Alexis de Tocqueville · Politics
Tocqueville’s most famous warning: that in a democracy the gravest threat to liberty is not a tyrant but the <em>majority itself</em> - its unlimited legal power and, more insidiously, the crushing weight of its opinion, which can enslave the mind while leaving the body free.
You learned Tocqueville’s idea of the “tyranny of the majority.” Explain in your own words its two forms - the unlimited power of the majority and the crushing weight of its opinion - and why he thought the second was the more insidious threat to liberty.
Leads to John Stuart Mill.
Begin this lesson →epoché — a humanities education that remembers you.