Our theme involves various issues where we are led to use the terms "culture", "minority", "majority" and "law". Each term must be defined anew, given the imprecision of words in the media, political life and in our university institution, the latter in particular contaminated by the current Wok movement. Reading Chapter VII of the second part of the first volume of Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville could well help us in this task.¹. This thinker allows us to formulate and problematize what is currently confusing and imprecise in these terms, particularly in the expression "minority rights". We are even entitled to fear the establishment of a real "tyranny of minorities" which would not back down in the face of provocation or intimidation.

Before studying Tocqueville's analyses, we must start from the extreme confusion reigning around the term "culture". Then we will return to the legal and ethical issues of this overall problem, which seems to us to be of great topicality.

Let us start with a working hypothesis: the expression "minority" too often slips from its initial electoral meaning to an unclear meaning, of a communitarian or even ethnicist nature, when democracies no longer see that they are moving from force to the "tyranny of the majority" (Tocqueville's expression).

But when democracies maintain this confusion, the conformism of the majority pushes minorities to withdraw into themselves by claiming a community and "cultural" belonging, not hesitating to speak of "minority rights". In this sense, the discovery of the diversity of cultures by modern ethnology was strictly contemporary with the awareness of the ravages of ethnocentrism, of colonialist and imperialist ideology, based on the "tyranny of the majority" denounced by Tocqueville.². But does this confrontation between ethnocentrism and the identity withdrawal of minorities not risk making us lose sight of the respect we owe to individuals within so-called "minority" groups, a respect that the law could guarantee?

To answer this question, let us take two philosophical detours:

1. to account for the confusion in the uses of the term “culture”;
2. read closely the pages where Tocqueville sheds light on the genesis of the “tyranny of the majority”.

The current confusion of the term “culture”

In 1924, anthropologist Edward Sapir in his collection Anthropology (Ed. Points), offers a triple definition of the word “culture”.

The first meaning, of a socio-ethnological nature, designates "the elements of human life that are transmitted by society, whether material or spiritual". This first meaning, currently predominant, corresponds to the adjective "cultural". This meaning is favored by ethno-sociologists in reaction to ethnocentric worldviews, to affirm the equal dignity of cultural groups, including those oppressed by colonizers and imperialists.³Let us remember this fact because it will help us to better appreciate Tocqueville's analyses in our second part.

The second meaning of the term "culture" is academic, culture corresponds to an "academic ideal of individual refinement developed from a small number of assimilated knowledge and experiences, but made above all from a set of particular reactions sanctioned by a class and a long tradition" (us. cit.). This requirement is found in the division of academic and scientific knowledge into school and university disciplines.

The adjective that corresponds to this second meaning is "cultured"; the cultured man judges his cultural group, he notices it and can distance himself from it; it is an individual critical activity. Finally, third meaning, culture is the interaction of the first two meanings, the author prefers to speak here of civilization. A culture becomes civilization when individuals within their initial group (meaning 1) freely take up and redefine the elements of their collective cultural heritage (words, concepts, values, works, institutions, etc. meaning 2).

A civilization can thus bring into dialogue individuals who are free to criticize and express themselves, hence the need to jointly guarantee freedom of expression and absolute freedom of conscience. In a civilization, through individuals, several cultures can dialogue and enrich themselves, in the quest for the universal. There will therefore be confusion when these three meanings are not hierarchized and thought of together, in a dynamic way.

So, when individuals do not exercise their critical spirit within their culture (in sense 1). They do not contest their heritage, in this case, the author deplores an "interaction of mediocrities" (ib., p. 349). Culture becomes simple Folklore (we “live together”, but we don’t know where we’re going), but also ideology, as in the case of the decolonial and woke movements.

Thus, a civilization where a single vision reigns to the detriment of the wealth of individuals would become ethnocentric and would harm itself. Thus, individuals who reject any common and inherited cultural framework would be without reference points and exposed to all manipulative fanaticisms. It is therefore appropriate to balance and harmonize these three levels to avoid maintaining confusion, otherwise the "cultural" would become a war machine against civilization.⁴ To ward off this risk, reading Tocqueville could prove indispensable.

Tocqueville's lessons: the notion of "tyranny of the majority"

Tocqueville starts from an initial and paradoxical observation: the majority wish must be respected in the democratic game but it has formidable perverse effects that turn against democracy itself. He even speaks of the "tyranny of the majority" (ed. cit., pp. 348 to 351). We can only respect the majority opinion, because it expresses the general interest, "the moral empire of the majority is still based on the principle that the interests of the greatest number must be preferred to those of the few" (ed. cit., p. 345). But, at the same time, this force can turn against itself: "it is of the very essence of democratic governments that the empire of the majority be absolute" (ed. cit., p. 343). But "the omnipotence of democracy" can degrade into "tyranny of the majority", due to the conformist drift that threatens the members of the majority. Members who are in the minority, in the electoral sense, will quickly feel ousted.

This contradiction produces two negative effects:

1. Conformism within the majority.
2. The marginalization of minorities within the nation, or even society.

These two dangers are summed up in these lines from 1835 taken from the work De Democracy in America, chapter VII, 2^e part, first volume (cit. ed., p. 353-355):

"In America, the majority draws a formidable circle around thought [...] the slightest reproach hurts it [...] and one must praise from the forms of its language to its most solid virtues [...] the majority lives in a perpetual adoration of itself."

When this majority, of community becomes tyrannical, minorities will be tempted to resort to violence: "If ever freedom is lost in America, it will be necessary to attack the omnipotence of the majority which will have driven minorities to despair and forced them to resort to material force" (ed. cit., p. 359). Let us consider the fate of the Indians or even of black slaves in America, described by Tocqueville.

From then on, two questions arise: how to respect the legitimate strength of the majority and prevent its drift into "tyranny of the majority"? How to preserve the wealth, even the existence of minorities within the majority conformism?

We know the strictly political solutions provided by Tocqueville.⁵[/ref] ; it is interesting here to compare this concept of "tyranny of the majority" with the conclusions of our first part. Indeed, do they not consider that the "cultural" and communitarian claim of minorities is the effect of the surreptitious passage from "omnipotence" to the "tyranny of the majority"? But how can we prevent the minority from falling into communitarianism, or even fundamentalist entryism? Indeed, a new risk arises since within his minority group, itself a victim of the hegemonic majority, an individual could very well find himself doubly oppressed:

1. by the majority of its minority group, within a democratic and multicultural society.
2. by the majority oppressing its minority group⁶. How can we avoid these contradictions linked to the “tyranny of the majority” in multicultural societies?

Three perspectives of responses

Firstly, it will be a question of making possible both the respect of the traditions inherited by each group and the free expression of each individual. This first perspective confirms the importance of the constitutional principle of secularism: this principle protects individuals against the influence of religions, particularly within families, public spaces or institutions.

Another perspective of response and research: each group organized around its own symbolic codes will seek to better to translate in the codes of other groups, near or far. It is this principle of generalized translation that founds the universalist humanism that nourishes the republican university institution. This universalism is therefore at the same time scientific, non-dogmatic and free. This is the whole point of the concept of "civilization", proposed by Edward Sapir in our first part.

This is also the role of the general culture within training and educational institutions: promote the aspiration to the universal in the knowledge and transmission of works and masterpieces⁷.

Finally, so that "minority rights" do not become, paradoxically, a means of oppressing the majority (in the electoral sense), we must undoubtedly take into account the contribution of Avishai Margalit, particularly in his book The Decent Society (trans., Éditions Climats, 1996). The author calls for completing the classic distinction of the three citizenships identified by Thomas Humphrey Marshall⁸. To legal, political and social citizenship, Avishai Margalit proposes to add the csymbolic citizenship (see the chapter on citizenship, ed. cit., p. 153 et seq.).

This symbolic citizenship becomes the condition for the institution of a decent society where institutions would ensure that they never allow the humiliation of individuals by building a common world, of which the Popperian theory of World 3, heir to the Republic of Letters, would be the civilizational framework. Would this symbolic citizenship not allow us to benefit from the strength of democracy without pushing minorities to claim a "right of minorities" since society as a whole would respect individuals? In a decent society based on a citizenship concerned with building a common world, each individual and each group could escape the oppression of the majority, thus making it possible for each person to produce their own style. The communitarian drift within democracies would be avoided; we know that this is also the regulatory model of republican and secular integration. In this case, minority expression would not be the victim of the majority conformism denounced by Tocqueville. In addition, the aspiration to build a common world (symbolic citizenship) prevents the possible instrumentalization of the concept of culture and its reduction to the sole "cultural". To do this, we must accept the idea that the quest for the universal and respect for human dignity inspire every man of good will, enlightened by a public education worthy of the name.

We would thus escape the so-called "right to difference" which is formidable when it is not accompanied by a duty to come together in a common humanity, as the very idea ofuniversity. This curious idea of ​​unity, turned towards the universal, is dramatically ignored by the supporters of the wokism and cancel culture, as denounced by all the contributions of the Observatory of Decolonialism.

However, does not this game of otherness and unity within symbolic citizenship allow us to protect the cultural wealth of a society while respecting individual freedoms? In these cases, the humiliation of minorities and the arrogance of majorities can be avoided. 

Conclusion

Tocqueville, by insisting on the contradictions of the majority wish within democracies, indicates a program of action and mobilization capable of helping us to reestablish the university institution, even the Republic.⁹.

He indicates to us a triple task: to ensure that we respect the majority opinion without giving in to conformism; to respect the minority opinion while preventing the communitarian and differentialist drift (by reducing universal culture to the "cultural"); and finally, to respect each individual, the depository of the dignity of all humanity, thus summarizing the richness of the word "culture", beyond the very confusing "minority rights".