Adequate Interpretation of Socio-Political Values as a Conceptual Issue in the XXI Century (From the Perspective of the Concepts Used by B. Constant and A. Tocqueville)

Olga Puchnina

doi:10.14746/ssp.2021.2.1

Abstract

The article analyzes the transformation of concepts like liberty, equality, and democracy depending on the political, historical, and socio-cultural context. The author proposes to trace the significant difference in understanding “universal” socio-political values by using the classical liberal theories of B. Constant and A. de Tocqueville compared to modern international political processes. The author uses comparative and historical analysis methods, and a cultural and axiological approach to studying the ideology and politics. The argument is that the ancient understanding of liberty was irrelevant for the society of the XIX century, just as B. Constant’s classical understanding of liberty no longer meets the changing socio-political needs of people living in the XXI century. It does not consider a fundamentally new sphere of human activity like freedom and privacy in the digital world. Recognizing the value of democracy, the author observes that today, A. de Tocqueville’s approach is more than adequate for understanding political processes. For example, the post-election information warfare in the United States in 2020 shows the relevance of the specific understanding of Tocqueville’s democracy as a profound process of total equality spread. The main conclusion is that the political values familiar to modern discourse often are interpreted inadequately to reality since scientific understanding is rigid and lags behind the rapid development of information technologies, globalization, and virtualization.

Highlights

The article analyzes the transformation of concepts like liberty, equality, and democracy depending on the political, historical, and socio-cultural context
It is difficult to disagree that values such as liberty, justice, humanism, and democracy are fundamental for a modern person
Even if we recognize such democratic values as liberty, equality, and justice as universal for all humanity, regardless of nationality, culture, and religion, it is evident that their interpretations strongly correlate with the historical context

Summary

Democracy as the guiding star of humanity

There are many examples of such an interpretation of “universal” human values irrelevant to the actual state of affairs. It is appropriate to turn again to the history of the social and political thought of the XIX century, which gave brilliant examples of the original creative method, to the works of the French philosopher and politician Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859) He offers an entirely different interpretation of the democracy concept, which was relevant in his time and which fits perfectly into the political development of America, Europe, and Russia in the XXI century. It is noteworthy that based on his experience of observing democracy in the most developed form in America at that time, Tocqueville does not idealize it at all He points out, like Montesquieu, that many reasons for the people’s predisposition to democracy are found in its history, the peculiar climate, the location, the specific colonial structure, the national character, the habits and interests of society. Tocqueville knew that the era of democracy would be built on faith” (Runciman, 2019, p. 35)

Total or totalitarian equality of democracy?

The problem of adequate interpretation