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Individuality, Leadership, and Democracy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
Extract
There is a growing concern in the western world with the nature and function of democracy, a concern induced by outside pressures of conflicting ideologies and by internal development of protective devices. The latter source of concern, which finds its highlight in America in congressional investigative techniques, has its origins in the practical and political arena. The issues it raises are tremendously significant for the future growth of democratic processes of government. The struggles which it has released will be a long time abating. But behind these local issues of democracy there lies a more subtle and less popular difficulty, the difficulty of harnessing enlightened political consciousness to the broad-based electorate required by democratic theory. This particular difficulty is not without its practical ramifications and applications; in fact, it is the nub of the struggle over investigative techniques in America. But the problem of uniting political wisdom with an extended franchise has a closer connection with the theory of democracy than does the problem of technique of investigations: it raises, in fact, the critical theoretical question of whether democracy is possible. Put more carefully, the question to which I have reference asks whether democracy is possible as government directed from below by the electorate, or from above by the intelligentsia.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © 1955 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
1. David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1953) and Individualism Reconsidered (Glencoe, Ill., Free Press, 1954), Karl Mannheim, Freedom, Power and Democratic Planning (New York, Oxford, 1950); Max Beloff, in Encounter, Spring, 1954, and The Times Literary Supplement, June 18, 1954, which carries an editorial on Beloff's article.
2. We must not overlook the point made by Riesman that the very "impersonality" ofour present day society is sometimes a releasing mechanism freeing us from the strains of sociabil ity (Individualism Reconsidered, pp. 34-35). But in the context of the voter facing political decisions, the impersonality and size of the group to which the decision refers hampers the freedom and the precision of the judgment.
3. The Life of Reason (New York, Scribners, 1954), p. 144.
4. Dwight McDonald, "A Theory of Mass Culture," Diogenes No. 3, July 1953, pp. 11-12.
5. Dialogues in Limbo (New York, Scribners, 1926), p. 94.
6. Dominations and Powers (New York, Scribners, 1951), p. 389.
7. Dialogues in Limbo, p. 93.
8. Ibid.
9. The Life of Reason, p. 148.
10. Ibid., p. 144.
11. The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (New York, Scribners, 1944).
12. The defense of natural law is by no means dead. See also Leo Strauss's recent Natural Law (1954).
13. Dominations and Powers, p. 319.
14. Ibid., p. 351.
15. The Lonely Crowd, p. 373.
16. Individualism Reconsidered, p. 36.
17. Dominations and Powers, pp. 295-296.
18. Dialogues in Limbo, p. 106.
19. The Life of Reason, p. 142.
20. Dominations and Powers, p. 385.
21. Ibid., p. 409.
22. K. Mannheim, op. cit., p. 93.
23. Ibid., p. 106.
24. The Lonely Crowd, p. 287.
25. Ibid., p. 305.
26. Ibid.