Civil Disobedience And Other Essays the Collected Essays of Henry David Thoreau

Paperback, 188 pages

English language

Published Jan. 30, 2005 by Digireads.com.

ISBN:
978-1-4209-2522-7
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OCLC Number:
127365188

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Civil Disobedience and Other Essays is a collection of some of Henry David Thoreau's most important essays. Contained in this volume are the following essays: Civil Disobedience, Natural History of Massachusetts, A Walk to Wachusett, The Landlord, A Winter Walk, The Succession of Forest Trees, Walking, Autumnal Tints, Wild Apples, Night and Moonlight, Aulus Persius Flaccus, Herald of Freedom, Life Without Principle, Paradise (to be) Regained, A Plea for John Brown, The Last Days of John Brown, After the Death of John Brown, The Service, Slavery in Massachusetts, and Wendell Phillips Before Concord Lyceum.

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Mercifully short, this is not an easy read, and also not quite what I was expecting. I knew of his call for refusing to obey an unjust law, but not of his call for an ability to simply opt out of membership in a State. It's hard to rate this essay, because he is doing several things at the same time in this work. While he is admirably calling for every person to refuse to obey an unjust law, just as a soldier is obligated to refuse to obey an illegal order, he also applies, it seems to me, some of his own protected status, to that of the ordinary or poor person, when he suggests that it is better to put some of one's own skin in the game, so to speak, than to pay mere lip service to an unjust system. He is not wrong, but it seems …

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Subjects

  • Essays, journals, letters & other prose works
  • Literature: Classics
  • Literary Collections
  • Literature - Classics / Criticism
  • Essays