Civil disobedience
... new king and out of love for her brother, bury Polynices. Antigone advocated civil disobedience by deliberately breaking the immoral laws of her king to oppose an act of social injustice. Her act is deliberate, non-violent, unselfish, public and for the sole purpose of protesting justice. It is clear that Antigone accepts the consequences of her actions and considers her self-sacrificial act splendorous when she says: “I’ll bury him myself. And even if I die in the act, that death will be a glory. I’ll lie with the one I love and loved by him”. She sacrifices her life to uphold the dignity of another human, her brother. When Antigone was asked if she was guilty of the crime, she didn’t deny anything and defended her rejection of Creon’s laws. This is when she claimed to act by the laws of justice and the divine laws of the gods. The story of Antigone gives us a good example of civil disobedience. It meets all the criteria in that it was a public, deliberate, non-terrorist, and unselfish act of self-sacrifice. Antigone puts her values and morals ahead of the law, making a public attempt to defy the orders of her king Creon. Again, this act can be viewed in many different ways. It can be looked at as an attempt to take the law into one’s own hand and cause riot, while others may look at it as a morally right decision. In "Civil Disobedience," Thoreau rejects passivity and encourages his readers to stand up against the government that focuses on majorities over individuals. He argues that when the people have the power, the majority rules, "not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest". Thoreau does not clarify why the minorities’ beliefs should become the rule of law. He seems to imply that the minority has more intelligence than the majority, because the majority is composed of more people. For every example where a large number of people held a bad belief there is always a counter-example where a large number of people held a good belief. The "intelligence" of a group of people does not necessarily diminish as the number of people in the group increases. If an individual holds a strong conflicting belief against an idea and actively acts upon it, nothing will happen. Thoreau doubts the effectiveness of reform within the government, and he argues that voting and petitioning for change achieves little. He presents his own experiences as a model for how to relate to an unjust government: In protest of slavery, Thoreau refuses to pay taxes and spends a night in jail. He ideologically dissociated himself from the government, "washing his hands" of it and refusing to participate in his institutions. According to Thoreau, this form of protest was preferable to advocating for reform from within government; he asserts that one c...