Philosophies of Multiculturalism

Beyond Liberalism

Luis Cordeiro-Rodrigues, Marko Simendic

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781315516356
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia sociale

This edited collection offers a comparative approach to the topic of multiculturalism, including different authors with contrasting arguments from different philosophical traditions and ideologies. It puts together perspectives that have been largely neglected as valid normative ways to address the political and moral questions that arise from the coexistence of different cultures in the same geographical space. The essays in this volume cover both historical perspectives, taking in the work of Hobbes, Tocqueville and Nietzsche among others, and contemporary Eastern and Western approaches, including Marxism, anarchism, Islam, Daoism, Indian and African philosophies.

Section 1

Cultural diversity in the history of political thought

1 Cultural diversity for the sake of political freedom

Tocqueville’s perspective on multiculturalism

Demin Duan

Alexis de Tocqueville is famous for his defence of freedom in the age of democracy, advocating self-government and decentralisation, which he considers the basis for any hope of political freedom in modern society. Given this line, it is only logical that he endorses the value of cultural diversity within society, for people can only meaningfully participate in politics when they are free to live in their own culture and according to their own beliefs. This emphasis on cultural diversity is also corroborated by his thesis on race and colonial governance, as will be elaborated on in this chapter. People’s independence in their own culture is considered by Tocqueville as instrumentally useful in preparing them for political freedom. This chapter will discuss these issues in order to understand Tocqueville’s standpoint on multiculturalism, considered as the coexistence of diverse cultures within a certain political community (Kymlicka 2002: 327–376). First, we will consider Tocqueville’s position on cultural diversity in correlation with his idea of freedom. Second, his writings on race and colonial rule, which are the most directly ‘multicultural’ part of his oeuvre, will be discussed. Third, the issue of religion will be brought up in order to gain a deeper understanding of his ‘relationship’ with contemporary multiculturalism.

Cultural diversity in the age of equality

One of Tocqueville’s greatest fears regarding democracy is that it could tend a society towards uniformity, since people are universally ‘equal’. Equality of conditions is “the generative fact” for Tocqueville’s analysis, which he claims to be the “central point at which all my observations came to an end” (Tocqueville 2000: 3). This equality means that people are less and less ‘different’ from each other, with the same desires, the same tastes, the same emotions, the same intellectual habits, and more importantly, the same political tendencies. This sameness shocks Tocqueville, for it leads to things that are mediocre, petty, unholy, tedious, and above all despotic. Mainly for this reason, Tocqueville puts tremendous emphasis on things that could ‘stand out’, things with particularity: for instance, good taste, individuality, religious faith, and so on.¹

The diversity of cultures is often connected with people’s customs, traditions and religious beliefs, as well as sometimes, prejudices. But modern society, where people are equal to each other, is not so friendly to these things. Tocqueville noticed this when he discussed the ‘philosophic method of the Americans’, commenting that “America is therefore the one country in the world where the precepts of Descartes are least studied and best followed” (Tocqueville 2000: 403). Tocqueville illustrated this Descartian method in practice as follows:

To escape from the spirit of system, from the yoke of habits, from family maxims, from class opinions, and up to a certain point, from national prejudices; to take tradition only as information, and current facts only as a useful study for doing otherwise and better; to seek the reason for things by themselves and in themselves alone, to strive for a result without letting themselves be chained to the means, and to see through the form to the foundation.

(Tocqueville 2000: 403)

This ‘democratic’ method is followed when “conditions had finally become nearly the same and men almost alike” (Tocqueville 2000: 405). It gives rise to so-called ‘general ideas’, ideas that are about what is true for every human being. If men are equal and alike, then it is necessary to see the world through the lens of different cultures and customs in order to understand the universal nature of people. But as Tocqueville says, “God does not ponder the human race in general”, and “general ideas do not attest to the strength of human intelligence, but rather to its insufficiency, because there are no beings in nature exactly alike: no identical facts, no rules indiscriminately applicable in the same manner to several objects at once” (Tocqueville 2000: 411).

The equality and sameness of individuals may lead to despotism if there is nothing stopping it. For the most universal need of human beings is their material need. Tocqueville sees that there is a great danger in this tendency, namely whereby “men are no longer bound except by interests”. In his thinking, despotism is the ultimate dystopia for modern democracy, as it rules out difference and free will, both of which are central to his idea of freedom. In modern democratic societies, as Tocqueville asserts, despotism would take on a unique style when compared with the ancient kind of tyranny. He depicts it as follows:

Above these an immense tutelary power is elevated, which alone takes charge of assuring their enjoyments and watching over their fate. It is absolute, detailed, regular, far-seeing, and mild. It would resemble paternal power if, like that, it had for its objects to prepare men for manhood; but on the contrary, it seeks only to keep them fixed irrevocably in childhood; it likes citizens to enjoy themselves provided that they think only of enjoying themselves… . So it is that every day it renders the employment of free will less useful and more rare; it confines the action of the will in a smaller space and little by little steals the very use of free will from each citizen.

(Tocqueville 2000: 663)

Tocqueville calls this kind of despotism “new despotism” or “democratic despotism” in order to differentiate it from the older type (Tocqueville 2000: 662). In ancient times, a tyrant may not have acted according to law, and he was usually unable or even unwilling to rule out any kind of difference in his realm. Being tyrannical is the opposite of the rule of law. But modern despotism as described by Tocqueville means that the state would not only regulate people’s lives in detail, but also encourage them to stay isolated from each other, turning to the ‘tutelary power’ for guidance in their lives. Here, ‘reason’ may still be the foundation for this kind of political life, as centralization necessarily requires the calculation and distribution of people’s responsibilities, although it would still largely be based on material needs and instruments for their satisfaction. As Tocqueville sees it, the strongest penchant of modern individuals is material enjoyment (Tocqueville 2000: 506–507), which is perhaps the only thing that is truly universal and effective in uniting individuals.

Tocqueville pictured the contrast between uniformity and diversity, but his picture is at the same time a reflection of double contrasts between the past and the present, or between the New World and old Europe. We find the following paragraphs in the notebook he kept when he was travelling in the United States in 1831:

I had noticed in Europe that the more or less withdrawn position in which a province or town is placed, its wealth or its poverty, its smallness or its extent, exercised an immense influence on the ideas, the morals, the whole civilization of its inhabitants, and often caused a difference of several centuries between the various parts of the same area.

… Nothing is true in this picture… . In America, even more than in Europe, there is one society only. It may be rich or poor, humble or brilliant, trading or agricultural, but it is made up everywhere of the same elements; it has been leveled out by an egalitarian civilization. The man you left behind in the streets of New York, you will find him again in the midst of almost impenetrable solitude: same dress, same spirit, same language, same habits and the same pleasures.

(Tocqueville 1959: 332–333) [emphasis in bold mine]

Perhaps for Tocqueville, the truest kind of cultural diversity only exists in the past and in aristocratic societies. Inequality of conditions creates diversity, or rather impassable boundaries, among people. The gap between the two ‘classes’’ – the aristocracy and the commons – almost indicates two different kinds of civilization: different dress, different spirit, different languages, different habits, and different pleasures. Indeed, “When conditions are very unequal and the inequalities are permanent, individuals little by little become so unalike that one would say there are as many distinct humanities as there are classes” (Tocqueville 2000: 412).

However, as much as he may love the past, Tocqueville is very aware that the democratic tendency with its equality of conditions is irreversible, although he does make it very clear that equality does not necessarily equate to freedom. Equality of conditions creates individuals with no great differences between them, but these are individuals craving equality even if it would mean the negation of freedom. Tocqueville says, “Men cannot enjoy political freedom unless they purchase it with some sacrifice… . But the pleasures brought by equality offer themselves” (Tocqueville 2000: 481). Furthermore, “They want equality in freedom, and if they cannot get it, they still want it in slavery” (Tocqueville 2000: 482).

However, we should keep in mind that for Tocqueville, America represents the hope for freedom in modern democracy, and not the opposite. For him, what was left of French society following the 1789 Revolution offers the real proof of equality in terms of slavery (Tocqueville 1988: 131). What Tocqueville sees in America has thus intrigued many scholars of social and political study ever since.² What is certain is that he is against the social phenomenon that he calls “individualism” (Wolin 2001: 482–484), which makes him an unorthodox liberal, if he is ‘liberal’ at all. Roger Boesche emphasises his ‘illiberal side’ and bluntly calls his thought a “strange liberalism” (Boesche 1987). Some others highlight the communitarian, conservative, or republican sides of his thinking and contrast them with orthodox liberalism (Kahn 1992; Nelson 2002). Tocqueville says that “individualism is a reflective and peaceable sentiment that disposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass of those like him and to withdraw to one side with his family and his friends… . He willingly abandons society at large to itself”. In individualistic societies, “the bond of human affections is extended and loosened” (Tocqueville 2000: 182–483). In questioning this tendency, Tocqueville obviously highlights the value of community and the values that link people together in modern society.

In Tocqueville’s illustration of America, we can find many clues to his peculiar idea of ‘freedom’. In his famous book, Tocqueville Between Two Worlds, Sheldon Wolin points out that, apart from an America of equality, there exists for Tocqueville, a ‘feudal America’. A big discovery Tocqueville made in America is that, despite it being a society in which the principle of equality of conditions has been practiced to its limit, it is a much ‘older’ kind of society than most Europeans would think. By ‘old’ Tocqueville means that its equality of conditions has not yet led to a despotic government with a highly centralised administrative system. Put differently, although individuals are equal and alike, the society itself is not mired in mediocre sameness. As a matter of fact, America is characterised by significant inner differences and thus diversity.

First and foremost, in Tocqueville’s eyes, the political system in America in some ways resembles the feudal society of old Europe. In his later book, The Old Regime and the Revolution, Tocqueville goes to great length to prove that France had already become a ‘democratic’ society before the Revolution and its political system had been based upon this new social condition. In the hundreds of years of what Tocqueville calls ancien régime, the nobility had been gradually losing power, with people becoming more and more equal and monarchical power becoming ever stronger. One of Tocqueville’s most incisive discoveries was that France had actually lost its feudal past before the Revolution took place (Tocqueville 1988: 118–123).

In America, however, he saw the feudal past still in existence, albeit under the cloak of democratic social conditions. While local self-government in France became replaced by centralised state administration (Tocqueville 1988: 104–105), it still existed in a very good way in the United States. Local townships and states held genuine power that was to a large extent independent of the Federal government. More importantly, in local townships, the most active public life was thriving. As Tocqueville states, townships have two great merits that unite people: independence and power (Tocqueville 2000: 63). Indeed, townships greatly resemble aristocratic local political entities, except for the fact that they have been built upon a new principle of equality. What Tocqueville values most in America is that there exist points and mechanisms that are able to check the equalising and centralising tendency of modern democracy; local self-government and diversity of power are crucial in this regard. Sheldon Wolin comments that, for Tocqueville, “[the] aristocracy is represented as the instinctive opposition to any form of massed power, monarchical or popular” (Wolin 2001: 233).

In order to avoid a kind of democratic despotism and have a chance of preserving freedom, it is important to have something that has characters of difference, independence, and diversity of values. In this regard, it is worthwhile to mention Tocqueville’s analysis of the “tyranny of the majority” (Tocqueville 2000: 239–240). In describing this kind of tyranny, he compares it with the “absolute government of one alone”: “despotism struck the body crudely, so as to reach the soul; and the soul, escaping from those blows, rose gloriously above it; but in democratic republics, tyranny does not proceed in this way; it leaves the body and goes straight for the soul” (Tocqueville 2000: 244). Tocqueville also calls it the “moral empire of the majority”, which is a “theory of equality applied to intellects” (Tocqueville 2000: 236). The number of men should not be able to exert authority as to what is right and what is wrong, otherwise the cultural minority would have no legitimate standing in any society at all. This should function as a necessary precondition for the preservation of the diversified existence of cultures.

Along this line, Tocqueville gives high value to what he calls the “associations” of modern democracy (Tocqueville 2000: 489–490). In Democracy in America, he interestingly compares the voluntary associations of modern times with aristocratic social bodies, which were once headed by lords (Tocqueville 2000: 490). But the difference is that “in aristocratic societies men have no need to unite to act because they are kept very much together” (Tocqueville 2000: 490), while in modern societies they have to voluntarily unite over a certain value or aim. This association is so important that “in order that men remain civilized or become so, the art of associating must be developed and perfected among them in the same ratio as equality of conditions increases” (Tocqueville 2000: 492). We can infer from this that, since cultural existence is necessarily based on individuals associating with each other under a particular belief or doctrine, Tocqueville is leaving plenty of room for advocating cultural diversity in modern society. Without it, individuals would easily fall prey to the power of the state.

Race, colonial rule, and cultural boundaries

It would be a significant anachronistic mistake if we tried to place Tocqueville’s thinking on a par with contemporary multiculturalism. His writing has little to do directly with today’s so-called ‘politics of difference’, ‘identity politics’, or ‘politics of recognition’. However, that said, Tocqueville did reflect on the intriguing fact that American society had been entangled with cultural/racial differences from its inception. On the other hand, we can also notice that Tocqueville’s writings covered similar topics in France, although not in metropolitan France, but in French overseas colonies, especially Algeria. Through these materials, we may find more specific answers to Tocqueville’s position on cultural diversity.

(1) Cultural boundaries in racial relationships

Tocqueville’s thinking in the first volume of Democracy is focused on equality of conditions and its impact on American society. But there was something else on his mind, which apparently had nothing to do with ‘democracy’ itself. As a matter of fact, it relates to the opposite of equality: inequality among peoples. At the beginning of chapter 10, where he opens the topic, he suggests that “the principal task that I imposed on myself is now fulfilled”, but that “one encounters in America something more than an immense and complete democracy; the peoples who inhabit the New World can be envisaged from more than one point of view” (Tocqueville 2000: 302). The new topic is about “the three races that inhabit the territory of the United States”.

Apparently, in the United States, the equality of conditions did have its limits. It only applied to the European settlers, among whom there was no such social hierarchy as we find in aristocratic societies. But there did exist slavery. Tocqueville took great effort to document the conditions of black slaves in America and their relationship with the whites. It is not surprising then that he to...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Section 1 Cultural diversity in the history of political thought
• Section 2 Multiculturalism and Western contemporary political theory
• Section 3 Eastern philosophy approaches to multiculturalism
• Section 4 Multiculturalism, African and African heritage
• Contributors
• Index