Personal Ethics And Social Structure

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...Easter, ñ July, 1999 There is a famous story that illustrates perfectly the tricky nature of personal ethics, even when individuals share a common background and culture. In 1843, as the famous American philosopher and writer Henry David Thoreau was beginning his sojourn at Walden Pond, he was arrested and jailed for refusing to pay his poll tax. Thoreau did not pay the tax to protest the fact that the state of Massachusetts supported slavery at that time. The story goes that as Thoreau was looking through the bars of cell at the people passing in the street, his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson saw him in the jail. Emerson saw Thoreau and ran up to the window. "Henry, what are you doing in there?" he asked. Thoreau is said to have replied, "What are you doing out there?" (Holme 133) Both men faced the same social situation. Thoreau had made the moral choice to protest what he considered to be injustice within society by not obeying all the rules of that society. His reply to...

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