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Tutelary Figures from Malesherbes to Chateaubriand

Lucien Jaume

in Tocqueville: The Aristocratic Sources of Liberty

The preceding discussions of Tocqueville's social and intellectual milieu show that his attitude toward that milieu was compounded by allegiance alloyed with dissidence. This chapter looks more ... More

The preceding discussions of Tocqueville's social and intellectual milieu show that his attitude toward that milieu was compounded by allegiance alloyed with dissidence. This chapter looks more carefully at important thinkers on the monarchical side, who served him as references, boundary markers, or counterexamples. First and foremost among these was Chateaubriand, whose legacy Tocqueville often found irritating but could not ignore. Intellectually, Chateaubriand helped to nurture Tocqueville's intuition and what we might even call his personal myth, which can be summed up as follows: (1) the French monarchy was despotic, indeed a model of what administrative power could accomplish in the way of rationalized despotism; and (2) this despotism could recur in the modern era: history was likely to repeat itself in a new form if democracy did not equip itself with institutions to slow and counterbalance the power of the central government, representing the majority.Less

Alexis de Tocqueville

Alan Ryan

in The Making of Modern Liberalism

This chapter offers a reading of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, arguing that the book was not a philosophical analysis of the concept of democracy, nor a simple narrative of the ... More

This chapter offers a reading of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, arguing that the book was not a philosophical analysis of the concept of democracy, nor a simple narrative of the origins of American political institutions, but a form of political theory that used historical evidence to teach general lessons about the prospects for politics in the present. The chapter first places Tocqueville in his times and among his family before discussing his journey to America in 1831. It then considers the three major themes that might be extracted from the second volume of Democracy: the quality of intellectual and cultural life in an egalitarian society; the stability or proneness to revolutionary upheaval of such societies; and Tocqueville's final and most distinctive thoughts on democratic despotism, or what one might term quiet totalitarianism.Less

Tocqueville and Guizot: Two Conceptions of Authority

Lucien Jaume

in Tocqueville: The Aristocratic Sources of Liberty

This chapter presents a comparison of the thoughts of Tocqueville and Guizot. Both men represent the same important historical and intellectual moment and both are indispensable for understanding the ... More

This chapter presents a comparison of the thoughts of Tocqueville and Guizot. Both men represent the same important historical and intellectual moment and both are indispensable for understanding the French spirit. To be sure, they did not belong to the same generation: nearly twenty years separate the two men. Yet they continually observed each other, encountered each other in public life, and disappointed each other repeatedly. The fundamental divergence between them involved an issue that was central to Tocqueville's thinking and one of the major questions of the day: What type of authority was possible in the society to which Guizot often referred as “the new France”? Guizot was a proponent of elitist government and Tocqueville of subdued popular sovereignty.Less

From Tocqueville to the War on Terror

Douglas A Hicks

in With God on All Sides: Leadership in a Devout and Diverse America

This chapter examines the role of religion in American civic life from the time Alexis de Tocqueville visited the early United States until September 11, 2001. It focuses on an array of historical ... More

This chapter examines the role of religion in American civic life from the time Alexis de Tocqueville visited the early United States until September 11, 2001. It focuses on an array of historical images for how Americans in their diversity can—and should—come together in public life. Tocqueville called religion the first of America’s political institutions, due to the religious nature of many voluntary associations, but he was limited in assuming Christianity was the common denominator. Israel Zangwill and Horace Kallen offered opposing images — the melting pot and cultural pluralism, respectively — but they each also spoke of an American symphony. Will Herberg introduced the “triple melting pot” of Protestant, Catholic, and Jew, and Lyndon Johnson gave the most vivid picture of America as the home of immigrants from every corner of the world. None of these images can fix the current challenges, but they do help show some imaginative, alternative visions.Less

Introduction

Lucien Jaume

in Tocqueville: The Aristocratic Sources of Liberty

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to combine a study of context with an internal reading. Rather than offering a commentary on Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in ... More

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to combine a study of context with an internal reading. Rather than offering a commentary on Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, it attempts an interpretation based on signs, indices, and even stylistic turns of an author who revealed himself even as he attempted to draw a veil over his own views, and who can also be heard speaking in a different register in his correspondence and manuscripts as well as in the accounts of his contemporaries. To sharpen the intellectual portrait of Tocqueville the man, we need to identify the various levels of meaning contained in the text and the various audiences to which it was addressed.Less

Tocqueville’s Relation to Jansenism

Lucien Jaume

in Tocqueville: The Aristocratic Sources of Liberty

This chapter considers the supposed Jansenist leanings of Tocqueville. For generations, scholars have been arguing that Tocqueville had deep sympathy for Pascal and perhaps for Jansenism. However, it ... More

This chapter considers the supposed Jansenist leanings of Tocqueville. For generations, scholars have been arguing that Tocqueville had deep sympathy for Pascal and perhaps for Jansenism. However, it remains to be seen what effects meditation on Pascal had on Tocqueville's writing. Furthermore, we cannot speak of “Jansenism” without examining what the public image of Jansenism (one of the most controversial schools of thought in French intellectual history) was in the 1830s and 1840s. And finally, we will need to say something about Tocqueville's stance with respect to that image. The chapter argues that Tocqueville was neither devout nor militant. He had no intention of publicly advocating a religious dogma, although he was in favor of publicly censuring materialism. For those who would like to enlist Tocqueville in the cause of religious revival, a letter to Kergorlay will set things straight. In it he explains that, from the standpoint of civic virtue, a book like L'Imitation de Jésus-Christ is useless and even dangerous.Less

Political Engagement as Instrumental Good: Tocqueville, Attention Deficit, and Energy

Ben Berger

in Attention Deficit Democracy: The Paradox of Civic Engagement

This chapter examines Alexis de Tocqueville's defense of political engagement as instrumental good. Tocqueville's insights on attention and energy and their importance for sustainable self-government ... More

This chapter examines Alexis de Tocqueville's defense of political engagement as instrumental good. Tocqueville's insights on attention and energy and their importance for sustainable self-government comprise one of his more original—and overlooked—contributions to political theory. Tocqueville actually distinguishes between political and social engagement, explains why political attention and energy will probably founder in most liberal democracies, and proposes a number of avenues for resisting those tendencies. The chapter analyzes Tocqueville's views on political engagement and the obstacles it faces when citizens are free to invest their time and resources as they like. Drawing mostly from his book Democracy in America, the discussion focuses on his arguments regarding citizens' energies, individual and collective energy, the “doctrine of self-interest well understood,” political attention, township administration, and political and civil associations.Less

Attacking the French Tradition: Popular Sovereignty Redefined in and Through Local Liberties

Lucien Jaume

in Tocqueville: The Aristocratic Sources of Liberty

This chapter argues that traditionalists fail to realize the fact that for Tocqueville, the power of the people was above all a sociological and moral power, not an institutional one. Democracy in ... More

This chapter argues that traditionalists fail to realize the fact that for Tocqueville, the power of the people was above all a sociological and moral power, not an institutional one. Democracy in America offered an original conception of His Majesty the Majority, which was still called “the Public.” In Tocqueville's eyes, the various organs of decentralized government—the communes (dominated by great landowners) of which the monarchists dreamed, the associations of families in Lamennais, the “social authorities” exalted by Le Play and his followers—made sense only in this context. The Public was not a phantom conjured up by political dreams—a liberal illusion that in Le Play's view stemmed from “the so-called principles of 1789.” The Public was the new subject of history, or at any rate the quintessential totem of political action.Less

John Stuart Mill: The Tyranny of Conformity

Frank Prochaska

in Eminent Victorians on American Democracy: The View from Albion

The chapter is a study of John Stuart Mill's views on the United States over a period of several decades, which begins with his reviews of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. Like ... More

The chapter is a study of John Stuart Mill's views on the United States over a period of several decades, which begins with his reviews of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. Like Tocqueville, he had serious criticisms about the nature of American democracy. He admired its enterprise and free institutions but disliked its conformity and electoral system, which produced inferior men in politics. Federalism, women's rights, slavery, the Civil War, and the presidency of Abraham Lincoln were important to his analysis.Less

Beyond Tocqueville’s Myth: Rethinking the Model of the American State

Stephen W. Sawyer

in Boundaries of the State In Us History

It is striking the extent to which Tocqueville's vision of US politics has trumped all other visions of the American state abroad during this formative period. This essay is part of a broader attempt ... More

It is striking the extent to which Tocqueville's vision of US politics has trumped all other visions of the American state abroad during this formative period. This essay is part of a broader attempt to explore writers and historians who uncovered a very different American state in the nineteenth century. By focusing on other interpretations of the American state—especially that of Adolphe Thiers—it attempts to puncture the reigning myth of nineteenth-century American statelessness from the oblique angle of Europe at the same time that it gives voice to those observers whose interpretations more satisfactorily reconcile the past and present of American public power and its legacy across the world.Less

A Concise Anatomy of Secularism: Examining Its Linkages to Liberal Democracy

Nader Hashemi

in Islam, Secularism, and Liberal Democracy: Toward a Democratic Theory for Muslim Societies

This chapter explores the relationship between political secularism and liberal democracy. The historical roots of secularism as a political concept are investigated. The various political models of ... More

This chapter explores the relationship between political secularism and liberal democracy. The historical roots of secularism as a political concept are investigated. The various political models of secularism and types of liberal democracy, primarily the Anglo‐American and French traditions are discussed. In seeking out a detailed grasp of the precise relationship between secularism and liberal democracy the writings of two famous political philosophers are explored: Alexis de Tocqueville and Richard Rorty. Seeking a deeper grasp of the relationship between religion, secularism and democracy, the recent theoretical contributions by Alfred Stepan on the “Twin Tolerations” and the world's religious traditions are examined and then related to the debate on Islam and democracy.Less

Resisting the Democratic Tendencies of Language

Lucien Jaume

in Tocqueville: The Aristocratic Sources of Liberty

This chapter begins by discussing Tocqueville's comments about his own practice of writing and what “writing well” meant to him. It then turns a question that others asked but Tocqueville made ... More

This chapter begins by discussing Tocqueville's comments about his own practice of writing and what “writing well” meant to him. It then turns a question that others asked but Tocqueville made specially his own: Did democracy lack an authoritative institution in intellectual matters? If commerce could proceed on its own thanks to the market, could literature develop on its own and correct its errors by way of competition and interaction? Yet we can also ask whether Tocqueville was right in thinking that modern society, for all its liberty and equality, lacked a literary authority. The remainder of the chapter considers the claim that Tocqueville's aesthetic appealed to a certain idea of “the natural” that exists only thanks to the guardians of taste; and his investigation of the sources of authority in literature. It also argues that in Tocqueville's view, literature continued to have a mission, and its freedom of action was to be encouraged.Less

Tocqueville in the Debate about Literature and Society

Lucien Jaume

in Tocqueville: The Aristocratic Sources of Liberty

This chapter considers Mme de Staë's influence on Tocqueville's work. In De la littérature Mme de Staë contrasted the two types of society and their respective norms. She laid the groundwork for an ... More

This chapter considers Mme de Staë's influence on Tocqueville's work. In De la littérature Mme de Staë contrasted the two types of society and their respective norms. She laid the groundwork for an idea that Tocqueville made his own: that there is a “democratic” literature that can and should be studied sociologically—or, as Mme de Staël put it, that should be examined “in its relations with social institutions.” Tocqueville's strength lay in the way in which he combined the contribution of two major works of the day, which deeply influenced the romantic sensibility yet managed to turn their message against Romanticism.Less

Introduction

Axel Hadenius

in Institutions and Democratic Citizenship

Illuminates broadly the relationship between active democratic citizenship and institutions conditions. It draws in particular on Tocqueville's comparison between the conditions in USA and France. ... More

Illuminates broadly the relationship between active democratic citizenship and institutions conditions. It draws in particular on Tocqueville's comparison between the conditions in USA and France. Other contributors to the institutionalist‐cum‐republican tradition, such as Rousseau, Mill, Kornhauser, and Putnam are presented.Less

Democracy as Modern Religion

Lucien Jaume

in Tocqueville: The Aristocratic Sources of Liberty

The second volume of Democracy in America begins with the other question that Tocqueville regarded as crucial: that of public opinion conceived as a form of belief. The chapter in question— “On the ... More

The second volume of Democracy in America begins with the other question that Tocqueville regarded as crucial: that of public opinion conceived as a form of belief. The chapter in question— “On the Principal Source of Beliefs among Democratic Peoples”—deserves to be read carefully because in it Tocqueville sets forth one of his strongest intuitions, but in a complex style that proceeds from paradox to paradox. Tocqueville's intuition is the following: that the “principal source” of what the citizens of a democratic society think takes on the form and power of an authority—an authority that everyone collectively exerts on each individual. But because “everyone” creates this authority without knowing it, individuals find themselves facing an entity that is not fragmented but monolithic and therefore omnipotent. Democratic public opinion becomes the god of modern times, a god strangely immanent in society and with a face that changes daily. This chapter is devoted to the mechanisms of this alienation, which Tocqueville characterizes as “religious.”Less

Tocqueville's Understanding of “Conditions of Equality” and “Conditions of Inequality”⋆

in From Vienna to Chicago and Back: Essays on Intellectual History and Political Thought in Europe and America

This chapter reports the understanding of “conditions of equality” and “conditions of inequality” by Alexis de Tocqueville. Tocqueville has explained the great transformation from aristocracy to ... More

This chapter reports the understanding of “conditions of equality” and “conditions of inequality” by Alexis de Tocqueville. Tocqueville has explained the great transformation from aristocracy to democracy. His approach to aristocracy is addressed, omitting for the time being the often discussed biographical aspect of his aristocratic origin. His L'ancien régíme et la révolution is also elaborated. It then suggests five dimensions or elements of the “conditions of equality,” characterizing the “état social” designated by Tocqueville as democracy. The absence or disappearance of “aristocracy” produces “conditions of equality” or democracy. Tocqueville's visionary genius intuitively grasped the mentality of restlessness in liberal western democracies, and his power of imagination seems limitless. He said that legal rights were particularly important at a time when religious beliefs were on the decline, the divine notion of rights disappeared, and with the changing of the “moeurs” the moral notion of rights is fading away as well.Less

Introduction

Ben Berger

in Attention Deficit Democracy: The Paradox of Civic Engagement

This book examines what it calls democracy's political attention deficit and the paradox of civic engagement. It calls for an end to the umbrella term “civic engagement,” arguing that it confuses ... More

This book examines what it calls democracy's political attention deficit and the paradox of civic engagement. It calls for an end to the umbrella term “civic engagement,” arguing that it confuses more than it illuminates. More specifically, it contends that we should put civic to rest while coming to grips with engagement. Civic simply means that a subject pertains to citizenship or a city, so it can easily be subsumed under the rubric of political without any loss of conceptual clarity. Engagement entails a combination of attention and energy (or activity), the two primary components of political governance. While seeking to consign the phrase “civic engagement” to exile or obsolescence, the book stresses the value of political engagement by drawing on the views of Hannah Arendt and Alexis de Tocqueville. Prescriptions for pragmatic democratic reform are given; for example, reforming our political institutions so that they channel existing political attention and energy more efficiently.Less