Since the last post of the “What Are You Reading?” column, I have begun work on a new paper about civil disobedience. It will take up the question of what role civil disobedience has to the government. In addition to reading classics on civil disobedience like Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience, Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” and some of Gandhi’s writing’s, I am also reading what a number of contemporary philosophers have to say. This includes Rawls‘ and Arendt’s statements on the topic as well as some papers written in the liberal-democratic tradition, like Clyde Frazier’s “Between Obedience and Revolution” and Marshall Cohen’s “Liberalism and Disobedience.” I am also looking at some critiques of this tradition, such as those found in Roland Bleiker’s “Rawls and the Limits of Nonviolent Civil Disobedience” and Bernard Harcourt’s “Political Disobedience.”
Any suggestions are welcome. What are you reading?
