Autor: Mansfield, Harvey C.

Buch: Tocqueville

Titel: Tocqueville

Stichwort: Tocqueville; informelle Demokratie 3, Macht d. Mehrheit über Gedanken;

Kurzinhalt:

Textausschnitt: 45b Almost immediately after introducing majority tyranny, Tocqueville speaks of the “power that the majority exercises over thought.” He makes the flat statement that “I do not know any country where, in general, less independence of mind and genuine freedom of discussion reign than in America.” It is not that a dissident need fear being persecuted or burned at the stake, but that nobody will listen, and he will be dismissed from consideration, finally shushed. This is an “intellectual” violence that closes the mind and, more effectually than the Inquisition, takes away from authors even the thought of publishing views contrary to the majority’s opinion. Tocqueville cites as evidence the fact that “America has not yet had great writers.” (Fs)

46a Of course Tocqueville’s own book was translated and published in America soon after it appeared in France, apparently regardless of the majority’s opinion. But several times in the book he shows himself wary of being thought hostile either to America or to democracy, and particularly at the beginning of volume 2, where he declares his unwillingness to flatter either the great parties or the little factions of his time. Moreover, a modern reader might respond that America’s great writers, such as they are, were soon to appear: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter in 1850, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick in 1851, to mention only two. James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans (1826) came out in time for Tocqueville’s consideration in this judgment. Still, one would not want to run afoul of his stricture against Americans, none of whom, he says, can stand the least criticism of their country. (Fs)

46b In the chapter on freedom of the press, Tocqueville remarks that there are three kinds of opinion: belief, doubt, and rational conviction. The last is achieved by very few; most people live in belief, during ages of religion, or in doubt, in the democratic age. Here is one of his brilliant paradoxes: he says that in times of belief, people will change their opinions when they are converted, but in times of doubt they hold to their opinions. Why the latter? When men doubt, they see no better opinion than their own and feel no closer interest, which is likely to be a material interest easily compatible with stubbornness, prejudice, and fixity of opinion. (Fs) (notabene)

46c A free press, therefore, does not induce people to live by rational conviction or by truth. Claims made today for the press that the people have a right to know are too lofty. Most people do not live on the basis of knowledge but of complacent opinion. They are skeptical: ‘You can’t believe what you read!” And we say today that the media always get it wrong. Consequently we believe that we are right, there being no authority above us to say we are wrong. Democrats like to pride themselves on independence of thought, which is just the kind of independence they display the least. Tocqueville identifies two hidden advantages of a free press: employment for the ambition of talented writers using their vulgar cleverness against one another, and stability of opinion engendered by the very confusion that enables people to distrust or dismiss what they are told. (Fs)

47a In volume 2 Tocqueville addresses the authority of science, which attempts to produce rational conviction of a sort in the people, halfway between full knowledge and uninformed opinion. But in this discussion he lays stress on both the “inestimable good” that a free press provides and the irrational self-indulgence of the majority that it nourishes in the name of enlightenment. With characteristic moderation he measures it against both a regime of censorship, a usual contrast for liberals, and reason in the highest sense, not so usual. The result is quite a different picture from the paean to “liberty of thought and discussion” to be found in John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, published in 1859, the year of Tocqueville’s death. (Fs)

47b Mill was a friend and, as reviewer of Democracy in America, an early patron of Tocqueville, but they differed deeply in their view of the relationship between reason and pride. Mill believed that the prejudice of ordinary people could be overcome by persons now called “intellectuals,” who could direct society without actually governing it; he regarded human pride as an impediment and political liberty as an instrument of progress in knowledge. Tocqueville sees pride as both good and bad for democracy, bad when it enthrones the prejudice of a democratic majority, good when it helps to correct that prejudice in the “free school” that political liberty provides. For him, the highest reason represents “the last refuge” of human pride, and though theoretical discoveries may lead to social improvement, they must be undertaken for their own sake. Humans are distinct from animals by their reason; this is the reasonable basis of pride and must be respected in those who are capable of the highest reason. But most humans use their reason, most of the time, to take pride in defending their prejudices. Spreading prejudice is the occupation and calling of a free press. (Fs)