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Newton on Democratic Cultivation

By Lawrence Solum

Benjamin Patrick Newton (Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland College Park) has posted An Essay on the Salutary Habits of Restraint or, Cultivating Democracy on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

What is cultivation, that refinement of which all civilizations boast? We attempt an answer, but more often than not find ourselves confronted with the question, what is a culture? This question in turn seems only to offer vague notions of aesthetical refinement; we find no distinct substance and, dispirited, abandon the pursuit. What constitutes cultivation seems as nebulous a topic as what constitutes a people.

We live in an age of irresistible democratic sentiment; thus any study of cultivation must approach it via a study of democratic cultivation. Alexis de Tocqueville has offered the student of political philosophy the finest introduction to this study. And this essay is to be considered a monograph or meditation on Tocqueville?s Democracy in America.

Divided into two parts, the first section of Cultivating Democracy introduces the spectrum, democracy - aristocracy, this being Tocqueville?s understanding of association as such and, from it, his assessment of the democratic inclination with all its virtues and vices. The second section analyzes three central salutary habits of restraint; in short, a prescription for ?cultivating? democracy. Both sections together offer the thoughtful reader an assessment of what cultivation is as such.

Consider the following statement while reviewing this essay: once a people?s sacred has been placed on trial before a profane jury, it will henceforth cease to be divine. Like butterfly wings, once profanely touched, these gods never again get off the ground. That trial must therefore be impeded or prevented though obstacles--cultivation through restraint.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on April 08, 2010 (boomark / email).