Democracy and the New Age of Civil Disobedience

Refusing to obey the law in order to show its injustice: this is the principle of civil disobedience as defined by Henry David Thoreau. The paradigm has regained strength over the past decade – even if it is sometimes seen as an outdated and inadequate form of political action and even a menace to democracy. Civil disobedience is based on a moral principle, self-reliance, which encourages the individual to refuse the accepted law by basing herself on her own conviction. Advocates of the civil disobedience paradigm see it as a way of renewing democracy by making feelings of injustice, inexpression, and dispossession public and visible. They express a need to democratize democracy itself.  

Sandra Laugier is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-La Sorbonne, Senior Member of the Academic Institute of France, and Deputy Director of Institute of Legal and Philosophical Sciences (ISJPS, UMR 8103 CNRS Paris 1). She is a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honour (2014), a member of the Academia Europea, and a laureate of the French Academy’s annual prize awarding an author promoting new ethics (2022).   

Sandra Laugier is the author and editor of numerous books including: Le souci des autres (with P. Papermann, EHESS), Pourquoi désobéir en démocratie and Le Principe Démocratie (with A. Ogien, La Découverte), Why We Need Ordinary Language Philosophy (The University of Chicago Press, 2013), Nos vies en séries (Climats, Flammarion, 2019), Le pouvoir des liens faibles (dir. with A. Gefen, CNRS Editions, 2020), Politics of the Ordinary: care, ethics, and forms of life (Peeters, Leuven, 2020), and Series-Philosophy (Exeter University Press, 2023). She also writes for a wider audience, notably as columnist for Libération since 2013.