... We can escape from this external way of thinking only as we realize in thought and act
that democracy is a personal way of individual life; that it signifies the possession and
continual use of certain attitudes, forming personal character and determining desire and
purpose in all the relations of life. Instead of thinking of our own dispositions and habits
as accommodated to certain institutions we have to learn to think of the latter as
expressions, projections and extensions of habitually dominant personal attitudes.
– John Dewey, “Creative Democracy”
One of democracy’s greatest justifications, to paraphrase Walt Whitman, lies in its
encouragement of individuality. Yet, as Whitman well knew, the functioning of
democratic politics may neither enlist nor require the individual’s highest energies.
Embodying "the unyielding principle of the average," the temper of democratic public
life more often threatens to crush individuality through the force of the "en masse."
Others, including John Dewey, have drawn the similar conclusion that "democratic
institutions are no guarantee for the existence of democratic individuals."
1
What, then, to
put it baldly, is the relationship between politics and individual character in a democracy?
Addressing this question involves attending to fundamental issues regarding
democratic self-realization: if democratic politics does not require fully developed
selves, does a fully-realized existence require participation in public life? What of the
relation of individual flourishing to democratic politics? Does the individual need to be
protected from the operations and effects of the public sphere, or is it the public sphere
that needs protecting from effects of robust individuals? Put another way, does genuine
democracy require more than mere negative liberty?
In this paper I defend the relevance of individual self-realization and the
cultivation of character for democratic life.
2
To make this argument I begin with a
consideration of Richard Rorty’s emergent political theory. Premised on the priority of
Convention