Essay 54: How Equality Suggests To Americans The Idea Of The Indefinite Perfectibility Of Man (Vol. 2 Pt. 1 Ch. 8)

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

The essays in our study reference the following edition of Democracy In America: University of Chicago Press – 1st edition translated by Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop. Today’s essay references pages 426 (Starting at chapter 8 heading) – 428 (Stop at chapter 9 heading) of this edition of Democracy in America.

Volume Two of Democracy in America is divided into four parts: how democracy shapes the intellectual movement, sentiments, mores, and ideas of Americans. Chapter Eight is of unique importance to the whole of Volume Two because it offers an account of what seems to be American democracy’s most hopeful intellectual movement, a belief in “indefinite perfectibility” or progress.

De Tocqueville tells us that the notion of indefinite progress is a product of the equalization of conditions, which is central to democracy’s “irresistible revolution.” Equality, displayed by the leveling of social hierarchy and the rise of economic or material equality, suggests new intellectual currents to democrats, which De Tocqueville contrasts with those of the previous regime. For aristocratic nations with definite stratifications, man could progress definitively toward a limited ideal. The clarity with which aristocratic nations could view the limits of politics prevented them from “judg[ing] [perfectibility] to be indefinite.” The idea of indefinite perfectibility belongs to democratic peoples who are “mixed tumultuously” by equalizing conditions so that “the image of an ideal and always fugitive perfection is presented to the human mind.” In the tumult, man sees repeated success and failure in all his efforts to progress—never can he be satisfied that anyone has the absolute truth. The democrat is thus someone who “tends ceaselessly toward the immense greatness that he glimpses confusedly at the end of the long course that humanity must still traverse.” The democratic revolution overturns aristocratic practice and establishes new modes and orders that befit this restless pursuit of perfection.

Accordingly, the aristocrat builds for greatness and endurance, hoping to extend their definite grasp of a limited perfection as far into the future as possible. The democrat, on the other hand, is enamored with what is new. De Tocqueville makes much of an encounter with an American sailor who, when asked why Americans build ships that do not last, states simply that progress is so rapid that “the most beautiful ship would soon become almost useless if its existence were prolonged beyond a few years.” In the words of this sailor De Tocqueville, “perceive[s] the general and systematic idea according to which a great people conducts all things.” De Tocqueville concludes that “aristocratic nations tend to contract the limits of human perfectibility too much” while democratic nations “extend them beyond measure.” Here, De Tocqueville attempts to make sense of the aristocratic past and discern the course of the democratic future. How will a people so moved by progress come to regard enduring values? Where will they find limits to their quest for newness?

Further confounding Americans’ relationship with progress are their other intellectual movements. Chapter Eight is a counterpoint to the previous chapter on pantheism. Pantheism, the idea that all, creator and creation, is a single whole, forecloses the possibility that man can extend himself beyond nature—pantheism admits no possibility of human progress because man is not distinct from the rest of creation. However, in Chapter Eight, De Tocqueville argues that though democracy tends toward pantheism, equality suggests just as strongly a notion of indefinite perfection, which diametrically opposes the fatalism of pantheism with an unbounded capacity for man to improve his estate. Pantheism embellishes the democrat’s tendency to generalize by reducing all to sameness, and progress demands that the democrat be exempted from those generalizations so that he might progress beyond what is. Progress is indispensable to Americans because it balances the pantheistic intellectual movement, which would otherwise be deeply enervating. This apparent opposition points beyond Chapter Eight to more profound questions about how the idea of progress affects American life and culture.

Because Americans are so wed to this notion of progress, much of the rest of Volume Two should be read with regard to this view. Our view of progress has important implications for human liberty and historical self-understanding. If we must progress, to what do we progress? Is there a historical endpoint towards which indefinite perfectibility directs us? Might American liberty be endangered if such a historical endpoint appeared to exist? De Tocqueville writes in his conclusion that “[providence] traces, it is true, a fatal circle around each man that he cannot leave; but within its vast limits man is powerful and free; so too with peoples.” He seems to suggest that a historical endpoint is destructive of the inner freedom of the human soul, which is essential to human greatness. If we must encourage progress to resist other intellectual movements endemic to democracy, such as pantheism, then the task for American statesmen is to reconcile indefinite perfectibility with individual freedom, protecting the latter from theories and historical accounts that would motivate attempts to constrict it.

Dr. Eric Schmidt is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Kentucky Wesleyan College, specializing in political philosophy and American political institutions. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and a Master’s in Philosophy from Louisiana State University. His current research focuses on the intersection of political philosophy, civics, and the digital transformation. As head of the Political Science and Legal Studies programs at KWC, Dr. Schmidt enjoys serving as an advisor to students interested in law and public service careers. He resides in Owensboro with his wife and daughters.

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