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Absolute Democracy or Indefeasible Right: Hobbes Versus Locke

A PERVASIVE TENSION EXISTS within the American political tradition between democracy (the rule of the majority of citizens, restricted only by minimal standards of competence) and liberalism (the insistence that certain basic human freedoms are beyond abridgement). On the one hand, the claim of the majority to have its will carries great weight; on the other, the protest that certain rights, or liberties, are beyond the rightful purview of the majority's will is equally strongly asserted. Attempted reconciliation of the two arguments based on the claim that the liberties asserted are merely the conditions of democracy, may be pragmatically attractive, but merely obscures the fact that the majority's claim to rule as it wills is, in fact, abridged.' This tension exhibits itself at all degrees of reflectiveness within the tradition.