A Duty to Resist: When Disobedience Should Be Uncivil

by Candice Delmas

What are our responsibilities in the face of injustice? How far should we go to fight it? Many would argue that as long as a state is nearly just, citizens have a moral duty to obey the law. Proponents of civil disobedience generally hold that, given this moral duty, a person needs a solid justification to break the law. But activists from Henry David Thoreau and Mohandas Gandhi to the Movement for Black Lives have long recognized that there are times when, rather than having a duty to obey the law, we have a duty to disobey it.

Taking seriously the history of this activism, A Duty to Resist wrestles with the problem of political obligation in real world societies that harbor injustice. Candice Delmas argues that the duty of justice, the principle of fairness, the Samaritan duty, and political association impose responsibility to resist under conditions of injustice. We must expand political obligation to include a duty to resist unjust laws and social conditions even in legitimate states.

For Delmas, this duty to resist demands principled disobedience, and such disobedience need not always be civil. At times, covert, violent, evasive, or offensive acts of lawbreaking can be justified, even required. Delmas defends the viability and necessity of illegal assistance to undocumented migrants, leaks of classified information, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, sabotage, armed self-defense, guerrilla art, and other modes of resistance. There are principle alone does not justify law breaking. But uncivil disobedience can sometimes be not only permissible but required in the effort to resist injustice.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Nonfiction, Social Science

312 pages, Hardcover

Published September 4, 2018

Reviews

[Daniel Barrows · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book, and found it a thoughtful survey of past thought in political ethics on civil disobedience, as well as a creative application of this thought in a new way. Ordinarily, that would make for a great academic book in my view. Unfortunately, I found its depth in exploring justifications for disobedience amounted to a one-sided apology for resistance and failed to present a comprehensive perspective on the topic. I'm critiquing less the content of this book, and more the scope the author chose for it. She chose to give us only one side of an argument

I found that this book failed to address what I consider the most important questions I have when considering resistance to the social order:

1) How can we justify and accept uncivil disobedience without also justifying vigilantism and hooliganry?
2) How can we maintain social order given the diversity of viewpoints on justice and oppression? In a society of diverse perspectives and values, Delmas' endorsement of covert resistance seems to suggest that the social order will constantly have some portion of its members secretly working against it. Can society and a political system sustain this constant resistance? Surely this is taxing or costly to society.
3) What does this mean for what kinds of dissent are criminalized or otherwise marginalized? How might Delmas arguments guide institutions designed to sustain the social order, such as the FBI?

[Cozy Reading Times · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this for a seminar in uni. i found it to be enlightening and inspiring despite struggling with some of the author's takes. we had great discussions in class, and the chapters have an ideal length for weekly readings. The writing is very accessible as the author provides many examples, structures her chapters well, and writes in a prose that's not overly high-brow while still being engaging.
Can only recommend - might inspire some new thoughts on political resistance and the legitimacy of disobedience.

[Rhys · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed A Duty to Resist - it is an even treatment of civil and uncivil disobedience, or principled disobedience, and the concept of resistance. Delmas begins with a Rawlsian perspective of justice and applies it to recent examples of principled disobedience.

Principled disobedience, she argues, rises to address the harms of injustice: "The harms I am especially concerned with here are those of oppression. In Young’s analysis, they include marginalization (basically, social exclusion), powerlessness (inhibition of the development of one’s capacities for autonomy), cultural imperialism (universalization of a dominant group’s experience and culture), and violence (which is systemic and institutionalized when directed at members of a particular group specifically because of that membership)." This covers a lot of territory, making this an interesting read for those standing for justice.

[Hannah Gallacher · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting read which examines the different definitions and justification for both civil, and uncivil, disobedience. It intricately explains each definition and remains unbiased in its praises and problems with them all. The last chapter discusses the newfound meaning and justifications for civil and uncivil disobedience with the new political climate following the 2016 US election and that chapter and messages has become only more apparent and noteworthy in 2020.

[KaHo Wong · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s a war and you want to win. What you need is not a reason or discussion on definition. You want to talk about strategy.

[Anastasia Royal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delmar gives a strong argument for civil disobedience being a political duty. She gives countless examples of various historical events that have occurred through the country in prisons, women in India, African American mistreatment... etc where the laws of the land weren't extended to everyone and social morals accepted certain mistreatment of specific classes as just. Great read.

[Pablo Magaña Fernández · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

Delmas makes two important points in this book. First, that the main justifications for a duty to obey the law also support, under some circustances, an obligation to resist and disobey it. Second, that uncivil disobedience can in some cases be justified, even in reasonably just societies (a blanket prohibition thus being unwarranted). I'm broadly sympathetic with these two theses. The book is also very engaging, clearly-written, and (by and large) empirically-informed.

A few cons:

- Lately, I've been reading articles and books on political disobedience/resistance. While insightful, they sometimes lean too much towards - and seem too bent on vindicating - an activist's view of the world. Delmas is a professional philosopher, and her arguments - whether or not you agree with them - are rigurous and nuanced for the most part. But there are some exceptions, such as the claim (on p. 61) that "there is no reason to attribute the extent to which [decolonization] movements historically failed to establish stable democratic regimes to their use of violence in the struggle" (there is a literature trying to show that's precisely the case!). Or using Bobby Sands' hunger strikes as an example of a dignity-based struggle. First, wasn't there a neater example available? Sands is not your typical MLK or Nelson Mandela, and the demand of Provisional IRA members (which Delmas calls "freedom fighters") to be recognized as political prisoners won't readily prompt many readers' solidarity, to put it midly. Second, was it necessary to ground the discussion of the case almost exclusively in a movie?

- I found Delmas' underlying moral and political epistemology unconvincing. While she sometimes does acknowledge the burdens of knowledge, a lot of the book seems to assume that injustice is just there in the open for those who want to see. The role of (more or less favorable) epistemic environments, while again not ignored, wasn't taken sufficiently seriously in my view.

- I didn't find the last substantive chapter ("Acting on Political Obligations") particularly illuminating. Many of the points seemed rather obvious, and treated a bit superficially. Interestingly (and depressingly) enough, I did find the poscript ("Resistance in the Age of Trump") very timely.

[jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

This shit went so hard it's like just BARELY not a 5. But despite the very minor nitpicks and grievences I might have that keep me from rating it as that, I have nothing but great things to say about this book.

First of all, the argument and the way Delmas makes her case is fantastic - her method of systematically proving that within any coherent framework of political obligation one has duties to participate in fairly radical forms of resistance I think uses philosophical theory in a really beautiful way. While there's of course value in quibbling over the minuet details of more abstract theory, Delmas has a God damn goal to reach in this book - get this bitches PROTESTING. And her whole methodology in engaging with various philosophical theories demonstrates this, among other smaller things as well; from her selective and justified use of empirical information to lean on, her willingness to abandon certain commitments inherent to a lot of the theories (such as particularity) when they don't suit her purposes, and her consistent returns to practical suggestions for action, her approach is really refreshingly grounded and practical.

On top of that, she somehow (to me at least) successfully walks an incredibly tight line to challenge both political obligation defenders and philosophical anarchists, literally two diametrically OPPOSED positions, with the same set of arguments. And although its a smaller piece of the overall book, I think her insistence on the high level of demandingness that moral obligations can put on us also deserves to be mentioned. It's often said that "ought implies can", and while there's truth to that statement I think sometimes it gets stretched to far into "ought implies it would be easy to do" which I think makes for a lot of unsatisfactory moral philosophy. Delmas holds herself, and us, to a VERY high standard and I think that's always a good thing in the face of serious injustice.

TL;DR - Literally a philosophy book about how it's morally OBLIGATORY to be a window-smashing street-rioting government-whistleblowing radical. What more do you need me to say?

[Scott Pomfret · Rating 3 out of 5]

This thought-provoking book argues that citizens not only have a right to engage in civil or uncivil disobedience (together, resistance), but under certain circumstances, citizens have a duty to do so. Delmas has produced a methodical argument to justify this position, which is in part based on the same justifications for a duty to obey the law. She cites a wide range of resistance, primarily in the last decade, but also reaching back to suffragettes in the UK. While the argument has some elegance, the devil is in the details, and here Delmas falters. For example, because the intent of the resister matters, Delmas has some preconceived notions of good intents and bad intents that are external to her argument for the duty to resist. For example, she asserts rather than argues that flouting laws to assist undocumented immigrants is justifiable, while Kim Davis's refusal to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples is not. While I happen to agree with those views, they do not stem from Delmas's theory. As a result, a duty in any particular case will not have global legitimacy, but will tend to depend on judgments the participant or viewer has already made. Ultimately then, the idea of the duty to resist is interesting (although it applies only under certain conditions to certain sorts of citizens) but not particularly useful.

What's best about this book, which argument has been made before, is that the conventional narrative of "civil disobedience" around the US civil rights struggle tends to privilege the status quo and disempower disadvantaged people ... AND it doesn't even completely jibe with MLK's more radical agenda.

[Myla · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think that the first few chapters had more to do with uncivil means of disobedience, although there are interesting frames to look at the moral issue of how one should morally or ethically act. I am glad I read this book and have referenced it in papers. I really liked the examples with context included in each section of the book- I think that these examples really helped to better my understanding of these moral and ethical debates.

[Emily Xu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for my senior thesis, major food for thought—slightly narrow in the context of other works

[Liv · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was pretty interesting.