“Peoples want equality in freedom and, if they cannot obtain it, want it in slavery”? | EUROtoday

On Jun 8, 2025

Get real time updates directly on you device, subscribe now.

Che statement of Alexis de Tocqueville doesn’t solely apply to American democracy, which he was in a position to observe throughout a examine journey to the United States which impressed him Of democracy in America, One of essentially the most impactful and prophetic political analyzes ever written. The Norman aristocrat thinks in fact of revolutionary France (which his household suffered in his flesh).

But this evaluation, which is anthropology and politics, may additionally very properly apply to France at the moment. “Democratic peoples love equality in all time,” he writes, “but there are certain eras where they push the passion they feel for her. This happens when the former social hierarchy, long threatened, completes to destroy itself, after a last intestine struggle, and that the barriers which separated citizens are finally overthrown. Men then rushed over equality as on a conquest […]. The passion of equality enters all sides into the human heart, it extends, it fills it entirely. »»

Disguised easement and invisible oppressions

However, democracy is, according to Tocqueville, a political regime which must be known to handle with care. If it guarantees freedom and tolerance to minorities, it is a source of disguised servitude and invisible oppressions. By its very principle, the reign of the majority can be transformed into a tyranny which anesthesia the ability to judge and refuses to the individual the possibility of distinguishing himself from others and taking political initiatives. And this because of everyone’s tendency to individualism, which pushes to withdraw in its private sphere to do what we like, with the illusion that everyone being treated in the same way in the name of equality, democracy will function by itself.

But if we do not treat freedom, she escapes, and without even realizing it. Better still, for Tocqueville, the passion for equality is such that it even accommodates the lack of freedom. The equality considered as a source of leveling of talents, of oppression of initiatives and, in the end, inequalities is at the heart of neoliberal thought, the American philosopher Ayn Rand (1905-1982) having pushed this analysis to the extreme in his novel Atlas Shrugged (1957).

Who was Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)?

In 1831, opposed to the July Monarchy, he went to the United States to study the penitentiary system, which inspired him Of democracy in America (1835-1840). He analyzes the foundations of mass democracy there and warns against its drifts (the tyranny of the majority, frenzied individualism, conformism, corporatism, etc.).

To uncover

The kangaroo of the day

Answer

From 1839 to 1851, as a deputy for the Channel, he defended the free commerce and the abolition of slavery, then handed on the facet of the conservatives beneath the II^e Republic. Refusing the coup of 1851, he withdrew. In 1856 he printed The outdated regime and the revolution, Another elementary work, the place he analyzes the forces that fueled the revolution.

Every weekend, at 8:30 a.m., The level gives you to embark on an enchanting journey to the land of concepts. From Plato to Derrida through Pascal, Schopenhauer, Shakespeare or Arendt, browse the historical past of philosophy by greater than 200 quotes defined in a easy and accessible technique to all.

https://www.lepoint.fr/culture/que-signifie-les-peuples-veulent-l-egalite-dans-la-liberte-et-s-ils-ne-peuvent-l-obtenir-la-veulent-dans-l-esclavage-08-06-2025-2591501_3.php