Reply to Critics

Abstract

This article responds to the four contributors to the book symposium on Conscience and Conviction: The Case for Civil Disobedience. Those four contributors are Thomas Hill Jr, David Lefkowitz, William Smith, and Daniel Weinstock. Hill examines the concepts of conviction and conscience (Chapters 1 and 2); Smith discusses conviction and then analyses the right to civil disobedience and my humanistic arguments for it (Chapter 4); Weinstock explores democratic challenges for civil disobedience (Chapter 5); and Lefkowitz assesses the merits of a legal demands-of-conviction excuse for civil disobedience (Chapter 5). This ‘Reply to Critics’ addresses them in turn.