Henry David Thoreau and the hypocrisy of the privileged

Henry David Thoreau’s essay on anarchism and individualism, “Civil Disobedience”, is at once both a theoretical masterpiece of the philosophical basis for one’s self-removal from society and the musings of an over-privileged man who has had his first brush with consequences of his actions. Thoreau makes a clear and poetic argument against the State as ideological apparatus that has legitimacy over the rights of the individual. He argues forcefully for the rights and freedoms of the individual, and argues against the right of the State to impose its will upon those rights and freedoms. Where Thoreau falters on the issue of this civil disobedience is when he explains his awakening in the jail cell in which he spent one night. Thoreau makes a correct and elegant argument for revolutionary action against the State, but his argument is slightly hypocritical when one takes into account the lack of real consequences he had to endure for his actions.

Thoreau’s difficulty with accepting the State’s authority stems from his ideas of one’s individual morality and how this morality is incompatible with support of the State by the individual. The State, to Thoreau, has no moral legitimacy if it participates in immoral activities, which at the time were epitomized by the practice of legal slavery and the Mexican War- a war of which Thoreau said, “the country that is overrun [by an antagonistic force] is not our own, but ours is the invading army” (Tp. 4). Indeed, resistance to this unchecked aggression of one’s own state is seen by those who choose prison instead of taking up arms. The support given by those who do not actually take up action against the will of the State is inconsistent with their actions, which do little to nothing to stem the tide of injustice. “The soldier is applauded”, says Thoreau on page six, “who refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the very government which makes the war”.

Thoreau’s belief in the antecedent to true change is in resistance to the State in such a way as to deny its authority and therefore erode its power. “A deliberate and practical denial of its power” (Tp. 7) is the greatest offense to the State, and this offense is the one to which the State must react to as forcefully as possible, despite how inconsequential the action may seem. For Thoreau, this was demonstrated in his refusal to pay his taxes, and he urged the admitted minority of his fellow countrymen that held the same ideals to do the same, to clog the system by its weight and purpose. As Thoreau said, “It is for no particular item in the tax-bill that I refuse to pay it. I simply wish to refuse allegiance to the State, to withdraw and stand aloof from it completely” (Tp. 14–15). Here Thoreau is making a stand to which there is no easy retort- he simply believes he is better off without participating in the workings of the State, workings which he has fundamental moral disagreements with, such as slavery, and thus he refuses to support monetarily the institution.

Thoreau’s philosophy thus explained, it is now time to turn to the hypocrisy that pervades much of his actual activities. While Thoreau made a persuasive justification for civil disobedience to the laws of the State, the actual actions of this disobedience relied on one’s tolerance for the pain and trouble one would encounter when one did so. Realizing this, Thoreau did note that his fellow citizens would “dread the consequences of disobedience to [the State] to their property and families”, but argued that the moral impetus for such actions was so strong it would be “impossible for a man to live honestly and at the same time comfortably in outward respects” (Tp. 11). But did Thoreau live without comfort? Did he truly deal with the consequences of his disobedience to the State? Thoreau builds his essay’s thesis around the fact that for not paying his taxes, he spent a night in jail. It was only one night, though, because his tax was paid by a friend to release him from prison after one night. Is one night in jail living honestly and without comfort?

Thoreau gives an account of his one night in jail, in which he was given a cell with a peaceful criminal and had little to no interaction with the rest of the prisoners. As soon as he entered the prison yard, the rest of the prisoners were sent to their cells for his benefit, and his cell was, by his account, not a squalid place but a rather clean one. Thoreau treated his time in jail as a romanticized sociological experiment in which he, for the first time, felt he was sincerely in touch with the sounds of his town, from tavern to factory. This one night was more a fanciful distraction from his patrician life of writing and leisure, which was supported by his aristocrtic background. Look how he was treated, the deference with which the jailer sent away the prisoners in the yard upon his arrival, the one night only he spent in jail, and his release by a wealthy friend who could not bear to see him in such a place. One may wonder what Thoreau’s philosophical take on civil disobedience would have been had he had to spend a year in prison, and prison proper. This student believes it would have been far different. To look at Thoreau’s actual experience and hold it up in juxtaposition with his writings on the revolutionary philosophy of civil disobedience is to see hypocrisy, hypocrisy that is shown by on the one hand endorsing actions which result in the State’s harsh disciplinary response, and on the other not experiencing the response in any meaningful way.

For pure philosophical arguments on the illegitimacy of the State and the necessity to not submit to its power, Civil Disobedience is a fantastic work that has much to offer despite the inconsistency of its author’s actions. Thoreau makes a spectacular case for refusing to participate in the injustices governments perpetuate using the tax dollars and the apathy of their citizenry. The government’s only power, Thoreau tells us, is from the acceptance of its superior force by the ruled, so what better way to defeat this superior force than to cease acceptance of its legitimacy? And although one can make the case that Thoreau did not have to face the most brutal consequences of his actions- he certainly did not- that fact does not detract completely from the validity of his philosophical point.