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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
My article has the title ‘Are there democratic values?’ In one sense the question is ironic: there are democratic values. And new ones appear every day. Nevertheless the question has a literal sense if you consider certain aspects of the regime or mode of existence of values in contemporary thought.
The idea that values are no longer what they used to be is not new: the classical line of argument on this question underlines the contrast between, on the one hand, the philosophy of the Ancients, for whom evaluation referred to a normative nature, to ideals, criteria of perfection, embedded in the order of things and, on the other, the philosophy of the Moderns, for whom we are the ones who make the decisions (we are the ones who do the evaluating). Objectivism of values on the one hand, humanist subjectivism on the other. I would like to leave aside this problem and the difficulties which it raises (notably: who is Ancient and who is Modern?), and try to approach in another way whether there is a specifically contemporary mode of being for values.
1 A. de Tocqueville, De la démocratie en Amérique (On American democracy), II, p.14, in the Garnier-Flammarion edition.
2 Cf. ‘L'art du spectateur: voir les sons et écouter les visions' (‘The art of the spectator: seeing sounds and hearing sights’) by Piergiorgio Giacchè, in Diogenes, No.193, January-March 2001, Paris, PUF.
3 Ibid., p.6.
4 DA II, 2, ch.13, and 4, ch.3, p.173-4 and 361.
5 Ibid., p.15.
6 Ibid., p.16.
7 Ibid., p.17.
8 Ibid., p.18.
9 DA, II, p.135.
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