Democratic Distinction

Phi Beta Kappa are the initials of a Greek phrase: philosophia biou kybernetes, “Philosophy, the pilot of life.” Philosophia is clear; biou is as in biology, the science of life; and kybernetes just lets you recognize the related word “governor.”

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We live in a democracy that is generally said to be characterized by two ideals: liberty and equality. These watchwords peculiarly define American democracy. Its European sibling, for instance, born at about the same time—French republicanism—added a word in its slogan: “Liberté Egalité Fraternité.” Our revolution and our way of life are, in a sense, defined by an absence: fraternity is conspicuously missing from our self-understanding. We owe the sober realism and the healthy liberalism of our democratic ideals to the Founding Fathers. Even Jefferson, probably the most radical of the major Founders, evidently held that it was safer to rely on the legal protection of a sound constitution than on the hyperbolic sentiments of expanded family feeling.

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It is a fashion now to be down on individualism, but the individualism being attacked is really a degenerate version of what was called liberalism by the English political theorists of the 19th century. This old liberal individualism, which is close to that of the Founding Fathers, emphasized equal duties more than equal rights, independence and freedom more than safety and support. This individual ism, which is neither fraternal nor mean, is still the deepest impulse of our democracy. Americans cling to it because their common sense tells them that the expanded sense of brotherliness or sisterliness is highly unreliable the worst war this country ever fought was a fraternal war while liberty and equality can in fact be legislated and enforced. Our founding documents, Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (which is, in fact, Public Law No. 1) and Madison’s Constitution, form the legal predicates for our equality and our liberty.

Now comes a difficulty with which we are all familiar in American con temporary life: liberty and equality can be very much at odds with each other. For example, some people have the money and are free to go to college, and that means that they get ahead of others who are not at liberty to spend four expensive years in that way. In general, some people, just by exercising their liberty to act, get ahead of others and in doing so introduce inequalities into the citizen body.

In many respects liberty and equality support and make each other possible, but in other respects they interfere with each other. This effect has been known for ages. Alexis de Tocqueville formulated it most extensively in his Democracy in America, published in 1835 and 1840. Generally, so-called liberals pursue equality more zealously, whereas conservatives care first for liberty—although this statement is a huge simplification.

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Clearly, liberty and excellence are powerfully related. It is not, of course, true, conversely, that equality and mediocrity need to go together.

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in this democracy equality in the form of homogeneity is much more noisily defended than freedom. Take, as a current example, free speech. It is on the whole easier to find sympathy, at least on campuses, for the notion that all invidious distinctions of speech should be care fully leveled out, so that speech is equally inoffensive to all, than for the idea that even nasty people should speak their mind freely. The defense of free speech usually falls to the courts.

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Of course, everywhere, at every time, people have felt personal envy for those who were distinguished. But in our country, the antipathy to distinction is not always meanly personal; some citizens object to distinctions on principle. Just consider the fate of the word discrimination, which used to be a good word. People were praised for showing discrimination in their tastes or their friends. Now to discriminate has an entirely negative connotation. It is always accompanied by against and means excluding people unjustly, as if there could never be a legitimate reason for distinguishing some people from others for better or for worse.

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In 1813, Jefferson and John Adams resumed a correspondence that had been for some time interrupted by an estrangement. The most famous letter in this wonderful epistolary dialogue reads in part as follows:

Monticello, October 28, 1813 … I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents. Formerly, bodily powers gave place among the aristoi. But since the invention of gunpowder has armed the weak as well as the strong with missile death, bodily strength, like beauty, good humor, politeness and other accomplishments, has become but an auxiliary ground of distinction. There is also an artificial aristocracy, founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents; for with these it would belong to the first class. The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature, for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. And indeed, it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the society. May we not even say, that that form of government is the best, which provides the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government? The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendancy.

Thomas Jefferson, who was, as I said, the most purely democratic of the Founders, thought that there was room for an aristocracy, namely, a natural aristocracy. We might even go so far as to say that he was a democratic aristocrat. Demos means people, aristoi means the best, and kratos means power Demokratia means the people in power; aristokratia means the best in power. And Jefferson clearly thinks that these two types of governments are not in contradiction, if the best are distinguished not artificially by birth or wealth but naturally by virtue and talents. In fact, he is saying that democracy is best when it knows how to find and elect the best citizens to govern.

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If we agree that an aristocracy of virtue and talents is good for America, we are still left with a question: What virtue, what talents?

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In 1789 he wrote: I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent . If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.

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“Philosophy” originally means “the love of wisdom.” It does not mean an ideology, a creed, a system, but rather a search, a pursuit, a longing for knowledge.