QuestionsMust we always obey the law?Helvidius Priscus: "You will do your part, and I will do mine"
Must we always obey the law?Conscience first

Helvidius Priscus: "You will do your part, and I will do mine"

Helvidius Priscus and Vespasian; the purple thread

Épictète 50 · 135A former slave turned Stoic teacher: he taught that we can act only on our judgements and desires, never on the rest.
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What it claims

I may disobey the order to be silent and pay for it with my life: conscience comes before the order, and the penalty is borne without resistance or fear.

Why

The emperor can expel or kill me, but while I am a senator my part is to say what I think right, and I keep it without trembling.

The same idea through history
Épictète108Epictetus offers Helvidius Priscus, a Roman senator under Vespasian, as an example of someone who keeps his character before power.
Henry David Thoreau1849Thoreau also defends a duty to do what one thinks right, while accepting the penalty.
In short

"Helvidius Priscus: "You will do your part, and I will do mine"" is an argument by Épictète (Discourses I, 2 (as recorded by Arrian, c. 108), 108) on the question "Must we always obey the law?" (answer: conscience first). Its claim: I may disobey the order to be silent and pay for it with my life: conscience comes before the order, and the penalty is borne without resistance or fear. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P4). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 2 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Discourses I, 2 (as recorded by Arrian, c. 108)
Valid with an implicit premise

Vespasian, emperor of Rome, sends word to the senator Helvidius Priscus not to come to the Senate. Helvidius answers: "It is in your power not to allow me to be a member of the senate, but so long as I am, I must go in." The emperor gives a little: "Go in, but say nothing." Helvidius: "Do not ask my opinion, and I will be silent." But the emperor will ask, and he will say what he thinks right, even at the cost of his life. Epictetus draws a lesson: everyone has a role, and what fits that role does not depend on the order received. The emperor does his part (punishing), Helvidius his (speaking, then accepting the penalty without fear). Note: the text comes from Arrian, who took down Epictetus' lessons, and Epictetus does not say here that every unjust law must be disobeyed: he speaks of a man in his place.

P1Power can take my place from me (senator, exile, death), but as long as I hold it, what that place asks of me does not depend on power.
P2My place as a senator asks me to say what seems right to me.
P3The threat of death does not change this duty: the emperor does his part by punishing, and I do mine by dying without fear.
P4 · implicit premiseWhen the ruler's order and what my role asks contradict each other, my role, as my conscience understands it, prevails.
Therefore I may disobey the order to be silent and pay for it with my life: conscience comes before the order, and the penalty is borne without resistance or fear.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P4, one can accept P1 to P3 and conclude otherwise: my role asks me to speak, but the ruler's order still comes first, and I must be silent until I can persuade. That is Kant's position.
The argument is valid. If my role requires speaking (P2), if power cannot change what my role requires (P1), and if in a conflict my role prevails (P4), then I must speak despite the order. P3 adds that the penalty does not change that duty. The objections target P4: may each person's judgment come before the law?
Analogy. A doctor whom a boss forbids to tell a patient he is contagious. The boss can fire him, but as long as he is a doctor, telling the truth is part of the job. He says it and accepts the consequences.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Plato (the Laws in the Crito) 385 BC · attacks the conclusion

In the Crito, the Laws tell Socrates he must either persuade the city or do what it commands. Obeying the order while seeking to change it is the rule; disobeying because "I judge it right" would ruin all law, since anyone could say as much.

no reply
We have not yet found a direct reply by Épictète in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) Our summary (a reconstructed reply, Epictetus does not discuss the Crito here): Helvidius does not flee or hide; he speaks in the Senate, as a senator, where the law gives him a voice, and he accepts the penalty, as Socrates did. He only refuses to be silent on command. Plato himself has Socrates say, in the Apology (29d), that he would not obey an order to stop doing philosophy: the rule "persuade or obey" may therefore not rule out refusing silence.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: there is wide agreement on accepting the penalty; the disagreement is whether an order to be silent is one a person must first obey, as the Crito says of the city's orders.
Immanuel Kant 1797 · attacks premise 4

Kant writes that the people have a duty to endure even an abuse of supreme power said to be unbearable, because resistance to the supreme legislation is always unlawful and destroys the whole legal order. A senator who defies the emperor's order undermines the legal order, even in the name of his conscience.

a defender replies
No reply possible: objection raised in 1797, after the author's death (135).
Henry David Thoreau defender of the argument · 1849
Thoreau answers that the only obligation we have a right to assume is to do at any time what we think right. Like Helvidius, he accepts prison and refuses to be the instrument of injustice.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: Kant holds that a shared legal order comes before each person's judgment; Thoreau and Epictetus hold that no order can decide for me what I must do. Neither has made the other give way.
E
Epictetus (an objection he raises himself) 108 · attacks the conclusion

"What good then did Priscus do, who was only a single person?" One man changes nothing for the emperor, and his death serves no one.

Épictète replies
E
Epictetus (as recorded by Arrian) 108
The purple does nothing for the toga except stand out on it as purple and be, for the rest, a fine example. So with Helvidius: the aim is not to change the emperor but to be an example others can follow. Another man would have replied "I thank you for sparing me": the emperor would not even have needed to forbid him the Senate.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: Epictetus answers in terms of example and dignity, not political effect. For someone who judges an act by its consequences the answer is not enough; for someone who judges it by what it is, it is.