Autor: Mansfield, Harvey C.

Buch: Tocqueville

Titel: Tocqueville

Stichwort: Tocqueville; Aristokratie - Demokratie; T.: Rechte (politische Tugend), Gesellschaftsvertrag, Stolz (vs. Hobbes u. Locke), Seele - Selbst (Schwächung d. Seele in D.)

Kurzinhalt: Tocqueville believes that the desire to dominate is not the passion most to be feared in democracy ... His new liberalism is liberalism with soul, as it is indebted to the old notion of soul that liberalism tried to replace with the self.

Textausschnitt: 32a Although the religion the Puritans brought from England was democratic and republican, religion in general is “the most precious inheritance from aristocratic centuries.” There are a number of aristocratic features of democracy in America that Tocqueville brings to our attention singly. While noting each one, he never adds them up—perhaps because the sum would make aristocracy too conspicuous. For him, aristocracy and democracy are successive eras in history, and aristocracy as a whole, as a principle, has left the scene, gone for good. But if aristocracy is gone for good, it is no longer a danger to democracy. Tocqueville can help us appreciate its virtues and charms without seeming to stand up for its defense. He does not attempt to mix aristocracy with democracy, and he declares resoundingly that the mixed regime is a “chimera” because in every society one always discovers “one principle of action that dominates all others.” In rejecting the mixed regime, Tocqueville abandons the central strategy of classical political science and casts doubt on the idea of liberal pluralism. But he retains the idea of mixing holdover aristocratic features into democracy as long as its principle is not challenged. (Fs)

32b Democracy and aristocracy are two wholes, each being a way of life driven to make itself absolute, thus constituting “as it were, two distinct humanities.” So Tocqueville declares at the end of Democracy in America. Yet he wants to moderate the absolute and partisan character of the democratic humanity without challenging the democratic principle of the sovereignty of the people. He leaves it to his readers to sum up the democratic mores and institutions that are said to be aristocratic in origin or character. Besides religion, he mentions the jury, once aristocratic as being judged by one’s peers, now democratized. America’s devotion to local self-government, to free speech, and to its free press also come from aristocratic England. Democratic associations are artificially created substitutes for the influence of “aristocratic persons,” and lawyers with their love of order and of legal formalities comprise a conservative aristocracy within democratic America. The “secondary powers” Tocqueville repeatedly recommends as a cure for democratic centralization are natural to aristocracy, and so are the democratic forms he praises: indeed, the American Constitution was made by the Federalist party and inspired by its “aristocratic passions.” (Fs)

33a Most striking in this list is Tocqueville’s attribution of rights to the English landed aristocracy. The idea of rights was brought over from England not in the political philosophy of John Locke (his name does not occur in the book) but, he says, was taken from the practice of English nobles who stood up to the king, preserving individual rights and local freedoms. In America “freedom is old, equality comparatively new.” So in speaking of the practice, mores, and institutions of freedom, he does not introduce rights as the basis of practice, as in the Declaration of Independence where men are “endowed by their Creator” with rights prior to the existence of government, but as the practice of self-government itself. (Fs)

33b Rights must be exercised with “a political spirit that suggests to each citizen some of the interests that make nobles in aristocracies act.” That spirit could remind one of the spiritedness (thumos) that Plato and Aristotle describe as bristling like an animal in defense of one’s own interests. It is altogether different from economic and social rights guaranteed by government, known today as “entitlements,” which are intended to provide security to individuals. For Tocqueville, rights are derived from virtue, from “virtue introduced into the political world.” That virtue would prompt one to risk one’s security in the defense of liberty—like the signers of the Declaration who mutually pledged their “sacred honor”—or in everyday practice, to abandon the comforts and complacency of political apathy and join an association or run for office. (Fs)

33c In using the word “aristocracy,” Tocqueville refers to a distinct form of humanity alternative to democracy, but not to the literal sense of the word: “rule of the best.” He means a landed aristocracy of noble families. But the aristocratic features of America come from England, and he therefore speaks not only of Americans but frequently of “Anglo-Americans” when he wants to call attention to the continuity—in some regards—between English aristocracy and American democracy. One can say further that Tocqueville’s liberalism relies on the nation as well as the social state, rather than the social contract, to describe liberal society. When dwelling on the Anglo-Americans, he says quite pointedly that he will never accept that men form a society merely by recognizing the same head and obeying the same laws—namely, the social contract idea. Instead of that idea, he recounts the actual covenant that the Puritans adopted in God’s name and not for the sake of individual self-preservation, as with liberal theory. That America acquired its identity partly from the English stamped it quite differently from what it might have received from another nation and not only in what we today call ethnicity. Its politics and religion, even its philosophy and morals, for example, the notion of self-interest well understood, came to America from England and characterize the dual nation of Anglo-Americans. (Fs)

34a What particularly distinguishes the Anglo-Americans from all other peoples is the sentiment of pride, and this is particularly true of Americans, who have “an immense opinion” of themselves. Even their religious zeal “constantly warms itself at the hearth of patriotism,” and they send preachers to the frontier as much to improve their country as to save souls. American patriotism is distinct from the England’s because it is inspired by democracy rather than the native land and comes out of the exercise of self-government. It is made rather than inherited, and rational, reflective, and enlightened rather than instinctual. For when citizens are active in government as in America, they take credit for the result. They see a connection between their own interest and the common prosperity, and as they work for both, their pride becomes mixed with the desire to become rich. Tocqueville endorses what we now call the American Dream of hard work rewarded, but with emphasis on its basis in politics. American patriotism is “irritable” and annoying to visiting foreigners like Tocqueville, because national pride aggravates and justifies the vanity of each individual so that one is permitted only to praise, never to criticize. It is a consequence of democratic freedom at work, but with significant borrowing from English aristocracy. (Fs)

35a Pride is a great feature of Tocqueville’s new liberalism. “I would willingly trade several of our small virtues for this vice.” He says this against “moralists” who complain against pride, and it applies as well to the formal liberalism of Hobbes, who wants pride or vainglory to be subdued by government, and Locke, who reduces it to a feeling of insecurity or uneasiness. Both thinkers put the right of self-preservation to the fore, declaring that fear for one’s life, rather than pride in one’s virtue, is the strongest natural desire in humans. For them, and for liberalism in general, pride is the enemy of liberty because it induces the desire to dominate others; and it is contrary to self-interest because a proud person easily becomes hot and fractious, abandoning calculation and charging forward imprudently. Tocqueville disagrees, but he ironically accepts that pride is a vice and adds it to the list of things apparently against one’s interest but comprehended in self-interest well understood. (Fs) (notabene)

35b Tocqueville believes that the desire to dominate is not the passion most to be feared in democracy and that the habit of calculating one’s interest works more against liberty than for it. In the matter of pride, he shows what he fears as well as what he praises in American democracy. He praises its self-government and the pride of accomplishment by free human beings, giving evidence of their elevation above the rest of nature that merely obeys and cannot rule itself. But he also observes that democracy acts against pride and tends to subdue it, as when a rich man runs for election. The intent of democratic moralists and liberal theory toward this very end has been achieved in great part by democratic society acting on its own and without their advice. Yet in humbling the proud, democracy creates a pride of its own as necessary in its way as the pride of aristocrats in aristocracy. (Fs)

36a Because pride is so important to liberty, Tocqueville returns to the soul. Pride means that you are conscious of your self, hence above yourself—one elementary meaning of “soul.” The soul can take a view of the self, an approving view in pride, a reproving one in shame. Such a soul introduces, or reintroduces, complication to his notion of human nature. He speaks frequently of the “soul.” His new liberalism is liberalism with soul, as it is indebted to the old notion of soul that liberalism tried to replace with the self. The liberal self had an interest in gain that was not complicated by the critical view of a soul above the self. The liberal self was not capable of pride or shame and unlikely to be satisfied; it just wanted more. Tocqueville does not simply return to the classical notion of an orderly soul, but he invokes the classical and Christian notion of an elevated soul. (Fs) (notabene)

36b Thus the main fear Tocqueville expresses in the introduction to Democracy in America is that democracy as seen in Europe degrades souls. Aristocracy, he says, was based on the belief that the nobles’ privileges were the immutable order of nature, an illusion to be sure, but considered legitimate by the people who had to obey. Democracy, however, has not established legitimate institutions there to replace aristocratic privileges that have been overturned, and the people, though no longer “serfs,” obey existing powers out of fear rather than love and respect. Obedience from fear is acting out of urgent necessity, which degrades the soul because the people feel the shame of their base surrender to authority, even to democratic authority, and cannot respect themselves or think themselves free. (Fs)

36c The cause of this depressing condition is not so much moral faults as certain “intellectual miseries” in the present landscape of Europe. These same errors are at work in the actual democracy in America, where citizens feel proud and believe their government to be legitimate and their obedience to it reasonable. (Fs)