Educating Anxious Minds

Abstract

This dissertation looks to the philosophy of John Locke and Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de la Brède et de Montesquieu to clarify the role anxiety should play in the political culture of liberal democracies. It argues that Locke and Montesquieu offer related but competing visions of how a restive civic spirit can be made compatible with limited government. Chapter One surveys a range of 20th century concerns that liberal democracies are endangered by the presence of widespread popular anxiety. At the intersection of psychology and political science, many theorists in this era worried that an anxious populace will be uniquely tempted by the order and regularity promised by totalitarian governments and authoritarian institutions. On this view, anxiety’s affinity with paranoia and conspiratorial thinking makes it an exclusively destructive force. The remainder of the dissertation proposes that Locke and Montesquieu address themselves to these concerns and that, in contrast to 20th century liberals, they see a constructive role for anxiety in politics. In Chapter Two, I examine Locke’s analysis of psychological “uneasiness.” He proposes that passions like disquiet typically cause citizens to seek relief in the beliefs that most comfort them, thereby leading them into intellectual submissiveness at best and into fanatical superstition at worst. In Chapter Three, I consider Locke’s suggestions for how this politically destructive response to uneasiness might be reversed. Paradoxically, he thinks the best response to disquiet depends on amplifying, and then redirecting, disquiet. It is only by becoming anxious about anxiety that Locke thinks citizens will develop the motivation to become “masters of [their] own minds.” Locke thus develops what I call the ideal of “skeptical citizenship”: the disposition of a wary and apprehensive populace perpetually on the look-out for threats to its independence. Chapters Four and Five turn to Montesquieu’s simultaneous appreciation of and ambivalence to this Lockean ideal of civic life. Chapter Four deals with Montesquieu’s writing on the English constitution, his analysis of a political culture that closely mirrors the one Locke endorses. In this examination, Montesquieu acknowledges the advantages—in terms of individual security and social stability—that come from a political culture characterized by “inquiétude” and suspicion toward authority. However, he worries that this civic culture also generates excessive individualism and that such societies will fail to make concrete use of the liberty they are at such pains to secure. Chapter Five considers Montesquieu’s response to this problem. In contrast to Locke’s ideal of skepticism, Montesquieu proposes a counter-ideal: “humanity.” Whereas Locke sought to cultivate a form of disquiet that grows suspicious of all authoritative customs and institutions, Montesquieu seeks to channel inquiétude through the various social activities linked with commerce, which he suspects will lead citizens to better appreciate their dependence on one another. The conclusion maps the overlap between these two visions, using them to reflect on a tension still running through liberal thought. In their divergent suggestions for how free states might manage civic anxiety, Locke and Montesquieu sow the seeds of competing elements in the liberal tradition.