Henry David Thoreau
American essayist and naturalist: he refuses to pay tax to a state that tolerates slavery and wages war, and writes that conscience comes before obedience.
Life
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), an American essayist and naturalist born in Concord, Massachusetts, lived two years by Walden Pond and drew Walden (1854) from it. Opposed to slavery and the war with Mexico, he refused to pay a tax and spent a night in jail in 1846. His essay on civil disobedience inspired Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
Main works
Argues that one must obey conscience before the law.
An account of simple living by a pond, and a reflection on what matters.
In his own words
« Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. »
« I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. »
Positions
click a row to see the evidenceAs a Transcendentalist he finds the divine in nature and in the self rather than in a personal God of the churches.
Thoreau, Walden (1854); A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)
Conscience points to a higher law than the state's statutes, which a just person must obey even against the law.
Thoreau, Resistance to Civil Government (Civil Disobedience) (1849)
'That government is best which governs least': the individual conscience comes before the state.
Thoreau, Resistance to Civil Government (1849)