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| ==[[Tocqueville's Typology of the Tyranny of the Majority]]== | | |
| | ==[[Tocqueville on the Necessity and Desirability of Dogmatism]]== |
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| Jonathan Bi: | | Jonathan Bi: |
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| "Tocqueville worried about three forms of tyranny of the majority: | | "The '''Necessity of Dogmatism''' |
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| 1. institutional tyranny: that existing governmental systems could be used by the majority to abuse a minority.
| | Dogmatic is necessary, in a first sense, simply because we do not have the intellectual capacity nor time to examine each and every one of our beliefs. We must take a subset of beliefs for granted and build meaningful structures on them. |
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| 2. future tyranny: that government could expand or dissolve into a tyranny.
| | If I now consider men as individuals, I find that dogmatic beliefs are no less vital for a man on his own than for when he acts in common with his fellows. If man was forced to prove for himself all the truths he employs each day, he would never reach an end; he would drain his energies in initial experiment without advancing at all. Since there is not the time, because of the short span of our lives, nor the ability, because of the limitations of our minds, to act in that way, he is reduced to the taking on trust a host of facts and opinions which he has neither the time nor the power to examine and verify by his own efforts but which have been discovered by abler minds than his or which have been adopted by the populace. Upon this primary foundation he erects the structure of his own thought. He is not brought to this manner of advancing by his own will but is limited by the unbending laws of his own condition. |
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| 3. psychological tyranny: that the majority could exercise a form of thought control that brought the best minds to a level of mediocrity.
| | Every great philosopher in the world believes a million things upon the authority of someone else and supposes many more truths than he can prove. |
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| | Even if one could labor to examine all of his or her opinions, dogmatism would still be necessary, in a second sense, for the formation of societies. The argument goes as such: individuals will simply come to too fundamental of disagreements, they won’t be able to coordinate collaborative action, and there can be no society. I found this eerily similar to the state of nature which the Chinese political philosopher Mozi detailed. It is neither amour proper, nor glory, nor a lack of resources which troubles Mozi’s state of nature but rather a difference in opinion. From there on his elucidation mirrors that of T.’s: when people couldn’t agree on things, they couldn’t act collectively, when they couldn’t act collectively, they could not overcome nature and her challenges. |
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| In almost all of these scenarios, the tyranny that Tocqueville fears is mild but pervasive, a tyranny that claws away at your character and soul rather than one that harms your body.
| | Depending on the times, beliefs of a dogmatic character are more or less common. They arise in different ways and can change their shape and object; but it is not possible for such dogmatic opinions not to exist— that is to say, opinions which men take on trust and without discussion. If every man chose to form for himself all his opinions in an isolated pursuit for truth along paths followed by himself alone, it is unlikely that a great number of men would ever come together in any commonly shared belief. But it is easy to see that no social grouping can prosper without shared beliefs or rather there are none which exist in that way; for, without commonly accepted ideas, there is no common action, and without common action, men exist separately but not as a social unit. For society to exist and all the more so, for such a society to prosper, all the citizens’ minds must be united and held together by a few principal ideas. This could not possibly exist unless each of them occasionally draws his opinions from the same source and agrees to accept a certain number of ready-formed beliefs. |
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| ===Institutional Tyranny===
| | '''The Desirability of Dogmatism''' |
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| Tocqueville thinks that because we elect officials, we feel much more confident in them wielding power so democratic officials get to wield more power than their aristocratic counterparts. And since every layer of government is, in some way, elected by the people -- this is the defining characteristic of American democracies -- the whole of society is simply this one homogenous mechanism of power.
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| Tocqueville worries about the potential for abuse, minorities simply have nowhere to hide in such a society where the people control the government in its entirety. (Not sure how much of his argument stands given the polarization of politics).
| | But T. goes even further, and argues that not only is Dogmatism necessary but in many instances it is highly desirable. Christianity, at least for the US, is the prime example. T. takes the conclusions of Christianity which govern one’s worldly pursuits, general duties, and relationships with others to be of immense practical benefit to society independent of its more transcendental consequences. Even if one could reach such conclusions through reasoning alone, one would still be plagued with doubt in their actions compared to the religious dogmatic. Dogmatism, then, appears to be desirable because only through it can one reach certain highly beneficial (for oneself and community) beliefs about the world and, more importantly, only through it can one hold said beliefs with high conviction. |
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| When a man or a party suffers from an injustice in the United States, to whom can he turn? To public opinion? That is what forms the majority. To the legislative body? That represents the majority and obeys it blindly. To the executive power? That is appointed by the majority and serves as its passive instrument. To the public police force? They are nothing but the majority under arms. To the jury? That is the majority invested with the right to pronounce judgments; the very judges in certain states are elected by the majority. So, however unfair or unreasonable the measure which damages you, you must submit.
| | Men have, therefore, a huge interest in creating fixed ideas about God, their soul, their general duties toward their creator and fellow men; for any doubt about these first concerns would put all their actions at risk and would condemn them in some way to confusion and impotence. This is, therefore, the most important matter upon which each of us should have settled ideas. Unfortunately, it is most difficult for each of us, if we are alone, to arrive at such settled ideas using only our own reason. Only minds freed completely from the ordinary preoccupations of life, minds of great depth and astuteness can, with the help of ample time and attention, penetrate such vital truths. Even then, we see that philosophers themselves are almost always hedged around with doubts, that, at every step, the natural light which illuminates them grows dim and threatens to be blotted out and that, in spite of all their efforts, they have as yet managed to uncover only a small number of contradictory notions upon which the human mind has floated endlessly for thousands of years without managing a firm hold upon the truths or even finding new errors. Such studies are quite beyond the average human capacity and, even when the majority of men were capable of such pursuits, they clearly would not have the free time. |
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| ===Future Tyranny===
| | '''Problematic Dogmatism''' |
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| There are various ways that government can increasingly take on more power such that its domain (and therefore what they majority can enforce and control) becomes total.
| | But in our appraisal for dogmatism, let us not forget T.’s heed against the tyranny of the majority, a form of dogmatism so crude, disastrous, and soul-sucking that he termed it “enslavement”. “I observe how, beneath the power of certain laws, democracy would blot out that intellectual liberty supported by the social, democratic state in such a way that, having broken the shackles formerly imposed upon it by class systems or men, the human spirit would be closely confined by the general will of the majority.” |
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| We could be jealous of priviledges so much so that we hand increasing power to the state to level our differences:
| | Dogmatism therefore, like many things in T., occupies a paradoxical position. On one hand it is necessary for society and produces many desirable consequences, on another, it is responsible for the greatest form of tyranny. Is there something more we can say to differentiate between productive and unproductive dogmatism? |
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| The loathing men feel for privilege increases as these privileges become rarer and less important, so that democratic passions would seem to burn the brighter in those very times when they have the least fuel. I have already accounted for this phenomenon. No inequality, however great, strikes the eye in a time of general social inequality, whereas the slightest disparity appears shocking amid universal uniformity; the more complete this uniformity, the more intolerable it looks. Therefore, it is natural that love of equality should thrive constantly with equality itself: to foster it is to see it grow. This ever-burning and endless loathing which democratic nations feel for the slightest privilege has an unusual effect upon the gradual concentration of every political right in the hands of a single representative of the state. Since the sovereign authority stands necessarily and indubitably above all the citizens, it does not arouse their envy and each citizen thinks that he is depriving all his fellow men of those powers that he grants to the crown. The man living in democratic ages is always extremely reluctant to obey his neighbor who is his equal; he refuses to acknowledge that the latter has any ability superior to his own; he distrusts his form of justice and looks enviously upon his power; he both fears and despises him; he likes to bring home to him the whole time that they are both equally dependent upon the same master. Any central power which pursues these natural feelings loves and promotes equality, for equality eases, extends, and guarantees the actions of such a power to an unusual degree.
| | Clearly, there are not two distinct species of dogmatism that are fundamentally different. Dogmatism is dogmatism: conviction in beliefs without examination. |
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| Industry and its growth could demand much more infrastructure, both material and political, to be built. Government and industry is symbiotic, the more the latter expands the more the former becomes all-encompassing:
| | The distinction must be either of degree, topic, or subject. That is how much one is dogmatic, about what one is dogmatic, and who is dogmatic that may separate productive dogmatisms from their unproductive counterparts. |
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| Industry normally causes a multitude of men to congregate in one place, establishing new and complex relationships between them. It exposes them to sudden and great alternations of plenty and poverty, during which public peace is threatened. Finally, this type of work can come to damage the health and even the lives of those who make money out of it or those who engage in it. Thus, the manufacturing classes have a greater need of regulation, supervision, and restraint than all other classes and it is to be expected that the functions of government will multiply as they do.
| | First, T. might hold the position that dogmatism is only productive if, when presented with sufficient evidence, one agrees to change one’s position. While this sounds productive empirical, T. might reject that it is better, at least when religious or patriotic matters are concerned, to have a high degree of dogmaticity. |
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| This is not a tyranny per se but Tocqueville worries that the industrial, capitalist class could get so powerful that they form an aristocracy.
| | The second way to distinguish between these two forms is what one is dogmatic about. Perhaps for T. we should compartmentalize our intellectual freedom and curiosity to only certain arenas that do not challenge the moral and cohesive fabric of society, like the modes by which we conduct commerce. |
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| Lastly, Tocqueville also warns of the possibility of a military leader not giving up his power and seizing the country by force. | | Lastly, T. could also plausibly hold the position that only the majority should be dogmatic, while the intellectual elite who has abundant time and talent should challenge traditional assumptions and push society forward." |
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| | (https://johnathanbi.com/book-notes-summaries/democracy-in-america) |
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| ===Psychological Tyranny===
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| I know of no country where there is generally less independence of thought and real freedom of debate than in America.
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| This section reconstructs Tocqueville’s analysis of Democratic thought policing in Democracy in America. In the 19th century, the French Aristocrat toured the United States and spent the next decade wrestling with a central question. How can a society which guarantees the most freedoms on paper be so limited in imagination, devoid of independent thinking, and conformist in reality? This conformity isn’t just a superficial problem either, but a subtle yet nonetheless deadly bondage that chips away at our character, distorts our thinking, and corrodes our very spirit – a bondage so forceful and pervasive that Tocqueville labelled it a “tyranny”.
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| Unlike modern commentators who may provide a timely diagnosis – blaming a particular political ideology or the recent polarization of politics – Tocqueville locates the source of bondage in the very democratic institutions and ideals that grant us freedom in the first place. His answer may be timeless, but we still need to keep the historical context in mind. When he comments on how unfree Americans were, he certainly did not have in mind as comparison the surveillance technologies of the 21st century nor the totalitarian regimes of the 20th. Tocqueville is contrasting the bondage of the democratic citizen to the freedom of European aristocrats who had considerable independence, even from the monarch. This may seem like a reason to dismiss his observations entirely. Aristocracies are part of the past; only a tiny population enjoyed this freedom; we shouldn’t dwell in a pessimistic critique of the freest regime we have today. But it is precisely this anachronism that makes his insights so unique and valuable. By contrasting democratic life to, perhaps, the most independent class in history, we can see how our freedoms are still limited in subtle ways. Under this light, it is we who are the pessimist and Tocqueville the optimist. For we look at democracies and say: “Yes, this is as free as man can be.” Tocqueville offers instead: “No, you can be much more!”
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| Tocqueville draws a sharp distinction between the influence of democratic institutions (e.g. elections) and democratic ideals (e.g. equality). Both will limit independent thinking but in different ways.
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| The defining characteristic of democratic institutions is the self-governance of the people. The political leadership is elected and, to a large extent, directed by the opinions of the masses. Ideas flow bottom-up, not top-down. A requirement of democratic citizenship is, therefore, to have an opinion on a wide-variety of topics. Ask any American, and they will gladly go on about anything from abortion, to economic policy, to global affairs. Ask almost any other nationality, and expect a puzzled look in response, wondering why you are asking them questions reserved for experts. From a young age, the American child is encouraged to form her own opinions, so much so that we expect beauty pageant contestants to have a ready-made foreign policy response to ISIS. The oddity of this social fact is perhaps visible only to the foreign eye: a fundamental perquisite of social life in America is to hold strong opinions on issues experts devote their entire lives to investigating. This social expectation is generated by the political demands of democratic institutions. If the people are to govern, the people must make up their own minds.
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| Doesn’t this encourage free-thinking? Common sense suggests that the expectation to be opinionated should produce a nation of inquisitive and liberated minds. Tocqueville does not deny that the American is more educated and informed than your average aristocratic citizen, most of whom are peasants. What is worrisome is the way we form and enforce our opinions on others.
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| Americans do not seek opinions from traditional forms of authority. There is a subconscious assumption that if we are equals, we must have equal access to the truth and the same capacities to reason. The democratic ideal of equality makes any authority figure appear inherently false and suspicious. Cautious of intellectual tyranny from above, Americans “search by oneself and in oneself alone for the reason of things.”
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| How this pans out in reality is a far cry from this Cartesian ideal. Most people are simply too busy to properly wrestle with all the different perspectives, much less the underlying assumptions. Even the philosopher, who spends every waking hour engaging with ideas, “believes a million things upon the authority of someone else.” Dogma – opinions accepted on nothing other than authority – is necessary simply because there are too many perspectives to be questioned and too many assumptions to be tested. When it comes to authorities of truth within a functioning society, the question to ask is not “if” but “where” and “how”. Tocqueville urges us not to take the American and his self-proclaimed independence at his word, and instead look for hidden springs of dogma.
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| The same ideal of equality that leads the American to distrust any traditional form of authority, makes him more trustful of public opinion. If we are all equals in our ability to reason, then truth shouldn’t lie with any singular person, no matter their credentials, but must instead rest with the greatest number of people, in public opinion. More so than any other regime, democracies look favorably upon the wisdom of the crowds. This is a marked difference from aristocracies where the authority of knowledge rested in the hands of a visible and select few. But just as the serf may adopt the ideas of the local priest, we too copy from authorities, even if they do not appear as such. We stitch together our beliefs from public opinion: a sound blurb on the late-night news, an echo from the community gathering, a post on social media. Because there is no explicit and visible authority to attribute our views to, we readily claim them as our own. We cling onto them ever the tighter, as fruits of our own intellectual labor, out of “pride as much as conviction.” When we say we are thinking for ourselves, too often that just means we forgot where we parroted it from.
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| More worryingly, the issues we are required to take a stance on are often heavily politicized. Certain stances – gun control, immigration policy, abortion laws, etc. – are mostly adopted on party lines. Asking about someone’s views on abortion is often less motivated by curiosity than a desire to place them on the spectrum, to label them as “friend” or “foe”. As a result, free thinking is even more threatened because it is often easier and more socially rewarding to pick the opinion that nets political advantages. If all my friends are liberal hippies, is it even an option for me to, upon careful research, conclude that climate change is blown out of proportion? Tocqueville’s insight is that the more external rewards there are around having the right opinion, the harder it is to be a free thinker and pursue truth for truth’s sake. When you liberate political power from a specific class, as democratic institutions do, you inject the political, and political rewards, across all of society. We shouldn’t be surprised that as more and more of our life – entertainment, sports, coronavirus, etc. – becomes increasingly partisan, it is harder and harder to have sober conversations about them.
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| Without a clear external authority dictating opinion, people feel a genuine ownership over their ideas. As a democratic citizen, I conceive of my opinions as “mine” and genuine, even if they come from external sources and are adopted for ulterior, political motives. The medieval courtier may secretly despise what he publicly accepts from an external authority. But the democratic citizen, believing himself to be the origin of his beliefs, endorses them wholeheartedly. Tocqueville praises this phenomenon and the character of responsibility it produces, but is nonetheless cautious of the side-effects. Because everyone in society has strong opinions, political allegiances and, thus, incentives to enforce these opinions, thought-control is much more pervasive than it ever could have been in aristocracies. Tocqueville’s claim is this: in aristocracies, there is a clear separation between the ruling class and the people, and even within the ruling class itself. Ideas don’t flow as freely and, therefore, society isn’t homogeneous. There’s always some safe harbor to explore outlandish ideas or, at least, enough people who don’t care enough to bother you. Even if the monarch wanted to control thinking, he can’t mobilize all of the people, all the time: “No monarch is so absolute that he can gather all the forces of society into his own hands and overcome resistance as can a majority endowed with the right of enacting laws and executing them.”
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| But, Tocqueville warns, when authority is bottom-up, when the people’s will determine the direction of the leaders, there is nowhere to hide. The ruling party share the opinions of the people because they were elected by them. And the people, now with a strong set of opinions and a deep sense of ownership over the political process, all become voluntary thought police, keeping each other inside the party line. Surveillance is carried out not through force or violence, but dirty glances, nasty remarks, and social ostracism. It is total and continuous. Tocqueville insists that when a democratic people makes its mind up on an issue, there is no room to explore alternatives. Anything outside the Overton window immediately becomes blasphemy.
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| But even when there isn’t a nation-wide consensus, policing on partisan lines can still smother independent thinking. It is the bottom-up nature that makes it so pervasive and effective. The homogeneous intellectual climate in our liberal universities is a good example. During class, in the dorms, at a party – students police each other non-stop in speech and action. They are not following orders from a central committee of political correctness, but simply participating in the democratic process which is inherently political. The result is an almost universal enforcement of the party line and an ideological homogeneity that could rival the achievements of the most effective central committees. As this example suggests, bottom-up policing is not only more pervasive but can also be more forceful because it coerces with a moral force. When the rare student deviates from the progressive ideal, he is not beaten or tortured, but made to feel like a worthless outcast. Tocqueville explains:
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| Under the absolute government of one man, despotism, in order to attack the spirit, crudely struck the body and the spirit escaped free of its blows, rising gloriously above it. But in democratic republics, tyranny does not behave in that manner; it leaves the body alone and goes straight to the spirit. No longer does the master say: “You will think as I do or you will die” he says: “You are free not to think like me, your life, property, everything will be untouched but from today you are a pariah among us. You will retain your civic privileges but they will be useless to you, for if you seek the votes of your fellow citizens, they will not grant you them and if you simply seek their esteem, they will pretend to refuse you that too. You will retain your place amongst men but you will lose the rights of mankind. When you approach your fellows, they will shun you like an impure creature; and those who believe in your innocence will be the very people to abandon you lest they be shunned in their turn. Go in peace; I grant you your life but it is a life worse than death.”
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| Tocqueville’s surprising insight is that the threat of violence used by an aristocratic monarch to control thought is often less forceful than the social forces within a democracy. The assumption here is that there is a moral force behind the people. If you rebel against an authority, you may gain the prestige of a martyr. But if you go against the people, you are an evil and worthless person. Tocqueville’s observation is that, with this moral force, bottom-up policing doesn’t even need to resort to physical punishment because it stamps out dissident ideas from the get-go: “The Inquisition was never able to stop the circulation in Spain of books hostile to the religion of the majority. The power of the majority in the United States has had greater success than that by removing even the thought of publishing such books.”
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| To be sure, it is not as if everyone in an aristocracy was a free-thinker. The social forces that restrict independent thinking exists in all societies. There will always be bottom-up policing. But it is inflamed by democratic institutions which require its citizens to have opinions around a wide range of issues and to form political allegiances around them.
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| The advantage of aristocracies, Tocqueville must think, is not in what they do have but in what they don’t have. People just don’t care about the wide range of issues that concern the democratic mind: they have no say in these matters and no parties hoping to win their votes. This is undesirable for a whole host of reasons. But, in so far as independent thinking is concerned, there is also no constant policing around these issues. Tocqueville concedes that aristocratic peoples are more ignorant – they hold less opinions. Democracies have, without a doubt, raised the averaged level of education. But aristocratic peoples are also less dogmatic – they hold less opinions out of ulterior, political motives. In such a society, someone who has the opportunity and urge to explore truth, granted a tiny minority, could do so without a pervasive social force policing their thought. Tocqueville is concerned that the social forces within American-style democracies will smother out the great, rare, and rebellious minds from the get-go and instead herd everyone into an above-average mediocrity.
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| If democratic institutions unleash social forces that limit our thinking through coercion, then the democratic ideal of equality furnishes our characters with similar habits, perspectives, and biases such that we naturally arrive at the same thoughts. Equality is the belief that we are fundamentally the same in essence. Any difference is either insignificant or the result of nurture. Democracies honor equality because they are meritocratic. In aristocracies, status is determined solely by birthright and remains stable for centuries on end. In democracies, no group of people is better in stock than another. Status is determined by merit. It is fluid and hierarchies are unstable. This is also the logic of the free market. Winners and losers change rapidly; your family lineage matters less than what and how much you can produce. Evidently, the ideal of equality is not exclusive to America nor democracies. We should not be surprised to discover the same effects on free thinking from equality in non-democratic regimes. Equality influences a society to the extent that it is meritocratic and allows for social mobility.
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| Equality shapes the democratic character to be pragmatic and oriented towards action. With equality comes meritocracy and with meritocracy comes opportunity. But this opportunity is a double-edged sword. Tocqueville observes that the aristocrat rarely worries about wealth and his status is more or less guaranteed. This frees the mind for more noble pursuits. Even the peasant is able to, in a much more limited sense, free his mind from worldly concerns, if not only for the reason that there is not much he can do to improve it. Our stations, as democratic citizens, aren’t fixed in life. We are given license to pursue material goods and improve our status. But this license is, at the same time, a bondage. Our gaze becomes directed only to the worldly and the mundane. Free to pursue status and wealth, the liberating “can” quickly becomes a demanding “ought”. Meritocracies, Tocqueville observes, envelope everyone in a state of agitation. Because our stations are not fixed, we always want more and fear losing what we already have. We are always engrossed in a state of action trying to improve and protect our lot. Under this light, the aristocrat and the peasant are mentally freed from worldly concerns, relatively to us, by being physically limited in their ability to change them. Even the rich do not enjoy the same leisure as the aristocrat did. The latter rests in the comfort that his status will never change, while the former must remain in a state of action to maintain his standing in society.
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| To be sure, our orientation towards constant action and our pursuit of worldly goods does not prohibit us from valuing ideas altogether. We quickly see the importance of intelligence for success and learn to appreciate it. But, as a result, we tend to value ideas only instrumentally for their usefulness. We are focused on utility, “aided much more by the opportunity of an idea … than its strict accuracy.” This pragmatism disposes us to value the useful and digestible ideas at the expense of the complex and profound. “In ages when almost every man is engaged in action, an excessive value is generally placed upon those rapid flights and superficial ideas of the intellect while its slower and deeper efforts are considerably undervalued.”
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| So, even though democracies may show a strong desire for knowledge, we must remember that “the desire to use knowledge is not the same as the desire to know.” Free-thinking, in Tocqueville’s opinion, requires a certain aristocratic leisure that is simply unavailable to the action-oriented man.” The mental habits which suit action do not always promote thought.” Tocqueville’s insight is that great ideas only come about when you pursue them for their own sake. They are never the result of a pragmatic calculus:
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| If Pascal had had in mind only some great source of profit or had been motivated only by self-glory, I cannot think he would have been able, as he was, to gather, as he did, all the powers of his intellect for a deeper discovery of the most hidden secrets of the Creator. When I observe him tearing his soul away, so to speak, from the concerns of life to devote it entirely to this research and severing prematurely the ties which bind his soul to his body, to die of old age before his fortieth year, I stand aghast and realize that no ordinary cause can produce such extraordinary efforts.
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| Equality furnishes the democratic mind with generalizations. The same pragmatism also leads the busy American to prefer generalizations that explain very much with very little. We are disposed to look for “common rules which apply to everything, to include a great number of objects in one category and to explain a collection of facts by one single reason” because our action-oriented life leaves little time for thinking. There is a further reason that we are inclined to generalizations, especially in matters regarding the human condition. The assumption of equality, that all humans are the same in essence, makes it natural to project observations of one individual onto the human whole. The same virtues and vices of one must apply to another. The best regime for one nation must also be the best universally. The moral standards of one epoch should judge all of history. We lose, if ever so subtly, this aristocratic instinct that different people are of different stock and should be evaluated according to different standards. The dangers of this tendency to generalize are obvious. We lose much nuance beneath our broad strokes. And our desire for a binary “good” or “bad” overlooks the complexity of the human experience.
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| Lastly, equality directs the democratic gaze towards progress. Aristocratic citizens can see the bounds on their potential, the scope of their occupation, and limits of their status more or less at birth. They acknowledge the potential for progress but in a much more limited way. The son of an ironsmith may think about how he can improve his craft, but he dare not dream of one day becoming the King. Democratic ambitions are not bound by any such restraints. The American child is told from an early age that: “You can be anything you want to be!” This encouragement is not entirely deceitful either. The child has a whole host of presidents, scientists, and CEOs with humble beginnings to look up to that lend credence to this promise. Coupled with the belief that we are of the same essence, one can only explain this wide variance in outcomes with the indefinite perfectibility of man. Democratic citizens believe in the boundless potential for the human subject to adapt and progress. Consequently, we live life constantly trying to be better and self-improve.
| | =Typology= |
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| This disposition towards progress is not limited just to our lives but becomes a general perspective through which we view the world. Tocqueville offers an example: American ship makers build less durable vessels with the assumption that “the art of navigation is making such rapid progress that the best ship would soon outlive its usefulness if it extended its life more than a few years.” This belief in our indefinite perfectibility is a generator of a whole host of philosophical assumptions. Even the way we interpret time and history is linear rather than circular: as a continued progression of mankind itself.
| | See: [[Tocqueville's Typology of the Tyranny of the Majority] |
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| It is hard to see how this perspective of progress can limit our thinking. It might be odd to even think of it as a perspective and not just plain fact in the first place. This only goes to show the degree which progress is embedded into our democratic psyche. Tocqueville warns us that we may be stretching the bounds of human perfectibility to excess and exaggerating what is possible. Can the child really be anyone he wants to? Furthermore, our lens of progress is, at the same time, an orientation towards the future. Tocqueville observes how the subject of a better future populates democratic poetry, as the subject of a glorious past did aristocratic poetry. We must be cautious not to devalue the past. If we think of ourselves as progressed, as better in every way, we overlook what can be learned from those who came before us.
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| A character oriented towards action, a mind fascinated with generalizations, and a gaze towards progress – these characteristics generated by the ideal of equality in turn generate numerous philosophical assumptions, predispose us to certain types of ideas, and makes us look for answers in similar places. But it is clear that as much as these tendencies frame and limit thought, they also lead the American to fruitful insights and innovative ideas. These weaknesses are, at the same time, strengths. Indeed, every political regime will carry within it assumptions that color its citizens perspectives. Tocqueville is highlighting ours so that we can become aware of them and their limitations.
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| It should be obvious by now that Tocqueville is neither an enemy of democracy nor America. On the contrary, he is a self-described “friend of democracy” and only came to America to study the most functional democracy in his time. Indeed, he is cautious of the potential for intellectual tyranny. But even this he concedes is somewhat necessary: no society can function without unity sustained by commonly shared opinions based on nothing but authority alone. Not everyone can or should be a free-thinker. Dogma is somewhat necessary for the healthy functioning of society.
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| Democracy in America highlights these sources of dogma that may not be obvious at first sight: hidden and decentralized but nonetheless restraining. Both democratic institutions and democratic ideals will always limit independent thinking, both to the benefit of societal cohesion as well as the detriment of independent thinking. This will not change as long as America remains a democracy. But Tocqueville does present the American with a genuine and meaningful choice: limit and contain these forces, and gain a degree of intellectual independence; neglect and inflame these forces, and expect an intellectual tyranny pervasive and restrictive beyond your wildest imagination. Just because the freedom of the intellect is granted on paper, does not mean it doesn’t have to be continuously fought for in reality."
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| (https://johnathanbi.com/book-notes-summaries/democracy-in-america)
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| [[Category:Democracy]] | | [[Category:Democracy]] |
* Book: Democracy in America. Alexis de Tocqueville.
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Description
Jonathan Bi:
"Tocqueville writes in a time where everyone had a philosophy of history. People believed that you can't understand politics without understanding the mechanisms of history.
There are two general narratives of how political revolutions/progress occurs. The Aristotelian accounts is that any regime can dissolve into any other regime. The Platonic account is that there is a teleological progression (circular or linear) between different types of regimes. In this regard, Tocqueville is more of a Platonist. He believes in the inevitable progression of democracy.
Tocqueville's philosophy of history is heavily Christian. There was once a period of a rule of law. Effectively a caste system. Christianity brought down this caste system by enabling anyone to join in the ranks of the clergy. The clergy entered the government and started wielding power. Then lawyers and the bourgeoise slowly developed. The new middle class was spawned by Christian destruction of the old caste system and it was this new middle class that yearned for a new political system.
The leftist interpretation is that society is trending towards the good after this radical break happened. The right believe that society is declining. The right have three options: 1. withdraw from society 2. attempt to undo the revolution 3. begin a new revolution that brings old aspects back stronger than before (20th century Fascism).
Democracy in America is mostly addressed to the right. He doesn’t necessarily think that democracy is trending towards the absolute good but he does believe it is unstoppable. He wants the right to give up an illusion of the return."
(https://johnathanbi.com/book-notes-summaries/democracy-in-america)
Discussion
Jonathan Bi:
"The famous Tocqueville principle states that the more a society tends towards equality the more the inequalities look like great crimes. This is because they become muhc more apparent and unjust. So as society becomes more equal, people feel they are less equal and become more resentful (This is a different argument from GIrard).
One can imagine men enjoying a certain degree of freedom which wholly satisfies them. Then they savor their independence free from anxiety or excitement. But men will never establish an entirely satisfying equality. No matter what a nation does, it will never succeed in reaching perfectly equal conditions. If it did have the misfortune to achieve an absolute and complete leveling, there would still remain the inequalities of intelligence which come directly from God and will always elude the lawmakers. However democratic the state of society and the nation’s political constitution, you can guarantee that each citizen will always spot several oppressive points near to him and you may anticipate that he will direct his gaze doggedly in that direction. When inequality is the general law of society, the most blatant inequalities escape notice; when everything is virtually on a level, the slightest variations cause distress. That is why the desire for equality becomes more insatiable as equality extends to all. In democratic nations, men will attain a certain degree of equality with ease without being able to reach the one they crave. This retreats daily before them without moving out of their sight; even as it recedes, it draws them after it. They never cease believing that they are about to grasp it, while it never ceases to elude their grasp. They see it from close enough quarters to know its charms without getting near enough to enjoy them and they die before fully relishing its delights. Those are the reasons for that unusual melancholy often experienced by the inhabitants of democratic countries in the midst of plenty and for that distaste for life they feel seizes them even as they live an easy and peaceful existence.
The Inevitability of Equality
The gradual unfurling of equality in social conditions is, therefore, a providential fact which reflects its principal characteristics; it is universal, it is lasting and it constantly eludes human interference; its development is served equally by every event and every human being.
Tocqueville, in the introduction to his book, explains one of the core reasons for the writing of On Democracy in America: the inevitable democratic destiny of Europe. While this destiny is guaranteed, for the reasons I will soon discuss, its successful implementation is not so, a fact that was blatantly obvious in, say, the French Revolution. Investigating why Tocqueville believes the march of democracy and its egalitarian ideals is inevitable is not only critical to understanding the motives behind his work but will also be informative in analyzing the trajectory of the modern world, a world in which democratic regimes are showing increasing signs of strain.
The rise of democracy coincided with one of the defining characteristics of modernity: capitalism. Capital revealed the stubborn class distinctions that were so entrenched in society to be a hinderance on commerce: before the eyes of a trader, everyone is equal in so far as they can pay. The great equalizer of the free market began eroding previous class distinctions in favor of the more egalitarian meritocratic system: “The influence of money began to assert itself in state affairs. Business opened a new pathway to power and the financier became a political influence both despised and flattered.”
While this trend may have been operating in the background, the inflection point happened, so Tocqueville suggests, at two key junctures. The first juncture is the introduction of private property as opposed to owning property within Feudal tenure. This is, for Tocqueville, an inflection point because it seems that the very introduction of private property set up a system in place that began eroding concentrated power of the wealthy that gradually lead to egalitarianism:
As soon as citizens began to own land on any other than a feudal tenure and when emergence of personal property could in its turn confer influence and power, all further discoveries in the arts and any improvement introduced into trade and industry could not fail to instigate just as many new features of equality among men. From that moment, every newly invented procedure, every newly found need, every desire craving fulfillment were steps to the leveling of all. The taste for luxury, the love of warfare, the power of fashion, the most superficial and the deepest passions of the human heart seemed to work together to impoverish the wealthy and to enrich the poor.
This, in our era when the examination of political economy has been so influenced by Marx and neo-Marxian thinking, is a deeply interesting and surprising claim. The introduction of private property, contra Marx, isn’t responsible for wealth concentration but rather wealth dissemination. (I guess Marx would agree that capitalism is more equal than feudalism) Unfortunately, Tocqueville does not give further elaboration as to why every improvement to industry and the economy post-property is an equalizing force. A first, and frankly quite uninteresting resolution, would be that it equalizes the old strongholds of power within Feudalism. While this could be included into what Tocqueville was hinting at, I doubt this explanation covers the entirety of his claim.
The second inflection point, one whose exact emergence is much harder to pinpoint than the first, is when we began to control nature with rationality:
From the moment when the exercise of intelligence had become a source of strength and wealth, each step in the development of science, each new area of knowledge, each fresh idea had to be viewed as a seed of power placed within people’s grasp. Poetry, eloquence, memory, the beauty of wit, the fires of imagination, the depth of thought, all these gifts which heaven shares out by chance turned to the advantage of democracy and, even when they belonged to the enemies of democracy, they still promoted its cause by highlighting the natural grandeur of man.
His idea seems to be that every act of human achievement over the natural world or manifestation of cultural brilliance has also contributed to the development of democracy. This may also be quite a surprising claim for the modern academic that has associated the control of nature with the oppressive and non-democratic control of society by a minority. What is most surprising is his final sentence within this arch: that even those who use these advancements of control against democracy, accelerate the emergence of democracy by displaying the goodness and power of humanity at large. What’s implicit in his argument is that should one believe in the grandeur of man then a democratic society, a mode of organization which gives the most freedom for this grandeur to naturally develop, would also be preferred.
Tocqueville further broadens the scope of this already surprising claim. Every action in history, whether for or against democracy explicitly, has engendered it in some way:
Everywhere we look, the various events of people’s lives have turned to the advantage of democracy; all men have helped its progress with their efforts, both those who aimed to further its success and those who never dreamed of supporting it, both those who fought on its behalf and those who were its declared opponents; everyone has been driven willy-nilly along the same road and everyone has joined the common cause, some despite themselves, others unwittingly, like blind instruments in the hands of God."
(https://johnathanbi.com/book-notes-summaries/democracy-in-america)
Jonathan Bi:
"The Necessity of Dogmatism
Dogmatic is necessary, in a first sense, simply because we do not have the intellectual capacity nor time to examine each and every one of our beliefs. We must take a subset of beliefs for granted and build meaningful structures on them.
If I now consider men as individuals, I find that dogmatic beliefs are no less vital for a man on his own than for when he acts in common with his fellows. If man was forced to prove for himself all the truths he employs each day, he would never reach an end; he would drain his energies in initial experiment without advancing at all. Since there is not the time, because of the short span of our lives, nor the ability, because of the limitations of our minds, to act in that way, he is reduced to the taking on trust a host of facts and opinions which he has neither the time nor the power to examine and verify by his own efforts but which have been discovered by abler minds than his or which have been adopted by the populace. Upon this primary foundation he erects the structure of his own thought. He is not brought to this manner of advancing by his own will but is limited by the unbending laws of his own condition.
Every great philosopher in the world believes a million things upon the authority of someone else and supposes many more truths than he can prove.
Even if one could labor to examine all of his or her opinions, dogmatism would still be necessary, in a second sense, for the formation of societies. The argument goes as such: individuals will simply come to too fundamental of disagreements, they won’t be able to coordinate collaborative action, and there can be no society. I found this eerily similar to the state of nature which the Chinese political philosopher Mozi detailed. It is neither amour proper, nor glory, nor a lack of resources which troubles Mozi’s state of nature but rather a difference in opinion. From there on his elucidation mirrors that of T.’s: when people couldn’t agree on things, they couldn’t act collectively, when they couldn’t act collectively, they could not overcome nature and her challenges.
Depending on the times, beliefs of a dogmatic character are more or less common. They arise in different ways and can change their shape and object; but it is not possible for such dogmatic opinions not to exist— that is to say, opinions which men take on trust and without discussion. If every man chose to form for himself all his opinions in an isolated pursuit for truth along paths followed by himself alone, it is unlikely that a great number of men would ever come together in any commonly shared belief. But it is easy to see that no social grouping can prosper without shared beliefs or rather there are none which exist in that way; for, without commonly accepted ideas, there is no common action, and without common action, men exist separately but not as a social unit. For society to exist and all the more so, for such a society to prosper, all the citizens’ minds must be united and held together by a few principal ideas. This could not possibly exist unless each of them occasionally draws his opinions from the same source and agrees to accept a certain number of ready-formed beliefs.
The Desirability of Dogmatism
But T. goes even further, and argues that not only is Dogmatism necessary but in many instances it is highly desirable. Christianity, at least for the US, is the prime example. T. takes the conclusions of Christianity which govern one’s worldly pursuits, general duties, and relationships with others to be of immense practical benefit to society independent of its more transcendental consequences. Even if one could reach such conclusions through reasoning alone, one would still be plagued with doubt in their actions compared to the religious dogmatic. Dogmatism, then, appears to be desirable because only through it can one reach certain highly beneficial (for oneself and community) beliefs about the world and, more importantly, only through it can one hold said beliefs with high conviction.
Men have, therefore, a huge interest in creating fixed ideas about God, their soul, their general duties toward their creator and fellow men; for any doubt about these first concerns would put all their actions at risk and would condemn them in some way to confusion and impotence. This is, therefore, the most important matter upon which each of us should have settled ideas. Unfortunately, it is most difficult for each of us, if we are alone, to arrive at such settled ideas using only our own reason. Only minds freed completely from the ordinary preoccupations of life, minds of great depth and astuteness can, with the help of ample time and attention, penetrate such vital truths. Even then, we see that philosophers themselves are almost always hedged around with doubts, that, at every step, the natural light which illuminates them grows dim and threatens to be blotted out and that, in spite of all their efforts, they have as yet managed to uncover only a small number of contradictory notions upon which the human mind has floated endlessly for thousands of years without managing a firm hold upon the truths or even finding new errors. Such studies are quite beyond the average human capacity and, even when the majority of men were capable of such pursuits, they clearly would not have the free time.
Problematic Dogmatism
But in our appraisal for dogmatism, let us not forget T.’s heed against the tyranny of the majority, a form of dogmatism so crude, disastrous, and soul-sucking that he termed it “enslavement”. “I observe how, beneath the power of certain laws, democracy would blot out that intellectual liberty supported by the social, democratic state in such a way that, having broken the shackles formerly imposed upon it by class systems or men, the human spirit would be closely confined by the general will of the majority.”
Dogmatism therefore, like many things in T., occupies a paradoxical position. On one hand it is necessary for society and produces many desirable consequences, on another, it is responsible for the greatest form of tyranny. Is there something more we can say to differentiate between productive and unproductive dogmatism?
Clearly, there are not two distinct species of dogmatism that are fundamentally different. Dogmatism is dogmatism: conviction in beliefs without examination.
The distinction must be either of degree, topic, or subject. That is how much one is dogmatic, about what one is dogmatic, and who is dogmatic that may separate productive dogmatisms from their unproductive counterparts.
First, T. might hold the position that dogmatism is only productive if, when presented with sufficient evidence, one agrees to change one’s position. While this sounds productive empirical, T. might reject that it is better, at least when religious or patriotic matters are concerned, to have a high degree of dogmaticity.
The second way to distinguish between these two forms is what one is dogmatic about. Perhaps for T. we should compartmentalize our intellectual freedom and curiosity to only certain arenas that do not challenge the moral and cohesive fabric of society, like the modes by which we conduct commerce.
Lastly, T. could also plausibly hold the position that only the majority should be dogmatic, while the intellectual elite who has abundant time and talent should challenge traditional assumptions and push society forward."
(https://johnathanbi.com/book-notes-summaries/democracy-in-america)
Typology
See: [[Tocqueville's Typology of the Tyranny of the Majority]