question of whether the rioters have the duty to obey the law, and whether their civil disobedience is justified. In this essay, I am going to draw from Joseph Raz’s The Obligation to Obey: Revision and Tradition, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail to analyze whether the protestors have the duty to obey the law, and consider an objection from the social contract theory. I will ultimately argue that they do not have a duty to obey the law. I will also argue that their civil disobedience
Zachary DesJarlais Essay Assignment #1 Introductory Ethics In Apology, Socrates appears in court for what would seem to be an unjust trail. During the processions, he states that any law denying him the right to pursue his life mission of practicing philosophy would be ignored. Later, in Crito, Socrates finds himself imprisoned and awaiting death. Crito, a close friend, finds the philosopher, and begs him to escape certain death. It is implied that the two would be able to escape easily, and seemingly
he should escape and go into exile instead of allowing the law to prosecute him for what he did not do. Socrates wanted Crito to understand that he was not ready to break the laws of Athens. Because the Laws existed as a single entity, to break one of them simply meant to break all of them which means that if he agreed to escape, Socrates would cause great harm to the law. He explained plainly that the citizen is obliged to obey the law the same way a kid is bound to his or her parents. That is why
themselves to observe the laws that are spelled out in its articles” (Rousseau 76). Unlike the savage man, because the civilized man is no longer solitary and in fact is in constant interaction with fellow members of his species, he can no longer be free from social obligations. George Kateb supports this claim by stating, the good citizen will willingly obey the laws set in place as “no man can preserve his life, liberty, and property without fulfilling his obligation” and utilizing the concept
In Crito by Plato, Crito attempts to persuade Socrates to escape from jail so as to avoid his death sentence. This essay will set out to elaborate on the things Plato would say to both Crito and Socrates, if he were to be in jail with them. In addition, this essay will elaborate further on the reasons Plato would not agree that Socrates’ decision, to stay in jail and accept his death sentence, would eventually result in happiness. Thus, I will establish the stand that Plato would take sides with
killing king Charles I was not to be the signal for the collapse of the social order whose keystone as he had pretended to be. Precedent periods of discontinuity in the government had witnessed an outbreak of riots prompted because of the belief that the law died with the crown, but the “year of intended parity” witnessed no popular revolts emerge to benefit from such situation; the situation remained unrealized.” Indeed, an examination of disorder in the 1640s and 1650s might suggest the possibilities