Homo democraticus and its excesses

Here is a work which seems perfectly appropriate, when the geopolitical destabilization of the world is accompanied by great tremors regarding the solidity of French democracy. Focusing on Homo democraticus, sociologist Dominique Schnapper closely discusses, with educated and clear writing, the terms of very current debates.

Its title is a filial and intellectual nod to an essay by Raymond Aron, published in 1969, “The Disillusions of Progress”. There he analyzed the dialectics of modernity, equality and universality. Schnapper continues and updates his own work on democracy, as a transcendence of the idea of citizenship and as a meeting of different individuals as well as diverse historical collectivities.

It is a question, relying in particular on the knowledge of serious sociology, going against a certain French school of the abstruse, of studying the tensions of democratic modernity. These span history and see the universal horizon and demands for recognition meet, or even confront, the republican project and the communitarian project, the abstract citizen and the concrete individual, assimilation and differentiation and , we could add in more political terms, integration and creolization.

“Providential” democracy

Democracy faces external challenges (China, Russia, “Global South”, etc.) and its internal demons. The latter, embodied by the radical, and sometimes violent, criticism of certain intellectuals and movements, constitute Schnapper’s material.

This extreme democracy lies in the aspiration for a deconstruction of institutions, which certainly have their imperfections, to achieve radical egalitarianism.

She insists on the excesses of a democracy that she describes as extreme. This extreme democracy lies in the aspiration for a deconstruction of institutions, which certainly have their imperfections, to achieve radical egalitarianism. Very convincingly, Schnapper maintains that the debate around democracy has focused too much on what she calls “providential democracy” and the material well-being that it aims to ensure.

Although the improvements are significant, both in terms of freedoms and equality, they remain insufficient. Schnapper here explicitly follows the Tocquevillian path, emphasizing that the more disparities are reduced, the more the residual disparities appear unbearable.

Homo democraticus, eternally dissatisfied

Since democracy is an always unfinished ideal of reconciling diversity and equality, dissatisfaction will always be present, relayed by very audible demands, even when redistribution and state intervention increase. Since “democracy can only disappoint democrats”, Homo democraticus is eternally dissatisfied.

“Providential democracy,” writes the author, “feeds frustrations and indignation. » Democracy will therefore always experience inadequacies, incompleteness, incompleteness, criticism and self-criticism. “It is in the nature of democracy to criticize itself, this self-criticism being both the exercise and the indicator of political freedom. »

Today, the gaps, sometimes exaggerated in their presentation, between the proclaimed principles and the observed realities provoke, in the name of democracy, attacks against democracy, as a political system, as a form of society. Real projects of social and intellectual revolution embody this “extreme” democracy. Schnapper takes part here, in a calm but also committed way, in the contemporary controversies on feminist and decolonial studies and mobilizations.

Wokism and caricature

These always have the sociological interest of being interested in unresolved questions, of adding variables (gender for example) to better understand the world. However, their caricatured dimensions, embodied in particular in “wokism”, risk distorting essential values and principles, while the activists of these causes claim to speak out in their favor.

Rejecting nuance and contradiction, demanding perfect novelty and the incarnation of good, radical criticism often appears, in public debate, in its dimensions which are themselves extreme to the point of caricature. More fundamentally, radical criticism of democracy puts democracy on trial in the name of a supposed failure of a model. With religious fervor, active minorities fall into irrationality (when they refute the very idea of objectivity) and into a potentially totalitarian drift (limiting in particular freedom of expression).

The whole essence of the analysis is summarized in the conclusion: “Contemporary Homo democraticus accepts less and less the inadequacies of democracy, even though developments are moving in the direction of its demands. » Open and worrying question: will democracy survive the criticism carried out in the name of “extreme” democracy?