individualism, I conclude that his emphasis obscures the self-restraining resources within
cynicism. His invocation of religious traditions and of associational life to serve as
defenses against despotism fails to appease cynicism’s “wild instincts.” Instead, it
manages to undermine cynicism’s affirmative, instructive stance and to exacerbate its
defeatist mood.
By implication, I suggest his analysis leads us to reformulate the challenge of
defending democracy against its tyrannical and despotic incarnations as one of cultivating
a democratic faith out of cynical sentiments, rather than castigating their lack of
reverence for civic virtues and the associational life. If democracy fosters these cynical
sentiments and is in turn threatened by their persistent challenge of authorities, habits,
and conventions and by their dogmatic anti-dogmatism, then the challenge seems to be
one of employing the ardor of the cynical temperament to affirm those democratic
commitments in whose name it protests against dogmatism so vehemently.
Emerson takes up this challenge. Whereas Tocqueville illumines why we should
expect cynicism in democracy (given how the principles of equality and liberty
exaggerate individuals’ capacity of judgment and independence) and whereas he
complicates our judgment of cynicism (by showing how its insatiable desire for
independence can both defend and abdicate that ever-elusive experience of liberty),
Emerson rescues the promise of these cynical impulses. While he does not deny the need
to fortify civic involvement, he places his primary attention on the cultivation of a
democratic individual – which civic involvement may help, but is not sufficient to,
cultivate. He makes more room for the potential promise of cynicism by emphasizing the
difficulty in distinguishing between: on the one hand, the cynical individual who
Convention