QuestionsWhat is a just society?Even the majority can be tyrannical, and a gentle power can lull liberty to sleep
What is a just society?Liberties

Even the majority can be tyrannical, and a gentle power can lull liberty to sleep

The tyranny of the majority; soft despotism

Alexis de Tocqueville 1805 · 1859Equality can lead to a gentle power that takes from citizens the habit of governing themselves.
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What it claims

A just society first protects everyone's liberties, including against the majority and against a protective state, and keeps alive the habits that allow people to defend them (associations, local liberty, a free press).

Why

When the majority is the only authority, nothing stops it; and a gentle power that thinks for us takes away the habit of being free.

The same idea through history
Benjamin Constant1819Constant had already said that the sovereignty of the people, if unlimited, can crush the individual.
Alexis de Tocqueville1835
John Stuart Mill1859Mill takes up the idea and speaks of a social tyranny exercised through opinion.
In short

"Even the majority can be tyrannical, and a gentle power can lull liberty to sleep" is an argument by Alexis de Tocqueville (Democracy in America, 1835 and 1840, 1835) on the question "What is a just society?" (answer: liberties). Its claim: A just society first protects everyone's liberties, including against the majority and against a protective state, and keeps alive the habits that allow people to defend them (associations, local liberty, a free press). According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P5). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 2 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Democracy in America, 1835 and 1840
Valid with an implicit premise

Tocqueville visited the United States in 1831 and admired its democracy. But he saw two dangers that democrats overlook. The first: when the majority is the only authority, nothing stops it. The second, which he describes in the 1840 book: equal citizens, busy with their small pleasures, hand their fate to an immense but gentle power that thinks in their place. For him, a just society protects everyone's liberty, even against an elected or kindly power.

P1In a democracy all power originates in the will of the majority, and no other authority balances it. The omnipotence of the majority then presents an extreme danger to liberties.
P2This tyranny needs no executioners: it works through opinion. Whoever steps beyond what may be thought is tormented by contempt and loneliness, and ends by keeping silent.
P3There is also a gentler danger: men equal and alike, withdrawn into private life, see rise above them an immense and protective power that secures their pleasures and watches over their fate.
P4This power does not shatter the will: it softens, bends and guides it. It makes the use of freedom less useful and less frequent, until the people are only a flock of timid animals of which the government is the shepherd.
P5 · implicit premiseA just society is one where each person keeps a real freedom to think, to associate and to govern himself, against any power, even a majority or a benevolent one. Justice therefore requires limits on the power of the majority.
Therefore a just society first protects everyone's liberties, including against the majority and against a protective state, and keeps alive the habits that allow people to defend them (associations, local liberty, a free press).

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P5, the computer finds a case where the majority is all-powerful, opinion crushes dissenters, and yet the society is just, because the dissenters are in the minority and justice is defined as what the majority wants.
With P5 the argument is valid. Without it, Tocqueville describes dangers (P1 to P4), but it does not yet follow that justice demands limits: one could judge these dangers acceptable in exchange for equality or security. Tocqueville himself holds democracy to be just and inevitable; he does not reject the majority, he wants its limits.
Analogy. A referee chosen by the leading team does not make a match fair, even if he is pleasant and smiles. For the game to be fair, the referee must also be able to blow the whistle against the strongest.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1762 · attacks premise 5

Long before Tocqueville, Rousseau holds that the general will, formed by equal citizens deciding what is common to them, cannot be unjust to them: each obeys himself. On this view, limiting the general will in the name of individual liberty puts private interest before the law all have willed.

Tocqueville replies
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus see the argument
Tocqueville 1835 · Tocqueville's reply
Tocqueville refuses that the will of the people be unlimited: a people's right stops where what is just begins. A general law, which bears the name of Justice, was made and sanctioned by the majority of mankind, and a nation is like a jury charged with representing it. He also writes that it is an impious maxim to say that a people has a right to do whatever it pleases.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Rousseau grounds liberty in obeying the law one has given oneself; Tocqueville holds that certain limits bind any collective will. The core disagreement: do these limits come from a justice prior to the people's decision, or is the people the sole judge of what is just?
J
Jeremy Waldron 1993 · attacks premise 5

When citizens disagree about rights, it is more respectful of equals to settle the matter by a vote than to hand it to a few unelected judges. Limits on the majority are not neutral: they give the last word to a small group, equally capable of error.

a defender replies
R
Ronald Dworkin defender of the argument · 1996
Summary: Dworkin argues that true democracy is not simple majority rule but a democracy in which all are treated as equals. If a vote deprives a minority of its basic rights, it is no longer democracy, and a court that corrects it may serve democracy.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Tocqueville and Dworkin want rights to limit the majority; Waldron disputes that the limit should be entrusted to judges. The core disagreement: who should decide when citizens in good faith disagree about rights?
T
T. H. Marshall 1950 · attacks premise 4

For Marshall, a state that guarantees education, health and a minimum income does not lull liberty to sleep: it makes the exercise of civil and political rights possible for those who lack the means to exercise them. Without social rights, citizenship stays formal.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 1950, after the author's death (1859).
The debate goes on (our summary) Tocqueville died in 1859, nearly a century before this text. His heirs say a welfare state can protect without taking charge: the danger lies in the manner (measures that encourage passivity) more than in the principle. Marshall's supporters answer that social exclusion also removes liberty, and that the risk of dependence is fought by participation, not withdrawal.