Civil disobedience, civil society and the state

This dissertation argues that civil disobedience is best understood as a political practice mediating between two distinct spheres of public organization: civil society, or the sphere wherein individuals pursue particular interests and subjective determinations of the good, and the state, or the sphere wherein coercive power is exercised in the name of a legitimate principle (or so it is claimed by those wielding this power) of public organization. This mediation occurs through individual or group withdrawal of certain expected "civil" behavior--respect for property, freedom of movement, loyalty to a product, general obedience to law--that has been given freely, if unreflectively, in the past.;This Hegelian thesis is then compared with contemporary theoretical treatments of civil disobedience as provided by John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, Michael Walzer and Jurgen Habermas. Rawls and Habermas prove less helpful to elucidating the Hegelian understanding of civil disobedience than do Dworkin and Walzer, primarily because their reliance on test procedures for determining political justification too narrowly delimits the range of possible civil disobedient practices.;This thesis is formulated in light of arguments taken from John Locke, Francis Hutcheson, David Hume and G. W. F. Hegel. Locke's theory of justified resistance offers a way into the question and points to the need to systematically differentiate between civil society and the state. Hutcheson and Hume develop a moral theory that points to the mode of behavior necessary for social order once this separation has taken place; i.e., civil behavior. Hegel's philosophy of history and his political theory provide the theoretical separation of civil society and the state necessary for the understanding of civil disobedience. Civil disobedience is defined in Hegelian terms as a second alienation of personality and property justified by abstract right in the service of a subjective determination of the good. This definition is used to delimit a topology of civil disobedient acts, ranging from acts not too different from the expression of individual preference (the boycott) to acts not too different from revolution (political abstention).