Lecture 4: Hegel (cont) Theoretical Tensons & Lecture 5: Tocqueville Putting Democracy in the Center

 11. Thus the task of social integration in the modern world involves all spheres of modern society. Hegel’s is the first great attempt to unify both liberal and republican paradigms. He recognises the importance of both private and public autonomy and his model attempts to synthesis these two in a complex, mediated understanding of socio-political organization.

12. A real tension exists between the idea of the end of history as the realisation of reason and freedom and the fact that Hegel views the state as the final bearer of these ideas in the domain of Objective spirit. Afterall, we live in a globalised world and the limitations of the nation state are now readily apparent. While the idea of cosmopolitanism is common amongst late 18th century thinkers like Kant, it does not survive the post-Napoleonic world. Hegel characterises the natural state in the domain of international relations as one where the individual subject suffers from the particularity of all such subjects: relations between states are governed by treaties alone. But the observance of these treatises is simply an obligation that can call on no higher universal will, only the will of the particular states themselves. As the relations between states are extensive, the opportunities for injury are many and their determination is just as arbitrary. This means the arena of international relations is like Hobbes’ state of nature where there are many sources of disagreement and conflicts. These can ultimately only by resolved by power and war. That Hegel looks upon this chaos with so much apparent resignation may seem strange, given his general description of modern as an era of rationality and freedom. Several remarks are relevant here. Firstly, he does not share our modern distaste for war. He lived in the last epoch before technological advances introduced mass slaughter to the battlefield and brought total war even to non-combatants. He could still view war as an energising and unifying force that consolidated national feeling and allowed the bourgeois individual to see something higher and more noble than his own self-interest. However, more than these empirical considerations, he has deep philosophical reasons for a reconciliation with Realpolitik. He rejects the traditional philosophical task of providing normative values. Values that cannot specific their own conditions for realisation are merely utopian. A philosophy that chooses immanence over utopianism must constrain itself to norms that exist as a rational power within the present. For the post-Napoleonic Hegel, the nation-state is the contemporary bearer of the rational mission in contemporary history and he contends that philosophy has no legitimate role beyond the study of immanent reason.

13. In view of Hegel’s affirmation of modern freedom and subjectivity it may seem surprising that he rejected democracy. This rejection rests on two points. 1/ Functional differentiation and complexity of modern society. The business of government is often a complex matter requiring education, expertise and impartiality. The aristocracy and the bureaucracy are the most qualified to overseer and direct these affairs. 2/ The irrationality of atomised citizens. Civil society is a collection of antagonistic and potentially explosive interest conflicts. While he affirms modern freedom, he still views it as an obstacle to full political participation. This introduces a moment of ambiguity into his support for modernity. He favours political elites to uphold the highest universal interests against the unruly dialectics of real civil freedom.

14. This is not just an empirical question concerning the contemporary viability of democracy. These doubts are conceptually inscribed in his understanding of spirit. In this paradigm the individual plays a dual role: as both a particular and as an expression of spiritual universality. No institutional expression of spirit is wholly irrational: all have a relative historical right. This brings us to the limits of Hegel’s embrace of modernity. He sets out to ground and make modernity meaningful after the collapse of tradition. This means somehow reconciling rationality with modern contingency. For Hegel, this reconciliation is effected through the concept of spirit. However, because spirit is essentially rational, the moment of modern contingency is compromised from the start, it is never treated on equal terms: it is either the finite accidentality of mere existence that is without philosophical significance or it must be raised by it own immanent essence to the full status of rationality. As a result, the conceptual vehicle that is supposed to signify the realisation of freedom and reason—spirit-- becomes both unbelievable and overpowering. It threatens to submerge the real fragile, empirical freedom and rationality of contemporary citizens. 

Lecture 5: Tocqueville Alexis de (1803-1858)


1. Although Hegel celebrates modernity as the realisation of reason and freedom, he is concerned about the potential for increased social atomisation and rejects democracy. Tocqueville, by contrast, will make modern democracy both the centrepiece and focus of his analysis. J.S. Mill said that Tocqueville’s book was the first philosophical account of democracy in the Modern world: the first attempt to explore the political commitment of the many. For him, democracy is much more than a constitutional commitment or a set of political institutions: it is a way of life. He wants to understand the world historical significance of democracy. In America, he sees much more than America, he sought the image of democracy itself, it tendencies, character, prejudices and passions, what could be hoped from it and what feared. By focusing on real democratic socialisation he hopes to follow the logic of democracy to its limits. America becomes the paradigm for the future, especially the future of Europe. This strategy is not the product of his desire to embrace democracy. This would be difficult for a man with his aristocratic credentials and life history; however, he feels the need to come to terms with it.  Democracy is the new social force in the modern world; it has an almost irresistible power and necessity that issued from the power of numbers. As he says, he examines America not out of mere curiosity but seeking instruction from which Europe might profit.    Biography. Aristocratic past, career aspirations, trip to America, Vol 1, Beaumont’s Marie, political career, Vol 2, trips to England and Ireland 1848, foreign minister, Napoleon III’s Coup, the Ancien Regime, Tocqueville is dogged by a sense of estrangement and ambivalence. He is at home neither in the present nor past. He is between worlds and he views his role as that of a neutral mediator. Democracy in America Vol 1(1835), Vol 2(1840), The Ancien Regime and the French Revolution (1856).

2 As with Hegel, the French Revolution is the pivotal event of modern history. It represents the acceleration of long historical processes and the beginnings of a new type of society. His question is: when will the revolution end? But he is not sure that it will at all; that is the unprecedented character of the modern democratic revolution. He suggests: “the past no longer illuminates the future and the mind proceeds as amongst shadows”; his contemporaries are on a voyage and he is not sure how long it will last or whether their destiny is not to sail the sea eternally. What attracts him in America is the possibility to distinguish between revolution and democracy. That is why America becomes paradigmatic for the future. America has produced a democratic society without revolution that demonstrates the political potential of the people. In the New World, the puritans had before them an apparent tabula rasa and democracy issued not from revolution or legislators but from the political habits, ideas and character of the people. This is why he will emphasise the question of political culture or what Hegel might has called “disposition”. He is especially interested in the practices and institutions that moderate the worst excesses and potentials of majoritarian democracy. This is also why his portrait of American democracy will tend to homogenise its variety with the New England township taking pride of place. The township is large enough to encourage individuals to think more comprehensively than in terms of self and family while it is still small enough to encourage affection and personal identification. Furthermore, in the New England case, there was a long history of religious community. For Tocqueville, religion in America served as a sort of cultural cement that holds a community together and legitimates morality. In America, contrary to the European experience, the separation of Church and State was envisaged as a way of protecting religion for state power, allowed religion to develop freely in voluntary religious communities, to hold on to the heart of the population and to be a source of social integration and stakeholder interest.

3. The French Revolution had exposed the internal dialectic of democracy between emancipation and 0ppression. The revolution broke the old political hegemony of aristocratic-church power and emancipated the masses as a political force. But, at the same time, it eliminates all intermediate social powers leaving the centralised state at the behest of this unprecedented new power. The new power was easily transformed into an instrument of terror, of oppression of the minority by the majority. Tocqueville’s highest value is freedom. However, he comes to view the chief tendencies of modernising process to be equally threats to freedom: these tendencies are increasingly powerful central government and social homogenisation; thus the crucial question becomes: is an egalitarian democratic society possible without relinquishing liberty? While modern democracy emancipates the people as a new class of political actors and facilitates real political engagement and participation, shared beliefs, values and interests amongst this new politicised mass can operate oppressively as an irresistible social and moral force. The oppressive potential of this mass force is only enhanced by its access to the central power of the state. The state can be either reduced to an instrument of this despotic power or the holder of this power may manipulatively harness this mass force. Either way Tocqueville turns the traditional problem of freedom on its head. Whereas the previous liberal tradition had viewed the state as the great threat to individual liberty, in this new democratic scenario the possibility emerges that society itself could be just as much or even a more dangerous threat than the state. But these potential are initially not at the forefront of Tocqueville’s thinking. Fresh from America in the early 1830’s, the question of compatibility between democracy and freedom is answered positively, underlining the way in which its most dangerous potentials of majoritarian democracy were moderated in the American case by certain historical, strategic, institutional and cultural safeguards. However, the second later more philosophical volume explores more deeply into the darker potentials of democratic power.