Tuesday, November 19, 2019

Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America



 Democracy in America: A philosophical adventure

Alexis de Tocqueville is one of the heads of liberalism. During his trip to the United States, Tocqueville was able to describe the awakening democracy. His approach is totally original compared to a normative philosophy that prevailed in Classics (Montesquieu, Rousseau and the Greeks), Tocqueville rather use a descriptive and clinical approach.

The issue at the heart of the book Democracy in America is this: How can we protect the people from himself? In the first part of Democracy in America, Tocqueville considers the public more as a means of coercion of people by the people than as a guarantor of rationality and freedom. In the second part, the questioning moves to protect people from the despotic democratic state.

Democracy and the power source
American democracy, Tocqueville said, is based on the absoluteness of popular sovereignty. This is the source of legislative power, exercised through elected representatives and renewed frequently. Two key ideas are at the heart of democracy: equality and freedom. In a democracy, the pursuit of equality prevails over that of freedom. This dialectic of democratic principles creates the possibility of self-destruction of the entire democratic system.

The excesses of democracy
It is this potential risk inherent in any democracy, which explains the ambivalence of judgments, both enthusiasts and critics, de Tocqueville. It diagnoses the ills of democracy and attempts to discern, even within the existing system, the remedies that can stop them. The healing of these evils do not occur from the outside, but the trends already present in democracy. Tocqueville observed that the three main threats to the American system are: the tyranny of the majority, individualism and despotism state.

Tocqueville and The tyranny of the majority

Paradoxically, the tyranny of the majority comes from public space. Public opinion, the result of free discussion between citizens within the public space, is in fact the majority opinion. However, this majority, which could be described as rational and legitimate, has a coercive force on minority views and lead them to comply with the prevailing opinion. Thus was born of freedom, public opinion denies thereafter. This tyranny of the majority comes from the absolute sovereignty of the people, which gives him, he believes, “the right to do anything,” the belief in its omnipotence. Therefore, to ensure that minorities are not brought to heel, forced conformism and self-righteousness, we must erect a barrier to this omnipotence. This remedy against the first evil watching democracy is the political association. Tocqueville distinguishes the civil association, whose purpose is different. This second type relates to private affairs of individuals, including religious, commercial or legal, not a political cause. The political association, it has always relative to a public cause. It can be defined as the gathering of individuals around common public interest. In this framework can only express opinions repressed by the majority, the political association gives the scope to be the voice of him who is alone. It is the guarantee unlimited freedom of thought and expression, respect for the rights of citizenship for dissent: they prevent the stigmatization and rejection of views considered deviant and those who defend them. Contrary to despotism, tyranny, democracy is not physical in nature, but immaterial: it is the deviant “a foreigner”. 

Associations have therefore dedicated to “normalize” free thinkers. In addition, the need for its existence is that it can be oppressive, since it is still a minority, according to Tocqueville. 
In fact, an association that would become the majority ceases to be one. Besides being a principle of social and political change, they are also a principle of stability. Since they introduce, of course, factions within the society, but by allowing all opinions to find a place for expression, they prevent the organization of plots or conspiracies. In this, Tocqueville is in line with Kant, because it defends the principle of publicity. Another reason “Kantian” in this observer of American democracy: political associations promote the critical use of reason. Public opinion is the product of reflection, but “once [the majority] is irrevocably pronounced, everyone is silent,” while discussions continue within these institutions, making permanent political activity. They therefore express a struggle against the Democratic gregariousness and silence of reason.

However, political associations pose a danger, that of anarchy. Their proliferation may in fact cause an infinite partition of popular sovereignty, so that it would be impossible to legislate on the basis of a majority. But this danger is thwarted by their benefits. Political associations are therefore, in this respect, a force of resistance to oppression of the majority, not only against state power. Nevertheless, Tocqueville does not make them the major legislative body of democracy: if they “have the power to attack [the existing law] and to make advance what must exist,” they do not the power to legislate.

Democracy and individualism

This awakening of the spirit, made possible by political associations, is also a revival of “public spirit” of reason. The second evil which threatens democracy is indeed individualism. He calls this tendency of individuals born from the destruction of the hierarchy of links that united in the monarchical system, to lose interest in the great society and retreat to the limited company. This evil is of democratic origin, since equality “breaks the chain and severs every link of it.” So reclusive in their private sphere, citizens directly endanger democracy, one of whose principles is participation in power. Therefore, the associations, but not all types, sanctions, here too, the role of remedy a negative trend for democracy. Indeed, the proliferation civil associations is harmful because they divert public governance. Political associations, on the contrary, “pulling people out of themselves, struggling against the fragmentation of the group and allow them to participate in public life. Paradoxically, therefore democracy is through political associations, which can save individualism, while it was she who gave birth.

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