POL 2107 Lecture Notes - Neoconservatism, Alexis De Tocqueville, Egalitarianism
19 Sep 2013
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If one pushes egalitarianism to its ultimate conclusion this means that, individuals being equal, their desires are also all equal. This means that all desires possess an equally legitimate claim to satisfaction. And ultimately, this can only lead to the complete erasure of the distinction between virtue and vice, or even of the distinction between what is normal and what is pathological. Moreover, since modern democracy rests on the belief that men are not only equal by nature, bout also good by nature, democratic man naturally concludes that he is what he is naturally meant to be. Not having the notion of fallen human nature, he cannot conceive of the idea that not everything he feels like doing is also the good thing to do. So he claims the right to have his desires satisfied (democracy depends on its capacity to satisfy the desires of the people).
