Philosophy in the Library: Candice Delmas: Do We Need to be Civil?

For the December Philosophy in the Library, Candice Delmas delves into the ethics of civil and uncivil disobedience.

Political leaders and commentators from all sides bemoan the loss of civility, seeing it as the glue that keeps divided political societies whole. Meanwhile, activists, from Black Lives Matter to the anti-lockdown, anti-mask and anti-vaxx movements, have resorted to a plethora of forms of disobedient protests, many of which do not neatly fit the common understanding of civil disobedience. What makes an act of disobedience civil? What is wrong with acts of principled disobedience that fail to abide by the marks of civility? After presenting the common (scholarly and public) understanding of civil disobedience, I will motivate the need to think beyond civil disobedience and conceptualize other kinds of principled, albeit uncivil, disobedience. I’ll then defend some types of uncivil disobedience both against general objections to disobedience and against arguments in favor of civil disobedience’s strategic and moral superiority. Contra the former, I’ll show uncivil disobedience’s capacity to do what civil disobedience does. Contra the latter, I will highlight uncivil disobedience’s unique value in liberal democratic societies marred by structural injustice. 

Candice Delmas is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Political Science at Northeastern University in Boston, and the Associate Director of the Politics, Philosophy, and Economics Program. She works in moral, social, political, and legal philosophy. She is the author of A Duty to Resist: When Disobedience Should Be Uncivil (Oxford University Press, 2018). She received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Boston University, a M.A. in Philosophy from Georgia State University, and a Master 2 in Ethics and Politics from Université Paris IV Sorbonne. During 2016-17, she was a Dworkin-Balzan Fellow at the New York University School of Law Center for Law and Philosophy.