It is not necessary to submit to punishment to be justified.
Submitting to punishment only shows a strong fidelity to law. The link between submission to punishment and purity of motivation is, though a serious consideration theoretically, a tenuous connection practically. There is nothing in submitting to punishment that absolves a disobedient of acting for "personal gain or fame".
Moreover, submitting to punishment may be okay in a nearly just society, but the further one moves from that ideal, the weaker the connection becomes between effective civil disobedience and submission to punishment becomes.
> There is nothing in submitting to punishment that absolves a disobedient of acting for "personal gain or fame".
If the punishment is severe enough to outweigh potential gain, then of course there is. Snowden could get 30 years in a federal penitentiary. If he stayed in the US and pled guilty to the charges, who could possibly think he was doing it for personal gain?
> Moreover, submitting to punishment may be okay in a nearly just society, but the further one moves from that ideal, the weaker the connection becomes between effective civil disobedience and submission to punishment becomes.
OK, but if you want to use this to avoid the civil-disobedience arguments of MLK, then you need to say that (for instance) today's society is less just than 1963 Birmingham, AL was for blacks.
I think you misunderstand me (or perhaps are reading too much into what I've said).
I wasn't talking about severity of punishments. You'd said that submitting to punishment prevents self-deceit about one's motivations being for the greater good, rather than for personal gain. You said nothing about severity of the punishment. Given your premise, I disputed that there is nothing in accepting punishment itself that clarifies one's motives or otherwise indicates more altruistic and pure motivation. You simply cannot draw a definitive connection.
Please be careful about suggesting I am avoiding the arguments of practitioners like MLK, et al. I am specifically dealing with the philosophical debate around civil disobedience, which has not significantly relied upon punishment as a justification for disobedience.
What justifies civil disobedience is the mode of action and the motivations for action. Not the acceptance of punishment. Punishment shows fidelity to the legal system one is disobeying. It does not purify motives. It does not absolve disobedients of acting from defeatable reasons.
It is not inconceivable that a disobedient might act in such a manner, including submission to punishment, even egregiously harsh punishment, for reasons that are not pure, altruistic, or otherwise engendering controversy for the sake of personal gain and/or fame.
While you may look at MLK and say, "His submission to punishment justifies his actions," that is a very dangerous maxim to put into play, because you cannot apply that as a universal rule for justifying illegal actions. This is why theorists leave punishment out of the justification-seeking, because it has no part. It is a marker for fidelity to the rule of law, around which much thought has been shared to understand what is just punishment for civil disobedience.
MLK engaged in justified civil disobedience because his mode of action and motivations for action have been interrogated and found undefeatable.
> You'd said that submitting to punishment prevents self-deceit about one's motivations being for the greater good, rather than for personal gain. You said nothing about severity of the punishment.
Well, I said "Personally, I would add that acceptance of punishment reduces your ability to deceive yourself into thinking you're disobeying for the greater good, rather than just for your own personal gain or fame." I thought that was implicit in the "reducing", in the sense that the avoidance of self-deception was not full, and presumably depends on the size of the punishment. Sorry if this was unclear.
>Please be careful about suggesting I am avoiding the arguments of practitioners like MLK, et al. I am specifically dealing with the philosophical debate around civil disobedience
I meant no disrespect. I meant "avoid" in the same way a physicists proposing a new particle avoids constraints placed by existing experiments on the properties of that particle. He does this by specifying the properties of the proposed particle in a way that ensures it would not have already been seen.
> It is not inconceivable that a disobedient might act in such a manner...for the sake of personal gain and/or fame.
Not inconceivable, but it does make it much more unlikely.
> "His submission to punishment justifies his actions," that is a very dangerous maxim to put into play,...
Submitting to punishment only shows a strong fidelity to law. The link between submission to punishment and purity of motivation is, though a serious consideration theoretically, a tenuous connection practically. There is nothing in submitting to punishment that absolves a disobedient of acting for "personal gain or fame".
Moreover, submitting to punishment may be okay in a nearly just society, but the further one moves from that ideal, the weaker the connection becomes between effective civil disobedience and submission to punishment becomes.