Reigning In Hermits: The Conflict Between Individualism and Participation :: Essays Papers

Reigning In Hermits The Conflict Between Individualism and ParticipationIn the wake of Enlightenment thinkers like Hobbes and Locke, who asserted the primacy of the several(prenominal) as the possessor of rights and emphasized the resulting legal equality of all men, the question arose of how an individual who originates in a state of nature interacts with society. Early 19th snow writers had an advantage in answering this question over the original thinkers in the form of a grand experiment in Enlightenment theory currently being conducted in America. Here, for the first epoch, was a democracy run by consent of the governed, all of whom were equal individuals before the law and, according to the dominant unearthly tradition, before God. The more thorough this leveling, Alexis de Tocqueville argued in Democracy in America, the less men are inclined to believe blindly in any man or any classall having the same means of knowledge, truth will be found on the side of the majority (T ocqueville, 435). At the same time that the power of self-styled authorities fades in both public and religious life and people are more apt to simply tow the line, he sees the ties that once created interdependence in aristocracieseconomic dependency and social hierarchyweaken, resulting in the isolation of the individual from public life, or, individualism (Tocqueville, 506-7). Tocquevilles apprehension towards individualism was not merely a passing worryhe saw in its extreme form the potential for despotism to replace democracy. Despotism, by its real nature suspicious, sees isolation of men as the best guarantee of its own permanence (Tocqueville, 509). This tension between personal isolation and participation in civil life surfaced in other contemporary works as well, including Charles Finneys Lectures on Revival of Religion and Ralph Emersons On Self Reliance, in which the designer argued in a vein similar to Tocquevilles that the nature of democracy will always create this conflict, and the latter disposed of democracy in elevate of the individual. Tocquevilles own reconciliation of the individuals natural inclination toward isolation is found in his analysis of the nature of knowledge in classless societies. On a purely practical political level, there must, he argued, be certain beliefs held in common by all citizens in parliamentary procedure for common action to be taken to administer government (Tocqueville, 433). Local government is the individuals closest connection to the public sphere, and the same inconsiderate impulse that leads to individualism will make it necessary for him to form political associations to secure his interests.