All
martyrs of religious faiths, of freedom
and of science have had to disobey those
who wanted to muzzle them in order to
obey their own consciences, the laws of
humanity and of reason. If a man can only
obey and not disobey, he is a slave; if
he can only disobey and not obey, he is a
rebel (not a revolutionary); he acts out
of anger,disappointment, resentment, yet
not in the name of a conviction or a
principle. -- E.Fromm
For centuries kings,
priests, feudal lords, industrial bosses and
parents have insisted that obedience is a virtue
and that disobedience is a vice. In order to
introduce another point of view, let us set
against this position the following statement:
human history began with an act of disobedience,
and it is not unlikely that it will be,
terminated by an act of obedience.
Human history was ushered in by an act of
disobedience according to the Hebrew and Greek
myths. Adam and Eve, living in the Garden of
Eden, were part of nature; they were in harmony
with it, yet did not transcend it. They were in
nature as the fetus is in the womb of the mother.
They were human, and at the same time not yet
human. All this changed when they disobeyed an
order. By breaking the ties with earth and
mother, by cutting the umbilical cord, man
emerged from a pre-human harmony and was able to
take the first step into independence and
freedom. The act of disobedience set Adam and Eve
free and opened their eyes. They recognized each
other as strangers and the world outside them as
strange and even hostile. Their act of
disobedience broke the primary bond with nature
and made them individuals. "Original
sin," far from corrupting man, set him free;
it was the beginning of history. Man had to leave
the Garden of Eden in order to learn to rely on
his own powers and to be come fully human.
The prophets, in their messianic concept,
confirmed the idea that man had been right in
disobeying; that he had not been corrupted by his
"sin," but freed from the fetters of
pre-human harmony. For the prophets, history is
the place where man becomes human; during its
unfolding he develops his powers of reason and of
love until he creates a new harmony between
himself, his fellow man and nature. This new
harmony is described as "the end of
days," that period of history in which there
is peace between man and man, and between man and
nature. It is a "new" paradise created
by man himself, and one which he alone could
create because he was forced to leave the
"old" paradise as a result of his
disobedience.
Just as the Hebrew myth of Adam and Eve, so
the Greek myth of Prometheus sees all of human
civilization based on an act of disobedience.
Prometheus, in stealing the fire from the gods,
lays the foundation for the evolution of man.
There would be no human history were it not for
Prometheus' "crime." He, like Adam and
Eve, is punished for his disobedience. But he
does not repent and ask for forgiveness. On the
contrary, he proudly says: "I would rather
be chained to this rock than be the obedient
servant of the gods. "
Man has continued to evolve by acts of
disobedience. Not only was his spiritual
development possible only because there were men
who dared to say no to the powers that be in the
name of their conscience or their faith, but also
his intellectual development was dependent on the
capacity for being disobedient--disobedient to
authorities who tried to muzzle new thoughts and
to the authority of long-established opinions
which declared a change to be nonsense.
If the capacity for disobedience constituted
the beginning of human history, obedience might
very well, as I have said, cause the end of human
history. I am not speaking symbolically or
poetically. There is the possibility, or even the
probability, that the human race will destroy
civilization and even all life upon earth within
the next five to ten years. There is no
rationality or sense in it. But the fact is that,
while we are living technically in the Atomic
Age, the majority of men--including most of those
who are in power--still live emotionally in the
Stone Age; that while our mathematics,
astronomy,and the natural sciences are of the
twentieth century, most of our ideas about
politics,the state, and society lag far behind
the age of science. If mankind commits suicide it
will be because people will obey those who
command them to push the deadly buttons; because
they will obey the archaic passions of fear,
hate, and greed; because they will obey obsolete
clichés of State sovereignty and national honor.
The Soviet leaders talk much about revolutions,
and we in the "free world" talk much
about freedom. Yet they and we discourage
disobedience--in the Soviet Union explicitly and
by force, in the free world implicitly and by the
more subtle methods of persuasion.
But I do not mean to say that all disobedience
is a virtue and all obedience a vice. Such a view
would ignore the dialectical relationship between
obedience and disobedience. Whenever the
principles which are obeyed and those which are
disobeyed are irreconcilable, an act of obedience
to one principle is necessarily an act of
disobedience to its counterpart, and vice versa.
Antigone is the classic example oft his
dichotomy. By obeying the inhuman laws of the
State, Antigone necessarily would disobey the
laws of humanity. By obeying the latter, she must
disobey the former. All martyrs of religious
faiths, of freedom and of science have had to
disobey those who wanted to muzzle them in order
to obey their own consciences, the laws of
humanity and of reason. If a man can only obey
and not disobey, he is a slave; if he can only
disobey and not obey, he is a rebel (not a
revolutionary); he acts out of
anger,disappointment, resentment, yet not in the
name of a conviction or a principle.
However, in order to prevent a confusion of
terms an important qualification must be made.
Obedience to a person, institution or power
(heteronomous obedience) is submission; it
implies the abdication of my autonomy and the
acceptance of a foreign will or judgment in place
of my own. Obedience to my own reason or
conviction (autonomous obedience) is not an act
of submission but one of affirmation. My
conviction and my judgment, if authentically
mine, are part of me. If I follow them rather
than the judgment of others, I am being myself;
hence the word obey can be applied only in a
metaphorical sense and with a meaning which is
fundamentally different from the one in the case
of "heteronomous obedience."
But this distinction still needs two further
qualifications, one with regard to the concept of
conscience and the other with regard to the
concept of authority. The word conscience is used
to express two phenomena which are quite distinct
from each other. One is the "authoritarian
conscience" which is the internalized voice
of an authority whom we are eager to please and
afraid of displeasing.This authoritarian
conscience is what most people experience when
they obey their conscience. It is alsothe
conscience which Freud speaks of, and which he
called "Super-Ego." This Super-Ego
represents the internalized commands and
prohibitions of father, accepted by the son out
of fear. Different from the authoritarian
conscience is the"humanistic
conscience"; this is the voice present in
every human being and independent from external
sanctions and rewards. Humanistic conscience is
based on the fact that as human beings we have an
intuitive knowledge of what is human and inhuman,
what is conducive of life and what is destructive
of life. This conscience serves our functioning
as human beings. It is the voice which calls us
back to ourselves, to our humanity.
Authoritarian conscience (Super-Ego) is still
obedience to a power outside of myself, even
though this power has been internalized.
Consciously I believe that I am following my
conscience; in effect, however, I have swallowed
the principles of power; just because of the
illusion that humanistic conscience and Super-Ego
are identical, internalized authority is so much
more effective than the authority which is
clearly experienced as not being part of me.
Obedience to the "authoritarian
conscience," like all obedience to outside
thoughts and power, tends to
debilitate"humanistic conscience," the
ability to be and to judge oneself. The
statement, on the other hand, that obedience to
another person is ipso facto submission needs
also to be qualified by distinguishing
"irrational" from "rational"
authority. An example of rational authority is to
be found in the relationship between student and
teacher; one of irrational authority in the
relationship between slave and master. Both
relationships are based on the fact that the
authority of the person in command is accepted.
Dynamically, however, they are of a different
nature. The interests of the teacher and the
student, in the ideal case, lie in the same
direction. The teacher is satisfied if he
succeeds in furthering the student; if he has
failed to do so, the failure is his and the
student's. The slave owner, on the other hand,
wants to exploit the slave as much as possible.
The more he gets out of him the more satisfied he
is. At the same time, the slave tries to defend
as best he can his claims for a minimum of
happiness. The interests of slave and master are
antagonistic, because what is advantageous to the
one is detrimental to the other. The superiority
of the one over the other has a different
function in each case; in the first it is the
condition for the furtherance of the person
subjected to the authority, and in the second it
is the condition for his exploitation. Another
distinction runs parallel to this: rational
authority is rational because the authority,
whether it is held by a teacher or a captain of a
ship giving orders in an emergency, acts in the
name of reason which, being universal, I can
accept without submitting. Irrational authority
has to use force or suggestion, because no one
would let himself be exploited if he were free to
prevent it.
Why is man so prone to obey and why is it so
difficult for him to disobey? As long as I am
obedient to the power of the State, the Church,
or public opinion, I feel safe and protected. In
fact it makes little difference what power it is
that I am obedient to. It is always an
institution, or men, who use force in one form or
another and who fraudulently claim omniscience
and omnipotence. My obedience makes me part of
the power I worship, and hence I feel strong. I
can make no error, since it decides for me; I
cannot be alone, because it watches over me; I
cannot commit a sin, because it does not let me
do so, and even if I do sin, the punishment is
only the way of returning to the almighty power.
In order to disobey, one must have the courage to
be alone, to err and to sin. But courage is not
enough. The capacity for courage depends on a
person's state of development. Only if a person
has emerged from mother's lap and father's
commands, only if he has emerged as a fully
developed individual and thus has acquired the
capacity to think and feel for himself, only then
can he have the courage to say "no" to
power, to disobey. A person can become free
through acts of disobedience by learning to say
no to power. But not only is the capacity for
disobedience the condition for freedom; freedom
is also the condition for disobedience. If I am
afraid of freedom, I cannot dare to say
"no," I cannot have the courage to be
disobedient. Indeed, freedom and the capacity for
disobedience are inseparable; hence any social,
political, and religious system which proclaims
freedom, yet stamps out disobedience, cannot
speak the truth.
There is another reason why it is so difficult
to dare to disobey, to say "no" to
power. During most of human history obedience has
been identified with virtue and disobedience with
sin. The reason is simple: thus far throughout
most of history a minority has ruled over the
majority. This rule was made necessary by the
fact that there was only enough of the good
things of life for the few, and only the crumbs
remained for the many. If the few wanted to enjoy
the good things and, beyond that, to have the
many serve them and work for them, one condition
was necessary: the many had to learn obedience.
To be sure, obedience can be established by sheer
force. But this method has many disadvantages. It
constitutes a constant threat that one day the
many might have the means to overthrow the few by
force; further more there are many kinds of work
which cannot be done properly if nothing but fear
is behind the obedience. Hence the obedience
which is only rooted in the fear of force must be
transformed into one rooted in man's heart. Man
must want and even need to obey, instead of only
fearing to disobey. If this is to be achieved,
power must assume the qualities of the All Good,
of the All Wise; it must become All Knowing. If
this happens, power can proclaim that
disobedience is sin and obedience virtue; and
once this has been proclaimed, the many can
accept obedience because it is good and detest
disobedience because it is bad, rather than to
detest themselves for being cowards. From Luther
to the nineteenth century one was concerned with
overt and explicit authorities. Luther, the pope,
the princes, wanted to uphold it; the middle
class, the workers, the philosophers, tried to
uproot it. The fight against authority in the
State as well as in the family was often the very
basis for the development of an independent and
daring person. The fight against authority was
inseparable from the intellectual mood which
characterized the philosophers of the
enlightenment and the scientists. This
"critical mood" was one of faith in
reason, and at the same time of doubt in
everything which is said or thought, inasmuch as
it is based on tradition, superstition, custom,
power. The principles sapere aude and de omnibus
est dubitandum--" dare to be wise" and
"of all one must doubt"--were
characteristic of the attitude which permitted
and furthered the capacity to say "no."
The case of Adolf Eichmann is symbolic of our
situation and has a significance far beyond the
one which his accusers in the courtroom in
Jerusalem were concerned with. Eichmann is a
symbol of the organization man, of the alienated
bureaucrat for whom men, women and children have
become numbers. He is a symbol of all of us. We
can see ourselves in Eichmann. But the most
frightening thing about him is that after the
entire story was told in terms of his own
admissions, he was able in perfect good faith to
plead his innocence. It is clear that if he were
once more in the same situation he would do it
again. And so would we-and so do we. The
organization man has lost the capacity to
disobey, he is not even aware of the fact that he
obeys. At this point in history the capacity to
doubt, to criticize and to disobey may be all
that stands between a future for mankind and the
end of civilization.
THE
PRICE OF DISOBEDIENCE
In
one version of the story, Prometheus steals fire
from the Gods and is punished by being chained to
a rock and having his liver eaten out every day
by an eagle.
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