Teachers of the People

2016 witnessed an unprecedented shock to political elites in both Europe and America. Populism was on the march, fueled by a substantial ignorance of, or contempt for, the norms, practices, and institutions of liberal democracy. It is not surprising that observers on the left and right have called for renewed efforts at civic education. For liberal democracy to survive, they argue, a form of political education aimed at âthe peopleâ is clearly imperative. In Teachers of the People, Dana Villa takes us back to the moment in history when âthe peopleâ first appeared on the stage of modern European politics. That momentâthe era just before and after the French Revolutionâled many major thinkers to celebrate the dawning of a new epoch. Yet these same thinkers also worried intensely about the peopleâs seemingly evident lack of political knowledge, experience, and judgment. Focusing on Rousseau, Hegel, Tocqueville, and Mill, Villa shows how reformist and progressive sentiments were often undercut by skepticism concerning the political capacity of ordinary people. They therefore felt that âthe peopleâ needed to be restrained, educated, and guidedâby laws and institutions and a skilled political elite. The result, Villa argues, was less the taming of democracyâs wilder impulses than a pervasive paternalism culminating in new forms of the tutorial state. Ironically, it is the reliance upon the distinction between âteachersâ and âtaughtâ in the work of these theorists which generates civic passivity and ignorance. And this, in turn, creates conditions favorable to the emergence of an undemocratic and illiberal populism.