Thursday, April 14, 2022

993: The Tyranny of the Majority......

 Behind me, you see a cartoon from 1793. Certainly, due to the atrocities of the French Revolution, there was a heated debate going on in Europe about the meaning of freedom.

  

In his numerous writings the French extreme conservative and philosopher, diplomate, Joseph de Maistre (1753 - 1821) systematically criticized

  

the revolutionary idea of ​​freedom, which he mainly associated with the views of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. 

  

Maistre mocked Rousseau for his belief that man was born free and labeled this "foolish assumption" as complete nonsense. 

   

In fact, when man was left to his own devices, he was too evil to be free. For this reason Maistre, like Augustine 1400 years before, claimed 

  

that slavery in the sense of legal bondage and of political subjection was the natural and proper condition of man. 

 

Freedom in the sense of spiritual freedom, in his view, was only possible under the leadership of Catholicism, and therefore the Pope had to be given supreme authority over both spiritual and secular matters. 

  

But Maistre was extreme in his radical rejection of freedom. Most counter-revolutionaries did not reject freedom itself and did it by distinguishing between civil and political freedom.

     

Just like the Athenian oligarchs had done more than two millennia before, counter-revolutionaries pointed out that the democratic theory of freedom was incoherent. 

  

According to the Atlantean revolutionaries, people could only be free if they governed themselves. But even in the most democratic states, there was never general agreement on policy, their opponents argued. 

  

In a democracy, the majority of the community ruled over all other people. This meant that a significant portion of the minority community often had to submit to laws they had not agreed to. 

  

The democratic definition of freedom was contradictory or even absurd. Democracy did not lead to freedom for all, but to the tyranny of the majority. 

  

Counter-revolutionary thinkers also argued, like Plato, that democracy would lead to lawlessness, not freedom. If people governed themselves, they could ignore any law they disagreed with.      

     

Therefore, a government based on the sovereignty of the people could only result in disorder and chaos, and thus in the destruction of freedom. 

  

The idea of ​​Thomas Hobbes "Homo homini lupus" (Man is a wolf to his fellow man) was very much alive at that time, especially after the horrors of the French Revolution. 

  

The thesis that democracy leads to a tyranny of the majority and leads to anarchy on the other may seem contradictory, 

  

but the idea was that democracy could lead in the first instance to a tyranny of the majority, and in particular to a tyranny of the poor. at the expense of the rich. 

   

But this would eventually culminate in total anarchy as the destruction of property led to a war of all against all. 

  

You heard at that time around 1800, that if the poor were given the right to vote, they would use it to deprive the rich of their wealth and that property would become the most dangerous and insecure thing in the world. 

  

It would eventually lead to chaos. The blessings of civil liberty would be lost. Thus, during the great debate on freedom at the end of the eighteenth century, 

  

counter-revolutionaries revived the arguments originally formulated by Greek critics of freedom.

   

Counter-revolutionaries thus gave different answers to the question of what a free state should look like. 

     

Some of them argued that freedom depended on THE EXTENT TO WHICH people were ruled. As long as they could do more or less what they wanted, they were free. 

  

Others felt that freedom depended on HOW people were governed. Whether they were governed wisely or not. 

  

Still, others believed that freedom depended on CHECKS AND BALANCES. From a theoretical point of view, of course, these views differed considerably from each other. 

  

Importantly, in counter-revolutionary discourse, they all served the same purpose. They acted as alternatives to the democratic theory of freedom, which stated that people's freedom depended on WHO ruled them.

   

Thank you for your attention again....




Main Sources:

MacMillan The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd edition

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1995
 http://plato.stanford.edu/contents.htm
Annelien de Dijn: "Freedom. An unruly history".  2020


TABLE OF CONTENT -----------------------------------------------------------------  


  1 - 100 Philosophers                         9 May 2009  Start of

  2 - 25+ Women Philosophers                       10 May 2009  this blog

  3 - 25 Adventures in Thinking                       10 May 2009

  4 - Modern Theories of Ethics                       29 Oct  2009

  5 - The Ideal State                                               24 Febr 2010   /   234

  6 - The Mystery of the Brain                                  3 Sept 2010   /   266

  7 - The Utopia of the Free Market                       16 Febr 2012    /   383

  8. - The Aftermath of Neo-liberalism                      5 Sept 2012   /   413

  9. - The Art Not to Be an Egoist                             6 Nov  2012   /   426                        

10  - Non-Western Philosophy                               29 May 2013    /   477

11  -  Why Science is Right                                      2 Sept 2014   /   534      

12  - A Philosopher looks at Atheism                        1 Jan  2015   /   557

13  - EVIL, a philosophical investigation                 17 Apr  2015   /   580                

14  - Existentialism and Free Will                             2 Sept 2015   /   586         

15 - Spinoza                                                             2 Sept 2016   /   615

16 - The Meaning of Life                                        13 Febr 2017   /   637

17 - In Search of  my Self                                        6 Sept 2017   /   670

18 - The 20th Century Revisited                              3 Apr  2018    /   706

19 - The Pessimist                                                  11 Jan 2020    /   819

20 - The Optimist                                                     9 Febr 2020   /   824

21 - Awakening from a Neoliberal Dream                8 Oct  2020   /   872

22 - A World Full of Patterns                                    1 Apr 2021    /   912

23 - The Concept of Freedom                                  8 Jan 2022    /   965


The Discussion


[13:18] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): Thank you Herman

[13:18] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): what is WHO

[13:18] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako):

[13:18] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): well

[13:19] herman Bergson: So there you have it all....to which extend, how, or with checks and balances...but not by the people itself

[13:19] herman Bergson: do you mean HOW. Beertje

[13:20] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): you wrote WHO

[13:20] herman Bergson: You see here all basic ideas of conservatims....

[13:20] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): oh sorry ik dacht dat het een afkorting was

[13:20] herman Bergson: I said "depended on HOW people were governed"

[13:20] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): the rich afraid of loosing their power and wealth

[13:21] herman Bergson: yes Bejiita...

[13:21] herman Bergson: one ..the masses are dumb

[13:21] herman Bergson: two...they envie the ricvh and thence are a threat

[13:21] herman Bergson: three...only wise, educated people can govern

[13:22] herman Bergson: four....the  dumbs should not be allowed to vote

[13:23] herman Bergson: Those werre the beliefs around 1800

[13:23] herman Bergson: Bu tit also was the time of increased education for th emasses...

[13:23] herman Bergson: For instance....

[13:24] herman Bergson: since 1806 basic education was accessible for everyone in the Netherlands...

[13:24] herman Bergson: but it took a hundred years to get to mandatorye ducation...1901 to be exact

[13:25] herman Bergson: But..people learned to read and write in those days

[13:25] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): ah

[13:25] herman Bergson: .

[13:26] herman Bergson: Interesting is that you heard in those days the same nonsense as you hear from for instance US Republicans today....

[13:27] herman Bergson: The belief that the masses willl rob the rich...

[13:28] herman Bergson: total social descruction  of society by (in our casde) socialism...etc

[13:28] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): yes

[13:29] herman Bergson: We are closing in in the question....do we nowadays live in freedom... :-)

[13:30] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): problem is we did but again going in wrong direction sadly in more and more places

[13:30] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): democracy is threatend and then we have Putins massacre and all who support this monster and what he do

[13:30] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): a true threat to freedom

[13:31] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): Orban, Erdogan ect

[13:31] herman Bergson: yes...but we have to wait and see who will win eventually

[13:32] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): all we can do indeed, its not looking good i say though at the moment

[13:32] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): or idk

[13:32] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): hope for the best in the end

[13:32] herman Bergson: I don't dare to predict the future....

[13:33] herman Bergson: But what I know is that 2000 years ago there wasn't a single democracy n this globe, except in Greece

[13:33] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): (shudders) indeed

[13:34] herman Bergson: and somehow that system worked its way up

[13:34] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): but 2000 years ago there weren't as many people on this earth

[13:35] herman Bergson: No, indeed, but enough to form a society here and there

[13:35] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): yes here and there, but now man lives everywhere

[13:36] herman Bergson: yes..it has become way more complex

[13:36] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): some countries are just too big

[13:36] herman Bergson: but basically it doesn't makea difference....it is about freedom and human rights still

[13:37] Particle Physicist Bejiita (bejiita.imako): yes

[13:38] herman Bergson: Well..I guess that's it for today... world saved again :-))

[13:38] herman Bergson: So, thank you all again ^_^

[13:38] herman Bergson: Class dismissed...


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