Plato’s Crito on Civil Disobedience and Political Obligations

1 Introduction : Why a Debate on Civil Disobedience ?

When doctors start civil disobedience it's time to take notice.

Paediatricians at the Lady Cilento Hospital in Brisbane are now entering the sixth day of their protest against the Australian government’s intention to send the young baby of asylum seeker parents back to a refugee detention centre on the Pacific island of Nauru. They believe that the centre cannot provide a safe environment for her, an assertion that is backed by ample evidence. 3 These docto...

A Theory of Civil Disobedience Faculty Research Working Paper Series

From the streets of Hong Kong to Ferguson, Missouri, civil disobedience has again become newsworthy. What explains the prevalence and extremity of acts of civil disobedience? This paper presents a model in which protest planners choose the nature of the disturbance hoping to influence voters (or other decision-makers in less democratic regimes) both through the size of the unrest and by generat...

Nber Working Paper Series a Theory of Civil Disobedience

From the streets of Hong Kong to Ferguson, Missouri, civil disobedience has again become newsworthy. What explains the prevalence and extremity of acts of civil disobedience?This paper presents a model in which protest planners choose the nature of the disturbance hoping to influence voters (or other decision-makers in less democratic regimes) both through the size of the unrest and by generati...

Defiance, Persuasion, or Conformity? The Argument in Plato's Apology and Crito

While the relation between the individual and the state belongs clearly to one of the most complex issues in Western political philosophy, the relation between the Socrates of the Apology and that of the Crito ranks, accordingly, as one of the most contentious problems in the entire Socratic scholarship. This is due to the fact that in the Apology (29 c–d) one is confronted with a defiant rebel...