Refusing to Disobey Conscience: Following in the Disobedient Footsteps of Eve and Prometheus

The difference between obeying arbitrary authority and obeying conscience—and its urgent implications for confronting genocide, militarism, and authoritarian overreach

“I believe that to recognize the truth is not primarily a matter of intelligence, but a matter of character. The most important element is the courage to say ‘no,’ to disobey the commands of power and of public opinion; to cease being asleep and to become human; to wake up and lose the sense of helplessness and futility.” ~ Erich Fromm, Beyond the Chains of Illusion (1962)

An excerpt from a talk by Jeffrey Nall, Ph.D., titled “Sacred Disobedience: Antigone, MLK, and the Question of When to (Dis)Obey,” delivered September 7, 2025.

The mark of maturity is knowing the difference between arbitrary rebellion and principled disobedience. To rebel for the sake of being oppositional tells us much more about the inner turmoil and insufficiency of the rebel than it does the people or institutions they rebel against. The person engaged in principled disobedience recognizes that family, workplaces, and the wider society cannot function without cooperation and responsible adherence to core rules and principles.

The people exemplifying what Erich Fromm named “revolutionary character” are not rebels without a cause, nor provocateurs or mere malcontents. They are people with existential problems. Some would have us believe that avoiding, getting around, or simply eliminating problems is the great goal of religion and philosophy. Before his passing, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel reminded us that nothing could be further from the case. “The greatness of man,” explained Heschel, “is that he faces problems. I would judge a person by how many deep problems he’s concerned with.” A man without problems, Heschel curtly explained, “is an idiot.”

The person considering principled disobedience faces a weighty dilemma when obeying an institutional norm, the command of an authority, or a clearly defined law requires disobeying a core conviction—a fundamental human value. On the other hand, obeying their core conviction means disobeying the norm, authority, or law, which in turn may not only disrupt and inconvenience the wider social group but also generate detrimental personal repercussions. This is the kind of problem that Heschel had in mind.

Our Human Problems

To clearly establish the context in which I am now speaking, the Trump administration, following in the footsteps of the Biden administration, is actively supporting an Israeli military campaign in Gaza that has been deemed a genocide by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Forensic Architecture, DAWN, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights, and the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS).

So far, the Israeli military has killed 64,000 Palestinians. This figure does not include the indirect deaths caused by the apocalyptic destruction of civilian infrastructure. People are struggling to access toilets, soap, medication, and of course, food. In response to horrifying images of starving men, women, and children, along with documented reports of starvation deaths, Florida Congressman Randy Fine posted to X: “Release the hostages. Until then, starve away.”

Within U.S. borders, President Donald Trump has explicitly identified with autocracy, endorsed imperialism, directed the arrest of non-violent activists like Mahmoud Khalil, and forcefully disappeared and deported countless students, friends, family members, and fellow human beings from their communities. In July 2025, District Judge Maame E. Frimpong found a “mountain of evidence” that federal law enforcement agents had violated the Constitutional right to freedom from unlawful search and seizure. Judge Frimpong declared that federal agents may not make arrests based on a person’s language, accent, occupation, or generic location.

In March 2025, the administration deported hundreds of men to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador on spurious grounds, their mass-produced urban attire or generic tattoos (such as crowns) evidenced gang affiliation without honoring due process rights.¹ Most of the men sent to CECOT have now been transferred to Venezuela as part of a prisoner swap between the two countries. Andry Hernández Romero, whom the Trump administration sent to CECOT, described being sexually assaulted at the notorious prison. According to Hernández, prison guards forced him, a gay man who had sought asylum in the U.S., to “kneel” and “perform oral sex on one person, while the others groped me and touched my private parts.”

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President Trump’s abuse of power has extended to the deployment of the National Guard—soldiers—in American cities, including Los Angeles and Washington, DC. In September 2025, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer ruled that the president had violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the use of military forces to enforce civilian laws within the United States, when he deployed soldiers in Los Angeles, where they engaged in law enforcement duties. The Judge ordered the government to stop soldiers from “engaging in arrests, apprehensions, searches, seizures, security patrols, traffic control, crowd control, riot control, evidence collection, interrogation, or acting as informants.” Meanwhile, the President has said his administration has plans to deploy soldiers in Chicago, Baltimore, and New York.

Meanwhile academic freedom is being trampled upon by the federal government, as seen with the Trump administration’s withholding of funds to Harvard and state governments like Florida where, according to the American Association of University Professors, “academic freedom, tenure, and shared governance in Florida’s public colleges and universities currently face a politically and ideologically driven assault unparalleled in US history.”

These aren’t just big social problems. These are also big individual problems. Will the immigration officer obey the order to racially profile and then arrest people without probable cause? Will members of the National Guard obey unconstitutional orders to perform civilian policing functions? Will educators permit politicians to dictate curriculum, thereby eroding academic freedom and subordinating authentic education to political authority? Will ordinary citizens go about their ordinary personal and working lives, unbothered, even as their neighbors’ lives are torn apart and their tax dollars are spent to conduct a 21^st-century genocide?

In this fraught moment, we are called more than ever to ask, what is worthy of obeying or disobeying? What are the laws, and do they accord with the higher laws of not only the Constitution but also elemental human reason and conscience? If not, do we obey unjust laws at the expense of core values and moral integrity? Is our obedience a mere cloak for cowardice, bitterness, and faithless disregard for our human brothers and sisters?

Following in the Footsteps of Eve and Prometheus

In times of ascendant authoritarianism and the exaltation of force and militarism, the humanities offer a storehouse of moral and spiritual sustenance. In his illuminating 1963 essay, “Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem,” the profound 20th-century thinker, Erich Fromm, reminded us that, according to Hebrew and Greek myths, human freedom is the result of disobedience.

By eating from the tree of knowledge, Eve endows humanity with conscious thought and responsibility, preconditions for the experience of autonomy—freedom. Yes, Adam and Eve’s transgression results in a curse, but this curse is no different than the curse endured by the cave dweller liberated from his bondage in Plato’s allegory of the cave. The boon of enlightenment—of self-awareness, agency, and integrity—comes with the inevitable difficulties of dropping illusions and losing ignorance. We discover the fraudulence of our prior state of comfort.

“The Temptation of Adam” (1767–70) by Irish artist James Barry. Alternatively, the birth of freedom.

Greek myth similarly describes the birth of human culture as the result of Prometheus’ disobedience, stealing fire from Zeus and giving it to mankind (and then torturously nailed and chained to a rock for his transgression). “Prometheus, in stealing the fire from the gods,” explained Fromm, “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.’”²

The spirit of Promethean defiance is conveyed in French artist, Gustave Moreau’s painting, Prometheus (1868). Prometheus endures his agonizing punishment with the dignity that comes from obeying humanistic rather than authoritarian conscience. He stares into the distant—the future—knowing the resort to tyrannical violence is a self-defeating admission of intellectual and spiritual impotence.

“Prometheus” (1868) by the prolific French artist, Gustave Moreau. Note Prometheus’ defiance as he stares into the distant—the future. He endures suffering with the dignity that comes from obeying humanistic rather than authoritarian conscience.

Fromm goes on to offer an insightful distinction between two different kinds of obedience, each born of their own conscience. On the one hand, we have submission: “Obedience to a person, institution or power” at the expense of our independent judgment and autonomy. Submission-obedience is born of what Fromm called “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.”

Then there is what we could call autonomous obedience in which we obey not arbitrary or irrational decrees or authorities. Autonomous obedience entails obeying our “own reason or conviction.” This form of obedience results from humanistic conscience, “the voice present in every human being and independent from external sanctions and rewards,” wrote Fromm. “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.” Prometheus represents the height of human excellence as autonomous obedience to humanistic conscience. To honor our fullest humanity we are called to defy fearful servility and faithfully pursue our deepest human convictions.

"Prometheus and Hercules" by Christian Griepenkerl, the artist who rejected a young Adolf Hitler’s art school application. The painting is part of a series of decorative ceiling paintings.

Obeying (Humanistic) Conscience

Earlier, I listed many of the bleak conditions we face. I now close by highlighting the instances in which we see Prometheus and Eve-like figures in our midst, refusing to disobey their conscience.

We see ordinary community members documenting ICE abductions within their community, recording encounters, at times placing their bodies between agents and frightened people targeted because of their ethnicity.

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Musicians like the emerging folk-rock artist, Jesse Welles, are writing songs like “Join Ice.” In the song Welles disobediently criticizes the racist and classist dimensions of the Trump administration’s policy of abducting immigrants.

“We can sneak around town / Hunting working folks down / I hear they get a great benefit plan / Join ice, boy ain’t it nice.”

We see ordinary people turning out to protests, embracing their First Amendment right and duty to give equal voice to their outrage and their longings for justice.

Sacred Disobedience: Antigone, MLK, and the Question of When to (Dis)Obey

As I speak to you today, hundreds of people are participating in the Global Sumud Flotilla, intent on breaking Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza. Participants include Nelson Mandela’s grandson, Mandla Nelson, climate activist Greta Thunberg, Irish actor Liam Cunningham, and American singer-songwriter Carsie Blanton.

Just days ago, Rev. Andrew Oliver and Minister Benedict Atherton-Zeman kneeled in prayer over a “Black History Matters” asphalt mural outside of the Woodson African American Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. The pastors were acting to stop Florida transportation workers from covering up the mural. The pastors were arrested and charged with obstruction.

Rev. Oliver of the Allendale United Methodist Church said, “I follow Jesus, who always stood with those who were being marginalized and attacked, and I knew that there was no other place for me to be than on that mural. For me, living out my faith, resisting tyranny and fascism and white supremacy was the most important thing last night. I had to do what I had to do.” Atherton-Zeman of the Unitarian Universalist Church said, “We have the values of interdependence, of love, and I really couldn’t just stand on the sidelines. I had to kneel in the street.”

In 1963, Fromm wrote, “If a man can only obey and not disobey, he is a slave.” I think it is quite clear that for all of the servile spirited people among us, there are many others who refuse to ignore the call of conscience. The question that remains is whether we have it within ourselves to disobey those commands which are an affront to human dignity and our core convictions.

The goal of disobedience is not merely to effect a change. The grand results of life are, after all, largely beyond our control. We do not know what power will do or how our brothers and sisters will respond to the efforts of those with greatest individual power.

The goal of disobeying unjust rules and illegitimate power is to exemplify rather than merely describe our values; it is to bear witness to injustice and demonstrate love for truth and justice; it is to refuse to live alienated lives in which we are forced to betray our highest hopes and deepest convictions. In other words, one reason we disobey is out of love for self-determination and integrity. So let us go forth and obey our humanistic conscience and refuse to submit to arbitrary authority wherever we can.

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1. The deportations proceeded in violation of the men’s due process rights and despite Judge James Boasberg’s order that the government’s flights en route to El Salvador be turned around.

2. Fromm here is referencing Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound. Prometheus tells Zeus’ messenger, Hermes, “Be sure of this: when I set my misfortune against your slavery, I would not change.”