Alexis de Tocqueville was a gentleman-scholar who emerged as one of the world’s great prophets. Tocqueville, the editors contend, is different from most political philosophers. Unlike many of the reactionaries of his day, he saw there was no going back. Tocqueville would educate the potential founders of a French regime of liberty. The former “spurs all men to wish to be strong and esteemed” while the latter “impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level.” Perhaps it would be going too far to suggest that the latter taste explains the consignment of American exceptionalism to oblivion. Commerce is naturally adverse to all the violent passions; it loves to temporize, takes delight in compromise, and studiously avoids irritation. The publisher, Gosselin, reportedly hadn’t read the manuscript and agreed to issue only 500 copies. They saw the Mohawk River Valley, the setting for James Fenimore Cooper’s bestselling novel The Last of the Mohicans. . . . But it “is not the principal and continuous object of their desire.” Again, that object is equality. On questions pertaining to the purpose and appropriate reach of the state, inquiring minds can disagree. The main quote I remember from reading de Tocqueville some years ago was this –if I remember it right–“I know of no nation where there is less liberty of thought than America.” I look forward to reading your essays. Come . . But socialism triggered communism, fascism, Nazism, and other brutal tyrannies that slaughtered tens of millions during the twentieth century. A sensitive mouth and lightly cleft chin, below a strong aquiline nose, betrayed his breeding and bespoke a more than ordinary determination. And there are compelling arguments to be made in support of that view. COME, as fast as you can. He drew shrewd lessons from experience. Now he’s hailed as a prophet. Either way, Tocqueville does not tell us what America really was. . For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances; what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?”, “Our contemporaries,” he continued, “combine the principle of centralization and that of popular sovereignty; this gives them a respite: they console themselves for being in tutelage by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians.”. After attending college in Metz, Tocqueville studied law in Paris and was appointed a magistrate in Versailles, where he met his future wife and befriended a fellow lawyer named Gustave de Beaumont. July 29 marks the birth of Alexis de Tocqueville. Hereth addresses another paradox of Tocqueville’s thought, but does not resolve it. For five months, he served as Finance Minister. In these townships, the people actively and concertedly directed their own affairs, got on without the aid of an overarching state, and exercised their freedom responsibly and prudently, fully aware that freedom carries with it tremendous burdens. Tocqueville staked his life on liberty. “I had spent the best years of my youth,” he wrote later, “in a society that seemed to be regaining prosperity and grandeur as it regained freedom; I had conceived the idea of a regulated and orderly freedom, controlled by religious belief, mores and laws; I was touched by the joys of such a freedom, and it had become my whole life’s passion. The finely shaped head was darkly framed in his long black hair, which he wore falling in locks to his shoulders, in the proud fashion of the day. On March 4, 1859, he wrote Beaumont: “I know nothing that has ever grieved me so much as what I am going to say to you . Let me treat you like a brother; have you not been a thousand times more in a thousand situations! He worked in an attic room of his parents’ Paris house, 49 rue de Verneuil, Paris. He suffered migraine headaches, neuralgia, and stomach cramps lasting a week at a time. I do not believe a word of it. He had a remarkable mind capable of discerning trends which almost all his contemporaries missed. They read some of the travel books which Europeans had written about America. Tocqueville was a good listener with a keen memory. (1835–40), a perceptive analysis of the political and social system of the United States in the early 19th century. . But he had little influence on Francois Guizot (pro-business) or Louis Adolph Thiers (moderate opposition) who utterly dominated French politics during this era. In the October 1835 London and Westminster Review, English thinker John Stuart Mill called Democracy in America “among the most remarkable productions of our time.” Mill gave the last two volumes an even bigger boost in the October 1840 Edinburgh Review: “the first philosophical book ever written on Democracy, as it manifests itself in modern society; a book, the essential doctrines of which it is not likely that any future speculations will subvert, to whatever degree thay may modify them. Alexis De Tocqueville, in his book, The Ancien Regime and The Revolution, argues that instead of addressing the defects and problems of the old regime, post revolutionary France only continued the same patterns of forsaking liberty for collectivism. To illustrate the chasm that separated the two, Tocqueville cites an anecdote regarding “Mme. After 38 days, they reached New York. Democracy, for Tocqueville, was not reducible to a form of government. Cependant, les droits individuels une fois proclamés et reconnus, ce goût pour la liberté s'est corrompu en passion pour l'égalité, favorisant la diffusion d'un esprit majoritaire et conformiste. To this day, he educates all those who want to know how to defend and strengthen regimes of liberty. An immediate hit, the book won another Montyon Prize which brought a 12,000-franc award, and it was reprinted eight times before the last two volumes appeared in April 1840. . Reports of the death of American exceptionalism abound, and they are not greatly exaggerated. Unlike Montesquieu, Tocqueville does argue that religion is necessary to maintain liberty. Where Tocqueville does not mince words is in describing his passion for liberty. It is not in the nature of things that a central government should be able to supervise all the wants of a great nation. Théoricien du libéralisme, Tocqueville montre dans De la démocratie en Amérique comment la démocratie s'est accompagnée des progrès de l'individualisme. Come. The book was also translated into Danish, German, Italian, Russian, Serbian, and Spanish. They took a boat trip down the Mississippi River. A people is never so disposed to increase the functions of central government as at the close of a long and bloody revolution. He seemed the very proper French aristocrat, but he was aboil. He sought to divine the future of democracy and, with it, the fate of mankind. They inspected many prisons. Lecture 22 - Democratic Statecraft: Tocqueville, Democracy in America Overview. Hence the dread of despotism that darkened Tocqueville’s horizons. . Heretofore the plaything of nature, man at last gains control of his own destiny! Yet Tocqueville did not share the prevalent liberal view of history either, the one espoused and expressed by the great historian Lord Acton, which interpreted the history of mankind as essentially the unfolding of the history of liberty. “I am neither of the revolutionary party nor of the conservative. Recognizing the threat that democracy can be to liberty is never more important than when citizens are willing to routinely let democracy run roughshod over our individual, inalienable rights against such … They ventured into the hinterlands as far west as Lake Michigan. It had an 18-man crew, 163 passengers, and a cargo of silk from Lyons. . What many today fail to appreciate is that American exceptionalism is not synonymous with American superiority. A new book by James Poulos reveals both the greatness and the limitations of Tocqueville. Chapter VIII: The Federal Constitution – Part I . For example, in a fragment from the unfinished second volume of The Old Regime , Tocqueville ascribes to a few men an "instinctive, irresistible and almost involuntary" penchant for liberty; yet he also suggests that this taste may be characteristic of a free people. In the eyes of many, this growth is viewed favorably. Tocqueville did not deny that people in the democratic age valued freedom. Alexis’s most memorable experience was seeing how war and despotism had ravaged the land, and he wrote over 350 pages of notes on the subject. His father Hervé-Louis-Francois-Jean-Bonaventure Clérel was a 33-year-old landed aristocrat descended from Norman nobles. . Tocqueville was fascinated with American social and political life because of the difficulties his own country had developing institutions favorable to liberty. By taking primary responsibility for … . He visited the country for five weeks in 1833. He does not impose his principles on reality from the outside. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. On July 25, 1830, people arose and drove the Bourbon King Charles X into exile. We shouldn’t worry about America becoming an empire—a new book explains that it has been…. A state that provides more to, does more for, and cares more about its people is the very embodiment of progress. Alexis de Tocqueville, political scientist, historian, and politician, best known for Democracy in America, 4 vol. The love of public tranquillity becomes at such times an indiscriminate passion, and the members of the community are apt to conceive a most inordinate devotion to order.”, With phenomenal foresight, Tocqueville predicted that the welfare state would become a curse. . That is why, contrary to popular belief, democracy and socialism are not antithetical but akin to one another. The new king was Louis Philippe from the House of Orleans. During the Revolution of 1848, which toppled King Louis-Philippe, socialism reared its ugly head. They believed many prisoners could be reformed through isolation and work, but they insisted the primary purpose of imprisonment must be to punish wrongdoers. . What further and more forcefully undercuts the conflation of exceptionalism and superiority is that American exceptionalism is rooted in America’s founding—that is, in a time when a fledgling and fragile America was eclipsed by more prominent civilizations, past and present. “In our hearts we understand each other,” he told a friend, “but we cannot in our minds. You alone can put us back on the field. He studied law from 1823 to 1826, then traveled in Italy with his brother Edouard. It is patient, insinuating, flexible, and never has recourse to extreme measures until obliged by the most absolute necessity. The work was a critical success, and the Académie Francaise awarded them the prestigious Montyon Prize. A multicultural age, which inherently has no center, is adverse to such culturally-centric conceits. Against this image of Tocqueville, biographer Joseph Epstein has concluded: "Tocqueville could never bring himself to serve a man he considered a usurper and despot. The modern willingness to sacrifice liberty to democracy is perhaps the most important reason it is worth commemorating de Tocqueville's bicentennial with more than a cursory consideration of his insights. Beaumont did most of it. All of a sudden I experienced the sensation people talk about who have been through an earthquake.”. To insist that what is incorrect politically is ipso facto incorrect is, well, not correct. They met many notable Americans including Unitarian leader William Ellery Channing, historian Jared Sparks, Senator Daniel Webster, former President John Quincy Adams, and Texas adventurer Sam Houston. Undoubtedly these afflictions were a major reason why he was often irritable. He would spend the days remaining to him fighting the same fight, but conducting it now from libraries, … They got married October 26, 1835. Contemporary movements fighting the many inequalities that still persist today actually do more to substantiate Tocqueville’s point than controvert it. To be free and unequal or equal and unfree—for democratic man, that is the question. . In doing so, it “renders the employment of free will less useful and more rare, and little by little steals the very use of free will from each citizen.” This state—at once absolute and paternalistic, despotic and mild—will prove much easier to erect than escape. . At 19, he wrote a friend that he wished “to roam about for the rest of time.” When he was nearly 30, after Democracy in America became a hit, he lamented: “Oh! Tocqueville lost consciousness and died around 7 p.m., April 16th. We have a central government, but not a central administration. Henry Reeve, a 22-year-old editor of the influential Edinburgh Review, began translating the book into English, and a revised version remains the most popular translation. Examine how and why your interpretation might differ? He has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Esquire, Audacity/American Heritage and other publications, and is author of six books. What remained to be seen was what would become of humanity. He hardly uttered a word about the industrial revolution that enabled millions to avoid starvation. His were the musings of a young French aristocrat who toured the United States in search of an image of democracy itself. Democratic peoples reflexively follow their natural inclinations until they find themselves sitting beneath “an immense tutelary power” that solicitously manages and micromanages more and more of their lives. During the next nine months, they toured cities—New York, Albany, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Montreal, and Quebec. “I know of nothing more opposite to revolutionary attitudes than commercial ones. James Poulos explains what Americans can learn about themselves from Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" and how the rootedness of our hearts can secure our own liberty in a changing democratic society. . . This echoed the debate in the 1820s between Benjamin Constant and Charles Dunoyer on whether civilization which was the fruit of commerce engendered or undercut … Indeed, he thought they had an instinctive taste for it. with your own? Montesquieu had noted that the commercial spirit naturally endowed men with the spirit of liberty; Tocqueville considered the spirit of commerce to be caused by liberty and the moral and intellectual qualities on which liberty was based. . .”. He suffered agonizing pain in his stomach and bladder. Rather than become an officer in the French army like his two brothers, Alexis preferred the intellectual career for aristocrats—law. What advice does Alexis de Tocqueville offer to Americans on questions of liberty and equality? this internal flame I feel within me that does not know where to find what feeds it.” At 41: “Perhaps a moment will come in which the action we will undertake can be glorious.”, Tocqueville, according to Yale University historian George Wilson Pierson, was “almost diminutive in stature; a dignified, reserved, shy little gentleman, delicate of feature and restrained in gesture. In 1827, his father had him appointed as a judge at Versailles, serving the Bourbon monarchy. Both of his parents had been jailed during the Reign of Terror. And, when he spoke, a resonant and moving voice, surprising in so small and frail a body, made his listeners forget all but the intense conviction and innate sincerity of the man.”. It is also why despotism, so congenital to socialism, is not inconsistent with democracy. Once again, he confronted the demon of centralized government: “the object of the French Revolution was not only to change an ancient form of government, but also to abolish an ancient state of society . Early on in Democracy in America, Tocqueville contrasts “a manly and legitimate passion for equality” with the “depraved taste for” it. Tocqueville supported democracy not so much because he thought it admirable, but because he thought it inevitable. That sort of ability did not come naturally. I think my work will benefit more than my health, which suffers a little from the extreme exertion of my mind; for I hardly think of anything else as I fire away. Advised to spend time in a sunny climate, he and Mary went to Cannes in January of 1859. He pondered how once-mighty civilizations could perish. Beaumont, most concerned about slavery, wrote a novel called Marie, ou l’esclavage aux tats-Unis. Lord Broughham, an English friend who lived there, made available his luxurious library so Tocqueville could relieve the boredom of illness. How are they welded into one people? Although Tocqueville identifies positive aspects of equality of condition, Democracy in America raises the possibility that equality might not strengthen liberty, but rather lead to a new type of tyranny of the majority over the minority. COME. . Tocqueville’s view of democratic evolution was clear, but he was fully aware of its complex nature. Since the Chamber of Deputies talked about reforming the criminal code, Tocqueville and Beaumont got official permission to see America and study the prison system there. Meanwhile, the first two volumes came out on January 23, 1835. (Ibid: 3; 93). They studied American literature. She had a calming influence, but unfortunately, she couldn’t keep up with his interests. He fought as best he could for the political liberty in which he so ardently believed—had given it, in all, thirteen years of his life [....]. De Tocqueville continued: "The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds , that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other; and with them this conviction does not spring from that barren traditionary faith … It is with them as it was with the pretorians, who voluntarily suffered the tyranny of the emperor because each of them might one day become emperor. du Châtelet, who according to Voltaire’s secretary, felt no embarrassment at undressing in front of her servants, not considering it really proven that valets are men.” That age, when it was not clear to which species valets belonged, is no more. . Democracy In America Alexis de Tocqueville 1831. According to Tocqueville, these “intermediary” institutions that exist in aristocracies serve as a “dike” against the force of dominant political power and a vital protection for human dignity and liberty. In mid-September 1833, he wrote Beaumont: “Upon arriving here, I threw myself on America in a sort of frenzy. Chapter VI: Judicial Power In The United States Chapter Summary. A great deal, but perhaps most fundamentally and most consequentially, the habits to sustain it. Alexis was tutored by Abbé Lesueur, a priest who taught devotion to the Catholic Church and the French monarchy. He occupied a unique historical moment that was bounded by a moribund aristocratic age and a dawning democratic one. He worked long hours completing important books despite health problems that plagued him most of his life. Law & Liberty welcomes civil and lively discussion of its articles. Yes, Tocqueville does demonstrate effectively the "equality - centralization" nexus. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except for material where copyright is reserved by a party other than FEE. No one is fully contented with his present fortune, all are perpetually striving, in a thousand ways, to improve it. Rather, it signified a social state that was centuries if not millennia in the making and had no analogue in the annals of history. Decentralization is the chief cause of England’s material progress.”, He spent almost a year writing the first two volumes of De la Démocratie en Amérique. . We have a central government, but not a central administration. Tocqueville was 29. Tocqueville was fascinated by the township governments of New England, which had no parallel on his native continent. . What does Tocqueville imply about the need for personal liberty in a modern, democratic - 17782799 Commerce renders men independent of one another, gives them a lofty notion of their personal importance, leads them to seek to conduct their own affairs, and teaches how to conduct them well; it therefore prepares men for freedom, but preserves them from revolutions.”, Tocqueville observed how liberty and the need for social cooperation give people incentives to be virtuous. . The Impact of Psychological Man—and How to Respond, The Lincoln Proposal: Pro-Life Presidents Must Take Ambitious and Bold Action to Protect the Constitutional Rights of Preborn Children, Qualifying Free Speech Out of Existence: Dare to Speak and the Danger of Polite Self-Censorship, From Sermons, to Speeches, to Protests and Riots: The Mayflower at 400 and an American Myth throughout the Centuries, Double Visions: Marilynne Robinson’s Jack, Questions on Abortion: A Dinner Invitation to Nicholas Kristof. Alexis de Tocqueville was born in 1805 into an aristocratic family recently rocked by Frances revolutionary upheavals. If there are differences in interpretation, examine those differences carefully. The students who enter my classroom semester in and semester out are bereft of the mere idea of American exceptionalism, not because the concept is incorrect, but because it is politically so. He was a french sociologist and political theorist that traveled to the United States in 1831 to study its prisons and returned with a wealth of broader observations that he codified in "Democracy of America" (1835) which was one of the most influential books of the 19th century. He occupied a unique historical moment that was bounded by a moribund aristocratic age and a … Indeed, a case could be made that there has been an inverse relationship between the two, in that America’s exceptionalism has become more tenuous the more powerful America has become. . He was also possessed of an astonishing acuity and keen sensitivity, which not only permitted him to apprehend America’s many shortcomings (its mistreatment of African and Native Americans foremost among them), but compelled him to draw attention to them. Tocqueville’s health had always been delicate, but it took a turn for the worse in March 1850 when he spat blood—tuberculosis. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Perhaps no one affords a greater understanding of American exceptionalism—what it is and what it is not—than Alexis de Tocqueville. The following year Beaumont, steadfast for more than 30 years, published his friend’s works and correspondence. Because there is a necessary connection between freedom and inequality, and because equality is the principal and continuous object of democratic man’s desire, the people of democratic ages ultimately will elect to be unfree. Liberty is my foremost passion.”, Reflecting on Tocqueville’s famous book Democracy in America, historian Daniel J. Boorstin observed: “The most interesting question for the newcomer to Tocqueville is why this book, of all the myriad travel accounts of the United States, should have become a classic—the standard source for generalizing about America. As he saw it, “there is nothing more prolific in marvels than the art of being free; but there is nothing harder than the apprenticeship of freedom.” Supposing Tocqueville to be correct on this score, as he was on so many others, how unfortunate to have undergone that apprenticeship and mastered the art of being free, only to permit that art to lapse into obsolescence or worse yet, oblige it to do so. Tocqueville figured this was better than chaos, so he took a new loyalty oath like many other judges, outraging his friends and relatives. Then doubt entered, or rather hurtled in with an incredible violence, not only doubt about one thing or another in particular, but an all-embracing doubt. Those township governments in particular, and America’s federalist system in general, served to preserve what Tocqueville considered a sacred good—not democracy, but liberty. Democracy In America Alexis de Tocqueville 1831. German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck embraced socialism and established the first modern welfare state, and people everywhere looked to Germany for leadership. He explained what was needed for democracy to work and how it could help protect human liberty. To be sure, as a member of the landed gentry who earned most of his income from tenant farmers, Tocqueville shared the usual aristocratic prejudices against business enterprise. “England,” he noted, “is the land of decentralization. The prodigious growth of the federal government, which counted 12,000 civil servants in Tocqueville’s day and more than 2,000,000 today, ought to lend a good deal of weight to his forewarnings. Each county, each borough, each district looks after its own interests. His mother was Louise-Madeleine Le Peletier Rosanbo, also 33. They were less successful commercially than the first two, but critics considered them more important, and they helped buoy Tocqueville’s reputation. We reserve the right to delete comments - or ban users - without notification or explanation. “I have often seen Americans make great and real sacrifices to the public welfare; and I have noticed a hundred instances in which they hardly ever failed to lend faithful support to one another. Furthermore, Tocqueville's Democracy in America is often cited by present-day critics because so many of the observations in it seem extraordinarily suitable even more than one hundred and fifty years later. It has been said that a French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville, who visited the United States in the 1830's, "understood us" in a way that few observers (foreign and domestic) have. . Then after World War II, America emerged as the world’s brightest hope. That is the secret!”, Tocqueville decided that before he could write about liberty and democracy, he had to better understand England, which pioneered limited government. He envisioned the insidious long-term consequences of government intervention. He does so even where there is no textual basis for the assumption and sometimes good reason to infer otherwise. . Tocqueville supported democracy not so much because he thought it admirable, but because he thought it inevitable. As he observed, “when inequality is the common law of a society, the strongest inequalities do not strike the eye; when everything is nearly on a level, the least of them wound it. What did that French aristocrat find so exceptional in America’s nascent democracy? It went into remission for several years, then became more serious. . Three main features that Tocqueville regarded as central to American democracy are discussed: the importance of local government, the concept of “civil association,” and “the spirit of religion.” . “England,” he noted, “is the land of decentralization. They will choose to replace the inequality that nature had undemocratically bestowed upon them with an artificial equality that only the state can effect. The book was published in January 1833 as Du systeme pénitentiaire aux tats-Unis, et de son application en France. Equal in servitude is made instinctively, not freely people is the very proper aristocrat... King was Louis Philippe from the standpoint of an outsider, concerned about slavery wrote! German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck embraced socialism and established the first two volumes came out on January 23 1835. 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