review of Joel A. Johnson, Beyond Practical Virtue: A Defense of Liberal Democracy Through Literature(Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2007)

Joel Johnson’s Beyond Practical Virtue is an inspiring book. It is a welcome change from the typical writings of paleoconservative and libertarian intellectuals, many of which are initially bracing but ultimately depressing. Instead of doom and gloom, Joel Johnson presents the promise of American democratic life. It has not been fulfilled but it remains a promise. It is hope tempered by realism.

Johnson, a political scientist at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, engages the aesthetic critique of liberal democracy. Johnson is using liberal in its classical, Locke/Smith sense, and democracy in its diluted, representative sense. Aristocratic, elite-minded writers from Plato to T. S. Eliot have argued “that the conditions of liberty and equality level out life in a way that every citizen in a democracy comes to possess nothing less than, but also nothing more than, a mediocre soul.”

Johnson answers the contention that democracy tends to lead to an “amoral, conformist culture.” The aesthetic critics were concerned that “liberal democratic institutions impoverish citizens’ souls by stripping society of all elevating and enlightening influences.” European by birth or choice, these writers saw the United States as the worst example of this debasing effect. To them, modern democracy—characterized by liberty, equality, and prosperity—leads the majority inexorably into mediocrity rather than into individual development. Democracy gives rise not only to social and political anarchy but to an anarchy of the soul that encourages petty materialism. Their recommended alternative to liberal democracy was cultural elevation through hierarchical institutions, both public and private.

After considering the Platonic roots of the aesthetic critique, Johnson summarizes the anti-liberal, anti-democratic leanings of Thomas Carlyle, Matthew Arnold, John Stuart Mill, Friedrich Nietzsche, W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and D. H. Lawrence. He gives the aesthetic critics a fair hearing, and even supporters of democratic liberalism would concede many of their points.

Arnold, for instance, complains that through “tall talk and inflated sentiment” Americans have convinced themselves that they comprise the best nation on earth and lack nothing while “many countries, much less free and prosperous than the United States, are yet more truly civilized; [and] have more which is interesting, have more to say to the soul.” It is not enough to have liberty and wealth. Point taken. It could be added that the “We’re number one!” shout of shallow nationalists is unbecoming of citizens in a land where ideally “there’s never a boast or brag.” Tocqueville observed the same unfortunate tendency when he toured America a half century before Arnold.

When Eliot criticizes the “death in living” that characterizes the empty existence of so many in the West, it is hard to argue with his assessment. It is likely, though, that the source of the emptiness and its attendant value system of violence, greed, and hedonism is more spiritual than political. As a Christian, Eliot himself understood this. Johnson summarizes the aesthetic critique of democratic liberty in this way: “To the critics, whether a nation is prosperous, law-abiding, and civic-minded is only part of the story. A regime must also speak to the soul of man, and produce citizens who are well developed as humans.” Their solution is the preservation or creation of hierarchical institutions. They offer the right diagnosis but the wrong prescription.

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