This course will explore some classic readings on civil disobedience and nonviolent political resistance in literature and philosophy. We will examine connections between some key moments in the history of intellectual thought in 4th- to 5th-century BCE Athens and in the 19th to 20th centuries. The lives of Socrates, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr., will be the focus of our study, though we will also read works of Greek tragedy (Sophocles), comedy (Aristophanes), and history (Thucydides), and writings by Thoreau, Tolstoy, and Orwell from the modern period. The course will conclude by examining the use and relevance of civil disobedience in the 21st century. |