Liberal democracy rests on two contradictory secular myths in tension with each other.
Evidence
In fact liberal democracy here expresses the two secular myths that are, notoriously, at odds with each other: the Enlightenment myth of politics as a discourse of public reason whose bond with knowledge enables the elite to direct the education of mankind, and the revolutionary myth of universal suffrage, a politics of large numbers in which the representation of “collective will” is sought by quantifying the opinion and fantasy of individual citizen-electors. The secular theory of state toleration is based on these contradictory foundations: on the one hand elite liberal clarity seeks to contain religious passion, on the other hand democratic numbers allow majorities to dominate minorities even if both are religiously formed. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 300
Categorization
Category: Definitional Content
- DEFINE: Defines ‘the two secular myths’ of liberal democracy and shows how tolerance is founded on contradiction.
- XREF: Connects to the reader’s work on moral panics and majority-minority dynamics, and to Habermas-style debates about public reason.
- DEEPTHINKING: The insight that toleration is built on two foundations—elite reason containing passion vs. majority numbers dominating minorities—recasts tolerance as internally contradictory rather than a stable value.
Related
- Liberal democracy’s secular theory rests on two mutually contradictory myths (similarity 0.95)
- Liberalism’s secular myth resembles but differs from Christian redemptive myth. (similarity 0.80)
- Democracy and liberalism can be decoupled and even opposed (similarity 0.80)
- Secularism’s essence is not protecting freedoms from religious tyranny (similarity 0.79)
- Liberalism and democracy are only contingently articulated, not necessarily linked (similarity 0.79)
- Liberal tolerance of religion extends only to religions accepting liberal discursive assumptions (similarity 0.78)