Nonviolence and civil disobedience

Abstract

This paper analyzes and describes the relationship between nonviolence and civil disobedience, stressing that both of them converge on the same ethical foundation and are an expression of the relationship between citizens and the political power. The paper begins with a presentation of nonviolence Mahatma Gandhi´s work, and continues then conceptualizing nonviolence as a political thought, with a epistemology and an action. Finally, traces a connection between nonviolence and civil disobedience that goes beyond the purely instrumental relationship that usually identifies the link between these. Thus, beyond their differences both nonviolence and civil desobedience, concur in essence, that is, in the ethical principles that support and legitimize them as actions and political expressions.