Candice Delmas – författare

What are our responsibilities in the face of injustice? How far should we go to fight it? Many would argue that as long as a state is nearly just, citizens have a moral duty to obey the law. Proponents of civil disobedience generally hold that, given this moral duty, a person needs a solid justification to break the law. But activists from Henry David Thoreau and Mohandas Gandhi to the Movement for Black Lives have long recognized that there are times when, rather than having a duty to obey the law, we have a duty to disobey it. Taking seriously the history of this activism, A Duty to Resist wrestles with the problem of political obligation in real world societies that harbor injustice. Candice Delmas argues that the duty of justice, the principle of fairness, the Samaritan duty, and political association impose responsibility to resist under conditions of injustice. We must expand political obligation to include a duty to resist unjust laws and social conditions even in legitimate states. For Delmas, this duty to resist demands principled disobedience, and such disobedience need not always be civil. At times, covert, violent, evasive, or offensive acts of lawbreaking can be justified, even required. Delmas defends the viability and necessity of illegal assistance to undocumented migrants, leaks of classified information, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, sabotage, armed self-defense, guerrilla art, and other modes of resistance. There are limits: principle alone does not justify law breaking. But uncivil disobedience can sometimes be not only permissible but required in the effort to resist injustice.

What are our responsibilities in the face of injustice? How far should we go to fight it? Many would argue that as long as a state is nearly just, citizens have a moral duty to obey the law. Proponents of civil disobedience generally hold that, given this moral duty, a person needs a solid justification to break the law. But activists from Henry David Thoreau and Mohandas Gandhi to the Movement for Black Lives have long recognized that there are times when, rather than having a duty to obey the law, we have a duty to disobey it. Taking seriously the history of this activism, A Duty to Resist wrestles with the problem of political obligation in real world societies that harbor injustice. Candice Delmas argues that the duty of justice, the principle of fairness, the Samaritan duty, and political association impose responsibility to resist under conditions of injustice. We must expand political obligation to include a duty to resist unjust laws and social conditions even in legitimate states. For Delmas, this duty to resist demands principled disobedience, and such disobedience need not always be civil. At times, covert, violent, evasive, or offensive acts of lawbreaking can be justified, even required. Delmas defends the viability and necessity of illegal assistance to undocumented migrants, leaks of classified information, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, sabotage, armed self-defense, guerrilla art, and other modes of resistance. There are limits: principle alone does not justify law breaking. But uncivil disobedience can sometimes be not only permissible but required in the effort to resist injustice.

Can violent resistance ever be justified as a means of protest? Brought to the fore of national consciousness by protest movements such as Black Lives Matter, as well as the January 6th storming of the U.S. Capitol, questions around the ethics of uncivil unrest urgently call for a wider scholarly examination and debate. In this volume, editors Candice Delmas and Avia Pasternak bring together a collection of cutting-edge perspectives on the ethics of uncivil protest and resistance. The contributions in this book challenge the dominant consensus in liberal politics and philosophy that the only permissible form of illegal protest in democratic states is civil disobedience. The contributors argue instead that the distinction between civil and uncivil protest is far less rigid than was previously thought. The book explores the meaning of civility and incivility, as well as related concepts like power, resistance, activism, and legitimacy. The contributors draw new conceptual distinctions and offer new and bold defences of uncivil forms of protest, from rioting to prison escapes and revolutionary movements. Overall, the volume establishes uncivil protest as an important new area of study and presents new questions and new answers to these complex challenges.

Can violent resistance ever be justified as a means of protest? Brought to the fore of national consciousness by protest movements such as Black Lives Matter, as well as the January 6th storming of the U.S. Capitol, questions around the ethics of uncivil unrest urgently call for a wider scholarly examination and debate. In this volume, editors Candice Delmas and Avia Pasternak bring together a collection of cutting-edge perspectives on the ethics of uncivil protest and resistance. The contributions in this book challenge the dominant consensus in liberal politics and philosophy that the only permissible form of illegal protest in democratic states is civil disobedience. The contributors argue instead that the distinction between civil and uncivil protest is far less rigid than was previously thought. The book explores the meaning of civility and incivility, as well as related concepts like power, resistance, activism, and legitimacy. The contributors draw new conceptual distinctions and offer new and bold defences of uncivil forms of protest, from rioting to prison escapes and revolutionary movements. Overall, the volume establishes uncivil protest as an important new area of study and presents new questions and new answers to these complex challenges.

What is wrong with disobedience? What makes an act of disobedience civil or uncivil? Under what conditions can an act of civil or uncivil disobedience be justified? Can a liberal democratic regime tolerate (un)civil disobedience? This Element book presents the main answers that philosophers and activist-thinkers have offered to these questions. It is organized in 3 parts: Part I presents the main philosophical accounts of civil disobedience that liberal political philosophers and democratic theorists have developed and then conceptualizes uncivil disobedience. Part II examines the origins of disobedience in the praxis of activist-thinkers: Henry David Thoreau on civil resistance, anarchists on direct action, and Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. on nonviolence. Part III takes up the question of violence in defensive action, the requirement that disobedients accept legal sanctions, and the question of whether uncivil disobedience is counterproductive and undermines civic bonds.