Tocqueville’s Politics of Grandeur

2021 ◽  
pp. 009059172110437
Author(s):  
Gianna Englert
Keyword(s):  
Party Politics ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
Political Career ◽  
Participatory Politics ◽  
Democracy In America ◽  
At Home

In his defenses of empire, Alexis de Tocqueville emphasized the need to achieve grandeur for France, and his writings on Algeria have shaped our understanding of his political career. In pursuing empire abroad as a remedy for weak politics at home, scholars maintain that Tocqueville abandoned the participatory politics of Democracy in America. This essay argues, however, that the focus on Tocqueville’s international turn has obscured his interest in the greatness of domestic party politics. It demonstrates that Tocqueville championed a version of grandeur tied to the latent energies of the lower classes and distinct from the Bonapartism and aristocratic nostalgia that characterized his thoughts on empire. This version of grandeur was a political reclamation of disagreement and debate that supported great party opposition to counter the malaise of bourgeois rule. The essay concludes by comparing Tocqueville’s attitude toward foreign others, whose freedoms had to be sacrificed to the cause of French nationalism, with his description of the lower classes within his own nation, whose inclusion in the franchise could foster great politics. This comparison enables us to draw modest lessons for interpreting political grandeur in the present day.

Democracy and Unfreedom: Revisiting Tocqueville and Beaumont in America

2015 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 466-494 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara M. Benson
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
Research Practice ◽  
Democracy In America ◽  
Jacksonian America

This essay reexamines the famous 1831 prison tours of Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont. It reads the three texts that emerged from their collective research practice as a trilogy, one conventionally read in different disciplinary homes ( Democracy in America in political science, On the Penitentiary in criminology, and Marie, Or Slavery: A Novel of Jacksonian America in literature). I argue that in marginalizing the trilogy’s important critique of slavery and punishment, scholars have overemphasized the centrality of free institutions and ignored the unfree institutions that also anchor American political life. The article urges scholars in political theory and political science to attend to this formative moment in mass incarceration and carceral democracy.

Tocqueville on Equality and Democracy: Reflections on Latin America

2004 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-171
Author(s):  
José Antonio ◽  
Aguilar Rivera
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin America ◽  
New World ◽  
The United States ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
Social State ◽  
Xixth Century ◽  
Democracy In America

In his essay on Tocqueville and Latin America Claudio López-Guerra asserts that, according to Alexis de Tocqueville, in the XIXth century Mexico and the United States had the same social state but not the same mores. The contention that follows is that religion (Catholicism v. Protestantism) is more important than equality in shaping the mores of a democratic people. In Democracy in America Tocqueville asserted: “It is true that the Anglo-Americans brought equality of conditions with them to the New World. There were neither commoners nor nobles there, and professional prejudices were always as unknown as prejudices of birth.

Harriet Martineau on the Theory and Practice of Democracy in America

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Pace Vetter
Keyword(s):  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
Women's Suffrage ◽  
Harriet Martineau ◽  
American Life ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Disparate Treatment ◽  
Democracy In America ◽  
Women’S Suffrage

Close analysis of Harriet Martineau’s lengthy examination of American life, Society in America, and her methodological treatise, How to Observe: Morals and Manners, reveals that she adapts Adam Smith’s theory of sympathy to accommodate greater diversity among observers and the observed. Martineau’s innovative account of sympathy and her method of observation distinguish her from her contemporary, Alexis de Tocqueville. Her approach is better able to address slavery and the disenfranchisement of women by allowing people to empathize with those who are radically different from themselves. For Martineau, as individuals connect to others in this way, they are in a stronger position to realize the disparate treatment and injustices others face, and to support abolitionism and women’s suffrage.

Alexis De Tocqueville (1835): Democracy in America

2020 ◽  
pp. 146-163
Author(s):  
Joyce Appleby ◽  
Elizabeth Covington ◽  
David Hoyt ◽  
Michael Latham ◽  
Allison Sneider
Keyword(s):  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
Democracy In America

Democracy's Family Values: Alexis de Tocqueville on Anxiety, Fear and Desire

2001 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 551-578 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Janara
Keyword(s):  
Family Life ◽  
Family Relations ◽  
Family Values ◽  
Democratic Society ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
The Family ◽  
Democracy In America

Standing interpretations of the family relations depicted in Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America project onto his portrait of democracy a strong public-private dichotomy. However, de Tocqueville insists that family life is embedded in the dynamics that shape the broader society and culture. Investigating this claim yields a psychological account of the desires, fears and anxieties that haunt democratic society. These passions foment a paradoxical mix of egalitarianism and hierarchy, liberty and subjugation, within family life and beyond. De Tocqueville's fundamental thesis that democracy boasts healthy and unhealthy potentialities is better understood when the idea of family as a discrete sphere is abandoned.

FROM THE SOCIAL CONTRACT TO THE ART OF ASSOCIATION: A TOCQUEVILLIAN PERSPECTIVE

2008 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-287
Author(s):  
Aurelian Craiutu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Strong Relationship ◽  
The United States ◽  
Democratic Citizenship ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Background ◽  
Democracy In America ◽  
Political Associations

In the United States, the debate on civil associations has coincided with the revival of interest in the writings of Alexis de Tocqueville, particularly Democracy in America (1835; 1840) in which he praised the Americans' propensity to form civil and political associations. Tocqueville regarded these associations as laboratories of democracy that teach citizens the art of being free and give them the opportunity to pursue their own interests in concert with others. Tocqueville's views on political and civil associations cannot be properly understood unless we also take into account the larger intellectual and political background of his native France. The main sections of this essay examine Tocqueville's analysis of civil and political associations in America. Special attention is paid to the strong relationship between democracy and civil and political associations and the effects that they have on promoting democratic citizenship, civility, and self-government.

The Early Nationalization of Political News In America

1986 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 255-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Kernell
Keyword(s):  
Capital City ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
Political News ◽  
Indirect Influence ◽  
Democracy In America

When Alexis de Tocqueville toured America in the 1830s, he found Washington occupying a lowly position in the political life of the country. In a footnote, Democracy in America informs the European reader, “America has no great capital city where direct or indirect influence is felt over the whole extent of the country.” Throughout the book, he expands on the effects of this decentralization. And we may fairly suspect that as much as any other, this observation led de Tocqueville to concentrate his inquiry on the performance of democracy in communities across the country.

Tocqueville

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucien Jaume
Keyword(s):  
Modern Society ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
Early America ◽  
Democracy In America ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
To Come ◽  
American Book

Many American readers like to regard Alexis de Tocqueville as an honorary American and democrat—as the young French aristocrat who came to early America and, enthralled by what he saw, proceeded to write an American book explaining democratic America to itself. Yet, as this book argues, Democracy in America is best understood as a French book, written primarily for the French, and overwhelmingly concerned with France. “America,” this book claims, “was merely a pretext for studying modern society and the woes of France.” For Tocqueville, in short, America was a mirror for France, a way for Tocqueville to write indirectly about his own society, to engage French thinkers and debates, and to come to terms with France's aristocratic legacy. By taking seriously the idea that Tocqueville's French context is essential for understanding Democracy in America, the book provides a powerful and surprising new interpretation of Tocqueville's book as well as a fresh intellectual and psychological portrait of the author. Situating Tocqueville in the context of the crisis of authority in postrevolutionary France, this book shows that Tocqueville was an ambivalent promoter of democracy, a man who tried to reconcile himself to the coming wave, but who was also nostalgic for the aristocratic world in which he was rooted—and who believed that it would be necessary to preserve aristocratic values in order to protect liberty under democracy. Indeed, the book argues that one of Tocqueville's most important and original ideas was to recognize that democracy posed the threat of a new and hidden form of despotism.

Tocqueville: Frenchman for all Seasons?Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, translated, edited, and with an introduction by Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop. Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 2000. xciii, 722 pp. $35.00 U.S. (cloth).Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America and Two Essays on America, translated by Gerald Bevan, with an Introduction by Isaac Kramnick and Notes by Jeff Seliger. New York, N.Y., Penguin, 2003. lii, 896 pp. $10.00 U.S. (paper).Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution, Vol.One, edited and with an introduction and critical apparatus by Francois Furet and Francoise Melonio; translated by Alan S. Kahan. Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 1998. xi, 451 pp. $32.50 U.S. (cloth).Tocqueville Between Two Worlds: The Making of a Political and Theoretical Life, by Sheldon Wolin. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2001. viii, 650 pp. $35.00 U.S. (cloth).The Tocqueville Reader. A Life in Letters and Politics, edited by Olivier Zunz and Alan S. Kahan. Maiden, MA, Oxford, Melbourne, and Berlin, Blackwell Publishing, 2002. xviii, 358 pp. $24.95 U.S. (paper).Alexis de Tocqueville, Writings on Empire and Slavery, edited and translated by Jennifer Pitts. Baltimore and London, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. xxxviii, 277 pp. $47.00 U.S. (cloth), $21.95 U.S. (paper).

2003 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 295-306
Author(s):  
Klaus J. Hansen
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
University Of Chicago ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
Johns Hopkins University ◽  
Sheldon Wolin ◽  
Democracy In America ◽  
University Of Chicago Press ◽  
The Revolution

Thoreau’s Neighbors

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy L. Rosenblum
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
The Self ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
Democracy In America ◽  
Self Examination ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
At Home

This chapter explains what “minding our own business” means, arguing that minding your neighbors' business and minding your own work is in tandem when it comes to self-examination and transformation. People listen and observe and then compare their neighbors' lives to their own. From the vantage point as witnesses to their neighbors' lives, people gain insight into their vulnerabilities, moral resources, and the terms of their happiness. Thoreau's Walden is the great American reflection on the quality of life at home, in this place, with these neighbors. Good neighbors emerge in Thoreau's work as essential to self-understanding and care of the self. The chapter also shows how Thoreau presents treating one another as neighbors as the “saving remnant” of democracy in America.

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