RPP 2

Plato and Tocqueville, though millennia apart, both critique democracy, and especially its tenet of equality. Plato claims that in a democracy, people go “along day by day, gratifying the desire that occurs to [them],” without any real sense of obligation. The goal of life is to enjoy the freedom afforded by equality. This carefree attitude helps to create a more diverse society because each individual is allowed to pursue their own varied interests, but it also allows for the development of a somewhat lazy relativism. The members of the society, because they (usually) only pursue their own pleasures, are not forced to make normative or ethical evaluations very often. In this way Plato outlines the danger posed by democratic government—without normative judgements, the potential to pursue ends that humanity should avoid rises.
Tocqueville makes a similar argument, although his is focused very specifically on his observations of American culture. Although he was researching in the early 19th century, much of what he says is eerily still applicable. He describes Americans as “taking their judgement only from themselves” and refusing to acknowledge external judgements. Furthermore, because of the social equality we experience, he argues, every idea is likewise judged to be equal. This contributes to the general avoidance of normative evaluations he observes in Americans; questioning the ‘ends’ humanity ought to pursue involves normative and ethical questions, and therefore is not a very large part of American culture. It would inevitably lead to valuing some ideas over others, which violates the tenet of equality members of a democracy are so partial to.
I believe that both Tocqueville and Plato touch on significant tendencies of democracies to avoid making normative or ethical arguments, but I would argue that they are really just tendencies. This predisposition against normativity was not very present in my own childhood or youth, because the schools that I attended and the general ‘activist’ culture of my hometown (Portland, OR) pushed me, and my peers, to consider ethical questions. We were taught to think critically and question the status quo, rather than accept what we were told about the world around us. My high school in particular encouraged its students to come up with our own ethical standards, but it was also an all-girls, Catholic, college-prep environment, which is not the typical setting of democracy that Plato and Tocqueville discuss. Ultimately, I would say they are right in that democratic societies are predisposed to avoid normative evaluations, but that it is not inevitable.