell, John Stuart Mill, thinkers who are willing to be sufficiently independent minded that they could, you know, challenge the status quo, endure censure and And nonetheless, had the conviction to back, you know, to back up their their their beliefs. And I think that that courage that it takes to be the gadfly was part of what drew me to this topic. Because it’s not only the thinkers in, you know, the ivory towers and you know, in academia who should be independent minded, but people you know, who are actively part of the community. And what made those philosophers special was that they were willing to be active members of their communities.

John Perry
So for our young philosophers out there that might want to crawl out of the ivory tower and be civil disobeyers, can you tell us what in your analysis makes converts just a breach of the law into a true act of civil disobedience, right?

Kimberley Brownlee
Well, I think in your opening John and Ken, you you you hit on some very, you know, central features of a paradigm case. And you know the, or what’s often cited as the key features, you know, one of them being non violence. The other key feature being, you know, a conscientiousness. You know, very clear set of intentions to engage communicatively with the community, to sort of make people sensitive to a certain injustice. Now, there, you know, there are debates about whether those indeed are the core features, you know. And the non violence feature is actually quite a tricky one, because, you know, philosophers, we love to play with concepts, but there’s a big question of, you know, what is it for something to be violent? Is an act of vandalism? Is, you know, sort of painting on the walls of a public space. Is that an act of violence? Because it’s, you know, damaging property.

Ken Taylor
Well, I would think that non violence, well, I was going to say something that I now don’t believe. But non violence, violence against persons is one thing, right? Direct violence against person, and damage to property is another thing. Sometimes, if the property is highly valuable, then damage the property can be of I mean, people who go around blowing up buildings, you know, it can be but sort of defacing property. It’s not exactly violence against property, is it?

Kimberley Brownlee
Right, right? Well, and I guess then the question is, when we’re talking about sort of what we would view as violence to persons, harm to persons, you know, if you if you look at different ways that people can protest, some acts that are clearly not violent, like a legal strike by ambulance workers, can, in fact, do far more harm to people than what might be viewed as a modest act of violence. You know, people at animal rights protests catapulting stuffed animals at the police. Well, you know the police are going to get hit with stuffed animals. And you know, that’s sort of mild violence to a person, but it’s, you know, not the same kind of thing as you know, the harm that would be done through an ambulance protest.

Ken Taylor
The idea of civil disobedience doesn’t entail like you don’t do harm. I mean, because some acts of civil disobedience can be highly consequential and have very down, severe downside causes cost for the society at large. And and the civil disobedience or disobeyers could intend that, can’t they?

Kimberley Brownlee
Yes, and I think that’s, you know, one of the sort of big questions when you’re trying to make a case for why this method of protest is a defensible one, is that it’s often viewed as having a very, very negative impact for for the society. And so, you know, the sort of, the point you raised about our our democratic procedures, the sort of the proper process for being politically engaged, that’s, that’s usually the challenge put to someone who resorts to breach of law, that they’ve somehow stepped outside the bounds of what’s, you know, what a society can legitimately tolerate.

Ken Taylor
So we’re going to take that up and discuss it in some detail. In our next segment, you’re listening to Philosophy Talk today, we’re discussing civil disobedience with Kimberly Brownlee from the University of Manchester.

John Perry
In our next segment, we’re going to ask when and if civil disobedience is morally justified. The Bay Area is a famous center of civil disobedience, from Vietnam to the gay rights movement and lots of other times. Have you ever gay engaged in civil disobedience? What were the consequences for you and for the law you were protesting? Tell us. Join us by calling toll free at one 805 to 59917, that’s 1-800-525-9917 or email us at comments at philosophy talk.org,

Ken Taylor
The morality of civil disobedience, plus your calls and emails when Philosophy Talk continues,

The Wailers
Get up, stand up. Stand up for your rights,

John Perry
Would you stand up for something you thought was right, even if it meant breaking the law? I’m John Perry.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. This is Philosophy Talk. We’re discussing civil disobedience. Share your experiences and thoughts. How far would you go to protest an unjust law? Would you risk a penalty for not paying taxes? Risk imprisonment? Would you risk your life the toll free? Number 1-800-525-9917, that’s 1-800-525-9917, or you can email us at comments@philosophytalk.org

John Perry
Our guest is Kimberly Brownlee from the University of Manchester.

Ken Taylor
Kimberly, so look, we admire people like Thoreau and Gandhi and many others who have engaged in the acts of civil disobedience. That’s you said. That’s how you got started thinking about this stuff, out of your admiration for such people. But I want to ask you a question about moral rights. Do we really have the moral right, especially those of us who live in a democratic system, to disobey a law just because we think it’s wrong or unjust?

Kimberley Brownlee
Yeah, well, and that is, you know, usually sort of the question that judges try to grapple with when they’re when they’re engaging, when they’re trying to respond to civilly disputed actors. They sort of say to two dissenters, you are improperly giving to yourself license to disregard the law that you know you’re expecting other people to follow. And sort of the the motto of you know that that view is no man or woman is above the law, but you know the so the response to that is that our democratic process doesn’t have an end point. It’s not that sort of the votes are taken, the votes are counted, and that’s the end of the matter. This is the law and debate now has to, has to be shut down. And many people may philosophers who look at civil disobedience and defend it say that, in fact, this mechanism of resorting to suitably constrained forms of illegal protest. That’s how you regenerate democratic debate when a discussion has been silenced or neglected. This is a way of correcting for democratic deficit. The famous philosopher John Rawls, about whom I think you had a session a couple weeks ago, he argued that justified civil disobedience is a way of stabilizing a democratic society. It’s a way of highlighting injustice and sort of bring it to the attention of the majority and trying to work towards positive solutions.

John Perry
So would it help here to think about cases where we not only maybe have it’s not just morally legitimate to disobey the law, but morally required. There’s a famous story that I probably don’t have quite right, where Ralph Waldo Emerson walks by Thoreau when he’s in jail, and says, Henry, what are you doing in there? And Thoreau says, well, Ralph Waldo, or whatever he called him, what are you doing out there? And we have an email on this topic. This is from Fred. And Fred says, I absolutely agree that we can’t have civilization without government by rule of law. But I recently read Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem. Could you comment on what someone like Eichmann should have done, given that he certainly maintained that he was obeying law? That is, we seem to think Eichmann not only would have been the. Morally okay to disobey the law. He was morally required to disobey the law. So, so does that help think about that as kind of a extreme case on the other side?

Kimberley Brownlee
Yeah, well, and I think, you know, that’s, that’s the kind of question Martin Luther King raised as well, is, you know, which is the worst abuse of the law, the the the unjust law that a you know Congress has passed, or you know the act of you know disobeying that law, and you know, many who champion the rule of law and the norms of the rule of law would say that you know norms of generality and predictability and transparency. They’re not simply procedural, that they actually have a substantive quality to them that you know the laws, you know, while they might still, you know, yes, they’re laws, you know, we you know, if they’re passed in the right through the right process, we’ll call them laws. But there’s, there’s, you know, there’s still laws we ought not to follow. And we make a mistake when we think that, well, we have a general duty, a general moral duty, to follow the law, even if it’s a really, you know, an indefensible one,

John Perry
okay, but let’s go back to Ken’s example earlier, of the of the of the abortion protesters. So we’ve got Roe versus Wade. Many people deeply believe it’s wrong, and some, some, some disobey the law, or disobey some other law, to protest that, sometimes violently, like by by blowing up an abortion clinic, but sometimes non violently, like by blocking the entrance. Now let’s, let’s just assume, for the sake of argument, that they’re wrong and that Roe versus Wade is an okay law, or interpretations law. Does the permissibility of their act depend on them being right about what they’re protesting, or is it? Is it permissible just because they believe they’re right about what they’re protesting?

Kimberley Brownlee
Well, it depends if we’re, if we’re talking about whether they’re they have a moral right to engage in civil disobedience, then the sort of the rightness or wrongness of their convictions is, is independent? It’s irrelevant, because rights are there to protect us when we’re going to make bad choices as well as good choices. You know that’s what it is to have a right. You have a protected sphere of autonomy within which you can act so you you have a right to free speech so that you can say the things people don’t want to hear and the things they won’t like, not just the things that people you know might like.

Ken Taylor
But wait a minute. Wait The law doesn’t present itself. And our democratic creation of law does not present itself is something that, okay, it’s up to you whether you accept this law. I mean, it’s not like it’s a cafe where a cafeteria where you say, here’s a law. I like, here’s a law, I think, is that, you know, it’s, isn’t there some kind of duty, especially in a liberal democratic polity, to respect the law. Some general do that would be hard to override.

Kimberley Brownlee
Well, when you look at the various arguments that are offered on behalf of such such a duty, they’re actually hard to sustain. You know, they, you know, they, some of them take the form that you know, we have consented in some implicit or explicit way. You know, we vote, we take advantage of the benefits of our society. We use the roads and hospitals and so on and and therefore we sign up for this legal system, and that creates this general moral duty to follow the law. But, you know, we can question that. We’re born into a society. We don’t choose to become a part of a society, and even if we leave this society, we’ll just end up in another society where, you know, there’ll be similar demands upon us. So we might say, Okay, well, the consent argument maybe isn’t going to work, but we know we can say that we have this general moral duty to follow the law, you know, except maybe in the really serious circumstances, because having a legal system is a good thing that you know, we need to coordinate. Government needs to be able to coordinate its activities. And this democratic process is vulnerable if we challenge it too much. And again, that sort of the question is, what kind of activity is most promoting those good institutions. And you know, when you have someone like Al Gore saying at the Global Initiative global, the Clinton Global Initiative, last September, that you know, young people, you should be out engaging in civil disobedience against coal plants that aren’t using process of carbon capture, because that’s what’s needed in order to put proper pressure on governments and businesses to, you know, preserve these good institutions.

Ken Taylor
It’s a complicated question, no doubt, and I’m sure our callers went away in here. You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. We’re talking about civil disobedience with Kimberly Brownlee from the University of Manchester, and we’d love to have you join this conversation. 1-800-525-9917 that’s 1-800-525-9917 or, as always, you can email us at philosophy talk.org and we’ve got Christina from El Cerrito on the line. Welcome to Philosophy Talk, Christina. Hi. Hi. What’s your comment question?

Christina
Well, I was part of a group of people who committed civil disobedience, and I wanted to make a comment regarding what we go shoot. This was in 1978 there were 250 of us who committed civil disobedience at the PG and E nuclear power. Plant in San Luis Obispo, and it was very well organized. But the purpose, the reason I called the purpose of that action, there were also 250 people who were support people, slash monitors. And it was very well organized. We went into it knowing that we were going to be arrested and we were going to go limp. We weren’t going to it was totally nonviolent. We were also going to not pay bail, and we were going to go to jail. The purpose was to clog up the system, get lots of attention from the media, and educate the public about the link between nuclear power plants and the proliferation of nuclear weapons, about the weapons that were being developed. Now, it was very successful, so it was educational on purpose. And I just wanted to kind of make that comment, because I think that that’s a extremely valid reason for committing civil disobedience to educate the public. Okay, Christina,

Ken Taylor
thanks for the call. Thanks for the call. Thanks for the comment. So Kimberly, what do you think?

Kimberley Brownlee
I think I think Christine is entirely right, that that is, you know, one of the core valuable parts of civil disobedience, and why some of the sort of the strategic methods used are important because they can either enhance or detract from that educational value. So you know, being conscientiously nonviolent in in a very specific way, can have a lot of strategic value in that it doesn’t change the debate. It helps to keep the focus on the issue that you’re most concerned about. In this case, you know the use of nuclear power and nuclear weapons, that I think that Christina is right, that you know the educational part of civil experience, the waking people up, making people uncomfortable. That’s that is a core part of its contribution to our communities.

Ken Taylor
Join this conversation. 1-800-525-9917, we’re talking about civil disobedience. And Tony, also in El Cerritos on the line. Welcome to philosophy. Talk Tony.

Tony
Hello. My question is, well, I have participated in civil disobedience. I was I’ve been wondering about what the responsibility is for those who plan civil media civil disobedience in terms of things they haven’t planned for, such as General damage to those people who are not involved in it, or those people who are involved in hadn’t planned for it to get out of hand, and I mean it in both directions, when police get out of hand, or when perpetrators of the civil disobedience get out of hand and do a lot of general damage.

Ken Taylor
Good question. Tony Kimberly, what do you think?

Kimberley Brownlee
Well, I think, you know, Christina’s observation that her group was very well organized. I think that’s that’s key, that sort of, the better organized your group can be in, the more you’ve anticipated sort of likely responses from police and from, you know, the court process, the better you can and, you know, take care of your responsibilities. Because I think that’s you know, that is an important piece of being a conscientious actor that you’re sensitive to. You know the possible damage you’ll be doing to you know if you’re holding up, if you’re doing a sit in or so on that.

Ken Taylor
But sometimes, if your attention is to bring a halt to a consequential public policy, a war, you know, an unjust occupation or something, as in Gandhi’s case, or to or to end segregation, as in Martin Luther King’s case. You want things, I don’t know if, to get out of hand, but you want to grind the attention you want to grind the wheels of this unjust public policy to a halt?

Kimberley Brownlee
Yeah, well, you know, and I think that’s, that’s probably right, there’s a bit of a balance there. Um, you know, some judges have been, have been lenient in their treatment of conscientious actors when those actors sort of engage with the police in a certain way. So, for example, Justice Allen hunter in Maine, when he was trying some people who had engaged in a sit in in protest the Iraq war in the Bangor Maine Federal Building, he was lenient toward them because they hadn’t gone limp upon arrest. They hadn’t made the police officer’s job more difficult by making it harder to arrest them, that they were sort of playing fair, that they wanted as much publicity as possible, but they were still showing a certain respect for the system and its formal processes. So there is a, you know, there’s this tension between wanting to get much, you know, some publicity, and wanting to be sufficiently sensational that you know, society will attend to you, but at the same time, you know, showing that you’re you know, you’re not terrorizing people, you’re not being coercive. You’re trying to persuade and make people think, not trying to overwhelm.

John Perry
I think there’s a difficulty. Maybe it’s not a philosophical difficulty, but but to have the civil. Disobedience movement be significant. You need a lot of people, and when you get a lot of people, it’s easily to drift into something that’s not merely civil disobedience, but an active attempt to stop things, not through education, but by interposition of your bodies, which may be justified too, but it’s a little bit different. My own memory is, after being a student, I became a faculty member in 1968 and I remember we decided, a group of faculty members once that we should interpose ourselves between the police and the student demonstrators. So there was a line of faculty they were protesting a Regents meeting, and you know, this wasn’t my idea, and I immediately began to have doubts about how good an idea. But the students were more frightening than the police.

Ken Taylor
We’ve got, we’ve got lots of callers on the line. Brian from Menlo Park, welcome to Philosophy Talk, Brian.

Brian
Oh, hello. I’m wondering if you think an act of violence is justified, if it’s permitted, against something of sufficient evil. For example, was the attempt to murder Adolf Hitler justified because he was perceived as a figure of great evil. And if we can say yes to that, was the actual assassination of Abraham Lincoln, justified because he was perceived by millions to be a figure of great evil.

Kimberley Brownlee
I mean, Brian, I think thanks for the call. I think assassinating Hitler was justified, but I don’t really put that under the under civil disobedience, because, I mean, for example, we were at war with Hitler, and we could do anything we can to stop him, and those who were his victims, I think they were justified in doing anything to stop but I don’t think you need concepts of civil disobedience to think about how to deal with evil. What do you think?

Kimberly, no, I would agree. And you know, we want to be careful not to become too sort of consequential in our thinking about, well, if it brings about a good end, then, you know, whatever means we need to use our defensible means. I think people who are, you know, civilly disobedient in the Para paradigmatic way of, you know, being non violent, or, you know, public engaging with the law in a certain way that they’re they’re very conscious of the process. You know, Martin Luther King said that the, you know, the ends must be just ends, but the means we use must be equally just. It’s not like he was very critical of Malcolm X for being willing to use extreme types of measures in order to achieve immense.

Ken Taylor
I mean, I think, I think there’s a big important thing you have to distinguish between the what justifies acts of civil disobedience in a basically just liberal society where there are many other means available, versus when you’re in a repressive, oppressive, totalitarian state. I mean, those are really morally different situations, I would think. But you’re listening to Philosophy Talk. We’re discussing civil disobedience with Kimberly Brownlee from the University of Manchester.

John Perry
How should the government react to acts of civil disobedience? Should protest be treated just like under breaches of the law? We’ll look into that in our next segment.

Ken Taylor
Punishing acts of civil disobedience, plus more of your calls and emails when Philosophy Talk continues,

Beach Boys
There’s a riot going on, student demonstration time.

John Perry
From student demonstrations to civil disobedience. Science, how should governments treat lawbreakers who claim the moral high ground? I’m John Perry. This is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything

Ken Taylor
except your intelligence. I’m Ken Taylor. Our guest is Kimberly Brownlee from the University of Manchester, and we have a whole lineup of callers on the line. Jay from San Francisco. Welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Jay
Thank you. I think it’s Kant’s idea. I’m not sure about the test, ethical test, about generalizing your behavior if everybody acted that way, right?

Ken Taylor
The categorical imperative.

Jay
Yeah, nd how that would pan out if the process would become just too unwieldy, if everybody acted on a civil disobedience, you know, manner,

Ken Taylor
Right, so are you, what are you wondering?

John Perry
What’s there’s a question is, how does does it pass that test?

Jay
Yeah, does it pass the test? Because it would just be too chaotic. Everybody acted in that way.

Ken Taylor
Good question, Jay. Kimberly, what do you think?

Kimberley Brownlee
Um, yeah, I think, I think that is sort of the the worry. And many, many theorists would say that, well, for that reason, if you’re going to engage in civil disobedience, you should pay some penalty that you know, even if your cause is a good one, and even if Judge you know, the judges actually agree with you about the value of your protest, that you should pay a penalty that’s a sufficiently high one that it’s going to deter people who aren’t very serious about engaging in this, in this kind of protest. And my worry with with that kind of argument is it’s, it’s suggesting that, you know, we can, and we’re not being very content when we when we do impose that penalty, because we’re saying to you that, well, we can treat you as a means we can sort of show, make an example of you so that other people won’t be inclined to engage in in protest, unless they’re really serious.

Ken Taylor
So you but you raised the question that that is like at the heart of this segment. So what should the law or the courts do to a civilly disobedient person? I mean, you can see you can let them off scot free because they had acted from these noble motives. You can punish them the same as other people. You can punish them more harshly than other people. You might want to punish them more harshly than other people, because not only did they commit the crime, but they said, Hey, I was entitled to commit the crime because I’m morally superior. You might want to bat them down. So how should the law think about the Civil disobedient when it comes to punishment?

Kimberley Brownlee
I think it’s actually quite, quite tricky, because, you know, as Chief Justice McEachern of British Columbia pointed out, civil disobedience is not a legal concept. There’s no offense of civil disobedience. So you know, when you engage in civil disobedience, you know you’re you’re claiming that you have a different intention, that you should be treated differently. But you know it is a philosophical notion, not a legal one. You know that said, Some judges have taken the view that there is a value in being made to feel uncomfortable justice. Hunter of Maine, whom I mentioned before, he said that, you know, there have been great acts of civil disobedience in our history that have helped to, you know, expand the moral horizons of our community. And so civilly disobedient people should be treated more leniently for that reason. You know, there are lots of cases that don’t take that view. And certainly, as you get into the appeal court cases, the line tends to be much more. You know, judge’s job is to uphold the rule of law. And you read about judges saying My hands are tied. I can’t, even though I agree with you, I can’t, in fact, treat you differently than an ordinary offender. I mean, it’s,

John Perry
I mean, it is a difficult question, but it seems to be part of the dynamic is supposed to be that we disobey the law, and the law is so obviously unjust, when you think about it and draw attention to it, that the judges will not feel good about enforcing the law. I mean, we take the risk that they won’t feel that way, but in a strange way. It sounds counterintuitive, but you think the judge should pay attention to whether they think the protest was legitimate, but if they think it was so legitimate, then maybe they should break the law too.

Ken Taylor
But part of the what civil disobeyers do in being conscientious civil disobeyers is to embody respect for the law. And part of that respect for the law is, I think, willingness to accept the punishment. So if I’m willing to accept the punishment, and it’s the law and you’re the judge, I mean, I don’t quite see why you should not punish me.

Kimberley Brownlee
Well, though, you know, some civilly disobedient people were quite happy accept the punishment, but it didn’t actually indicate what you might think it was indicating in terms of, you know, you know, I’m supporting the community and so on. You know, someone like Gandhi was very happy to go to jail for civil disobedience, but he wasn’t the least bit supportive of the British regime that was was punishing him. So I don’t know how much we want to take away from this idea of a willingness to accept punishment, but there is, you know, this sort of broader question of, you know, how to understand this kind of activity, and you know, some thinkers are trying to develop under examined defenses. You know, the idea of a demands of conscience defense that, you know, we put too much emphasis on law abidingness When we say there’s no defense for someone who deviates from the law because they couldn’t, they couldn’t act otherwise. Yeah.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, complicated stuff. Millie from Berkeley, the. And on the line. Welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Millie
Millie, hello, interesting. I thank you very much. I wanted to observe that I think, in a way, you folks are being too nice about what the law is. You are, of course, quite legitimately thinking about a relatively liberal, enlightened society ours. But we have had five to four Supreme Court decisions on very important issues, and we have lawless regimes, like things that functioned in New Orleans at time of Katrina and after. And sometimes breaking the law is a moral obligation or maybe even an emotional obligation, I would think, for which one has to take the consequences. And they may be cruel.

Ken Taylor
Millie, I thanks for the I totally agree with you. And I think in a when we’re not talking about a basically decent, liberal society, who’s who’s, whose laws are, by and large, just and ours wasn’t always that, then I think it becomes much more fraught. The burdens on you to not go along with that become much higher. So I agree. Kimberly, what do you think?

Kimberley Brownlee
I think that’s right. And you know, much of the philosophical writing about civil disobedience does focus on the liberal context, with sort of the assumption being made that in a in a less liberal regime, a more intolerant regime, that you know, if you you don’t have to make a case for civil disobedience, because, you know that’s that’s sort of the modest form of protest. You know that you’re probably entitled to use even more extreme measures in the liberal context. It is somewhat heartening when you when you hear Barack Obama, you know, supporting, for example, the workers at Republic windows and doors who occupied their workplace after it was closed, and, you know, and demanded that they that their rights be honored and so on. Or if you hear Al Gore telling young people to go out and civilly disobey that, yeah, the sort of sense that this is a potentially legitimate protest, and one which, you know, judges and lawyers and legal theorists need to give a bit more attention to, and maybe open up some legal space and give some legal terminology to, because it’s a very common type of activity, and it tends to just be treated in such a haphazard way, because there’s no sort of agreed upon sense of what it is legal. You know, its legal status is.

John Perry
Well, Millie makes a very good, good point, I think. But, and you might say, well, you know, it may be that America, the United States, scores pretty well compared to the competition on procedural justice. We do actually have democratic procedures, and with all their problems, they work pretty well compared to the the most of the the societies in history. On the other hand, in terms of consequences, we’re so big, so powerful, have so much to do with the world’s economy and completely monopolize the world’s weapon systems, that the consequences of what we do whatever fair procedures led to bad decisions, they have terrible consequences. And I must admit, I sometimes think that we should all be out on the streets all the time.

Kimberley Brownlee
I agree, and academics, we should be encouraging our students to be out there more than they are.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, I think you’re right about that. I think you’re right, but I do think we kind of let the civil disobedience a little easy, off the hook, because there got to be limits and constraints, and we haven’t had time, much time to talk about that at all. But that’s a good warning note to end on. Yeah, on that note, Kimberly, thank you so much for joining us. It’s been a it’s been a great conversation. Thank you, Ken, thank you John. Our guest has been Kimberly Brownlee. She’s professor of philosophy at the University of Manchester, co editor of disabilities and disadvantage, and she writes a lot about topics like civil disobedience. So John, what did you learn today?

John Perry
Well, I learned today that it’s a delight to have a clear thinking, clear talking, articulate guests like Kimberly Brownlee in preparing for the show. I must admit, civil disobedience, it’s not something I’ve ever taught about. It’s not something I’ve ever done research about. And so to read up on it was quite interesting. I engaged in some very minor civil disobedience that back during the Vietnam War, sat in a building where we didn’t have permission, and I never burned my draft card publicly, but I did erase it in private civil disobedience, but I didn’t think much of it as a philosophical issue there, but it raises a lot of interesting points.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, I do think it raises a lot of interesting points. And, you know, I really wanted to, I wish we had had time to think more about, you know, the limits when it’s called for and when it isn’t. Because, I mean, I think it is often called for. It is often something that we’re entitled to engage in. But it can’t just be anything goes. The law is not just an option, right? And I don’t conceive of the law as just an option to obey or disobey, but sometimes I am called to disobey it. So how do I how do you reconcile these two things, the non optional status of the law with the right to to disobey? I think that’s a fascinating question.

John Perry
Well, I think that also the the the absolute duty to disobey falls upon people like us that have tenure or retired people like myself that don’t need jobs. So it’s an interesting subject.

Ken Taylor
Conversation continues on our blog and on our Facebook page. Now you can

John Perry
download podcasts of our program too, by the way, from our website, just go to our website and follow the directions. Now we’re going to try to help a listener think through a real life problem using the tools of philosophy. We call this a conundrum.

Ken Taylor
So Don we have a very special conundrum on the line, this caller has requested anonymity.

John Perry
Hi caller. What should we call you? Pat?

Christina
Is a good name. Okay, Hi Pat. What’s your conundrum? My conundrum is that I am an assistant to a CEO of a small company, and our relationship has been very good over the years that I’ve worked with this person, but last year, this employer decided to what he called reformat the company, or reformat, I should say, a department, and fired the manager, and then we embarked on A high powered national search for someone new, and it was really, in retrospect, a complicated, intricate construct put into motion many months earlier to result in this CEO hiring his girlfriend to fill the position. And this person is not qualified for the management position she finds herself in, and she was by no means the pick of the other people who were involved in the process. So this has created a difficult environment for us people understand and recognize that they were lied to as a whole and individually, and that’s kind of how the work environment is now.

John Perry
Pat, just let me ask a clarification question. I got the sense originally that although he’s CEO of the company, the company is in fact part of a larger organization that so he has somebody besides himself that he answers to in terms of spending all this money.

Christina
That is correct. He does answer to a loose governing board of directors.

John Perry
So part of your conundrum is whether you have a moral obligation to tell them,

Christina
Yes, that would seem the right course of action, but I don’t believe it would result in anything other than my firing.

Ken Taylor
So now I’m beginning to understand your conundrum. There’s a situation that nobody’s willing to do anything about it, people, lots of people know about it, nobody’s willing to do anything about it. You think you might be able to do something about it by informing the board, but you don’t have any confidence that it would bring about a result other than damage to you. And you’re not a, you’re not a you’re not a martyr, right? I mean, you don’t want to be a martyr, no?

Christina
But I also don’t want to hurt anyone else, because several people have expressed great rage to me about what they know, but everyone is afraid for their job, and all history points to anybody who is labeled a troublemaker losing their job rather quickly. Pat.

Ken Taylor
Let me ask you a different kind of question. Before this incident, you had a high degree of respect for this CEO. You worked closely with him, yes. Did you consider yourself a close friend of his or just a co worker?

Christina
Somewhere in between, I thought we had a strong professional relationship that was also friendly.

Ken Taylor
What about when your friend does something wrong, you go directly to your friend, if you have a you say, I think you shouldn’t have done this. I think you’re ruining this workplace. I think I think you need to look at this again and rethink, could you do that?

Christina
I actually already did. But believe me, nothing good came of it. I didn’t lose my job, but I think he is very clear on where we both stand now.

John Perry
So now that you know he’s capable of this behavior, it does change your moral situation, it seems to me, and that you now have to realize that you have to be careful because you don’t want to be involved in this. It may be something that you can’t stop. You certainly can’t go back and reverse history. It may be something you can’t redress at a reasonable personal cost or at all, because telling the board would just result in your getting fired and not not undoing the situation, or his being punished. But you can avoid being involved in it in the future. That seems to me the first obligation that you have, the most important one. And it sounds like maybe you’ve already completed it, that you that you explained to him that you regard this as unacceptable behavior and as something you wouldn’t want to have been involved in and don’t want to be involved in in the future. Her, is that correct?

Christina
That is correct.

Ken Taylor
I want to echo John just a bit. I mean, I think this is kind of a morally unfortunate situation in the following sense, I don’t think there’s anything much more that you can do without deciding to be a saint or a hero, right? And you’re not obligated to be a saint or hero, you’re not obligated to hurt yourself to better this situation, right? And if you, but I know you’re you want internally to do something about it, but sometimes we just have to accept the limits possible of from our own, you know, moral agency, there are just limits to what you can do and achieve to improve a situation, right? There aren’t really any great options available to you, except living with this morally distasteful situation and protecting yourself.

Christina
Yes, I think that is where it is. I thank

Ken Taylor
you for your conundrum. It’s a very gripping one, and I, I hope somehow the situation improves. Thank you. Bye. Bye. You.

If you have a philosophical problem or quandary that’s affecting your work or your play or keeping you awake at nights, John and I would be happy to lend an ear and maybe give you some sound advice, go

John Perry
to the Philosophy Talk website and poke the conundrums button with your mouse, or just send an email to conundrums at Philosophy Talk, dot O, R, G. Philosophy Talk is a presentation of Ben Manila productions and the trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University, copyright 2009

Ken Taylor
Our executive producer is David Demarest. Our

John Perry
production coordinator is Devin strolovich. Our directors of research are Daniel elstein and Cole Lahey. Lael Weiss is our webmaster,

Ken Taylor
also thanks to Zoe corneli, Merrill, Kessler, Corey Goldman, Jennifer Jensen and Mark Stone.

John Perry
Support for Philosophy Talk comes from the Templeton Foundation, also from various groups at Stanford University, the friends of Philosophy Talk and the members of KALW San Francisco, where our program originates, the

Ken Taylor
views expressed or misexpressed in this program do not necessarily represent the opinions of Stanford University or of our other funders.

John Perry
The conversation continues on our website, philosophy talk.org

Ken Taylor
I’m John Perry and I’m Ken Taylor. Thank you for

John Perry
listening, and thank you for thinking.