ปัญหาเรื่องความชอบธรรมของการดื้อแพ่ง : การศึกษาเชิงวิจารณ์ / ประวิทย์ วิกรัยพัฒน์ = The problem of the justification of civil disobedience : a critical study / Pravit Vigraipat
The purpose of this thesis is to study the problems of the justification of civil disobedience. Civil disobedience is defined as an action that happens in the democratic society. The objectives of civil disobedience are to protest or to repeal the laws, policies, and other activities of the government. The civil disobedience is concerned as the last resort to change all of the injustice in society. The civil disobedient tries to find the reasons to support that their actions or what they have done are justifiable. Besides, they should have higher obligation to some principles higher than the laws of the government. From the analysis it is found that there are two parties: one party believes that civil disobedience is justified; another party believes that civil disobedience is not justified. The reasons to support that civil disobedience is justified are based on these principles: the principle of justice of the law and other principles such as the Higher-Law and Utilitarianism. Although the civil disobedient have sought some reasons basing on the principles, the principles themselves still have some weak points. Even though the civil disobedient always refer to the justifiable principles, it does not mean that all of their actions would be correct in all situations. Even in some situations those principles are still too broad because the principles do not specify when, where, and how they should be used. Democracy is the system in which the people have the rights to correct or to change the laws, policies, and other unjust actions in their society. If the people use their rights to do so, the actions could be legal. However the actions of the civil disobedient are illegal. Although, the civil disobedient try to find some reasons to support their actions, there are some conflicts in those principles. The conflicts could be illustrated as follow: 1. The principle of justice of law. According to this principle, civil disobedience is states as an illegal action because there are no laws to change illegal actions to legal actions. If the laws allow illegal actions, the laws would be unjust; 2. The principle of the Higher-law. Concerning this principle, there are several questions such as how this principle commands, who is to know this principle and how this principle is used. Besides, there are some groups of people who oppose the idea of using this principle. They have pointed out that the people who use the principle of the higher-law only use their own judgement in interpreting the meaning of the laws. If different groups of people use their own judgement, there would be no criteria of justification. Moreover, the reasons of the higher-law are too abstract. The higher-law is [regarded as] another principle which is not the principle of the law. If the principle of law is accepted as the only principle of the conducts of the people, other principles must be wrong. In conclusion, the problems of using the higher-law involve epistemological and specific situation problems; 3. Utilitarianism. Even though some people justify civil disobedience on the utilitarian principle, there are some errors. The first one is the problem of the fair distribution of happiness. Even if people know what is the greatest or what is the least pain, it is difficult to define the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Another problem in basing this justification on utilitarianism is the problem of criteria, because those people always find some exceptions. If there are more and more exceptions, the law will be unreliable. The third problem is morality. The people who use this principle are more concerned with the consequence of the actions than moral consciousness. When moral consciousness is neglected, civil disobedience will also be rejected. The last problem deals with Act and Rule Utilitarianism. The Act Utilitarianism accepts violence in some situations while the Rule Utilitarianism wouldn’t allow any violence or violation of the laws at all. Bentham, one of the utilitarians, agreed that people should have freedom, especially in economics and that freedom led to capitalism. Still, the society of capitalism could not provide economic equality in the society. In short, civil disobedience may happen in the democratic society and [sometimes] there are reasons for those actions. But after a careful analysis, some errors are found and the invalidity of their reasoning can be pointed out.
