Abstract
“Man is bound to obey secular princes in so far as this is required by order of justice. Wherefore if the prince's authority is not just but usurped, or if he commands what is unjust, his subjects are not bound to obey him, except perhaps accidentally, in order to avoid scandal or danger.” Civil disobedience can be defined – and that will be the definition I will consider in this essay – “as a public, non-violent, conscientious yet political act contrary to law usually done with the aim of bringing about a change in the law or policies of the government” . Thus it must not be confused with anarchy, anomie or a blank refusal of an existing law, verily of all the law. It is as old as Prometheus' disobedience of Zeus in order to give fire to mankind and as ongoing as the students' sit-in in Beijing's Tiananmen Square or demonstrations against Iraq war. Actually, the problem of the relationship between the individual and the laws of his State has been debated since ever. The theory of civil disobedience has been introduced in an essay by Henry David Thoreau . Half a century later, his ideas were brought to international attention through the writings of Leo Tolstoy and by Mohandas Gandhi.
