Thoreau's Civil Disobedience and Walden
by Barry Wright
Essay: Thoreau's Civil Disobedience and Walden
Pages: 10
Rating: 3 stars
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Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was an American philosopher, author, poet, abolitionist, and naturalist. He was
famous for his essay, “Civil Disobedience”, and his book, Walden. He believed in individual conscience and
nonviolent acts of political resistance to protest unfair laws. Moreover, he valued the importance of observing
nature, being individual, and living in a simple life by his own values. His writings later influenced the thoughts of
Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. In “Civil Disobedience” and Walden, he advocated individual
nonviolent resistance to the unjust state and reflected his simple living in the nature.
In “Civil Disobedience,” Thoreau stated that government should be expedient and conscientious. He started off his
essay with his motto, “That government is best which governs least” and “That government is best which governs
not at all.” He meant that we did not need a government that made rules and that the government should let the
people do whatever they wanted to do. He believed that government should be expedient, not inexpedient.
“Government is at best but an expedient, but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes,
inexpedient.” He used a lot of examples to justify the inexpedient government. One of them was the MexicanAmerican war. “Witness the present Mexican war, the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing
government as their tool, for, in the outset, the people would not have consented to this measure…” It was
inexpedient because war was just a tool for a few powerful individuals and did not have consent of the multitude.
He believed that the government should help most of the people, not just a few rich people. In addition, the
minority rule, in w...