1. Bringing Philosophy to Life
Cranleigh School
March 2017

2. In the last year, a lot of words have been tossed around which cry out for philosophical analysis: sovereignty, nationalism, patriotism, populism, identity, representation, will, control.
I am going to concentrate today on one of the most contested of all: democracy, and indicate topics that are particularly suitable for exploring in secondary school, and in some cases in primary school too.

3. Definitions Democracy = Rule by the demos, rule by the people
Demagoguery = Leading of the people (by one or more popular leaders); often implies manipulation of the people
However, although these words have Greek roots, I shall not be considering the direct democracy of Ancient Athens so much as the type of representational liberal democracy that arose in the 17th and 18th centuries, and is based on the theories of individual civic and human rights put forward by philosophers such as Locke, Paine and others.

4. Who are the ‘people’? A) Everyone in the state or group?
B) Everyone who can vote?
C) Everyone who did actually vote?
D) Those who voted on the winning side?
But casual equivalencies between ‘the people’ as a whole and all or some of the electorate are very dangerous: they imply that those who cannot vote, or those who can vote but did not, or those who voted on the losing side, are not part of the people – perhaps not even properly persons at all. This is the first of two reasons why I ‘the will of the people’ is such a misleading and often dangerous phrase.

5. Who are ‘the Majority’?
Working out what ‘the majority’ means is not always straightforward, particularly if there are more than two options to choose between, or if there is a difference, say, between the popular vote and the electoral college vote.
But let us say that on a particular day there is a clear majority who vote for one option. On a different day, however – the next year or month or possibly even the very next day - there could be a different majority vote, for 2 reasons:
i) the constituency of the electorate could change, through teenagers coming of age to vote and others dying or becoming too incapacitated to vote.
ii) individual voters could change their minds.

6. Majority rule versus Stability
There is clearly even more likelihood of one or both of these things happening if the vote is supposed to change things for decades, or even for ever.
But clearly there can’t be constant voting and consequent changes of government and policy … extreme instability makes administration impossible and can e.g. put off investors and lead to a decline in economic growth.
So how do you balance what the majority of the electorate want at any given moment with stability?
We usually have e.g. elections every 5 years or so in the interest of stability – and democracies themselves can make this choice, so opting for stability so engineered may itself be a democratic wish.

7. However, we still need to acknowledge that, in modern liberal representative democracies, an elected government may often not be supported by the majority of even the electorate – let alone the people - for all or indeed most of its duration.
This does not alter the validity of the outcome of the original vote on a particular day – unless perhaps it can be shown that outcome of the vote was the direct result of the telling of lies and the misrepresentation of facts, which is difficult to prove. But it does make us think hard about what ‘rule’ by the electorate really means.

8. More on ‘Rule’
Is ‘rule’ really no more than a ballot on a particular day?
Or is the ballot an important part of an on-going conversation, in which the electorate, both winners and losers, can take part – and indeed in which even those not yet of electoral age can have a voice?
The intellectual foundations of liberal democracy itself suggest that it is the 2nd option: each individual person has the right to a voice and the right to be heard.

9. The wills of persons, not the ‘will of the people’
Even if we just restrict the conversation to the current electorate, it is crucial to emphasize that each individual ruler i.e. each individual voter acts on his or her individual choice or will.
This is the second reason why the phrase ‘the will of the people’ is so dangerously deceptive: it suggests ‘the people’ are not a diverse collection of individual and diverse wills, but a homogeneous mass with a single, homogeneous will.

10. And this not only disrespects the basis of liberal democracy in human and civic rights; it also allows an unscrupulous demagogue to claim that only he or she can truly understand, channel and represent the single will of the single people.

11. Does ‘rule’ imply rational choice or transient whim?
Plato makes a very interesting and controversial claim in e.g. the Gorgias and Republic: true ‘rule’ can only take place if the ruler or rulers act from accurately informed, deliberative rational choice, and not just on a momentary whim …

12. Democracy to Demagoguery
Those who act on unreflective, ill-informed whims, thinks Plato, are at risk of being manipulated by opportunistic demagogues, who gain power through democratic mechanisms and then, as we have seen, by claiming that only they truly understand the will of the people, subvert democracy into tyranny before the people realise what is going on … Republic 562a-569c provides an incisive analysis of this process.

13. Conditions for Choice You might want to include: Freedom of expression
Free press
Access to internet
And, of course, good education – particularly, I would suggest, education in philosophy, which both invites students to consider what a flourishing individual and communal life might look like, and provides the intellectual tools required to try to work towards it: conceptual analysis; the construction and analysis of both deductive and inductive arguments; an ability to discuss together and listen to the views of others.

14. Thank you!
@drangiehobbs