polity
Copyright © James T. Schleifer 2018
The right of James T. Schleifer to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2018 by Polity Press
Polity Press
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ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-1887-6
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-1888-3(pb)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Schleifer, James T., 1942- author.
Title: Tocqueville / James T. Schleifer.
Description: Medford, MA : Polity, 2018. | Series: Classic thinkers | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018010024 (print) | LCCN 2018029305 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509518913 (Epub) | ISBN 9781509518876 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509518883 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Tocqueville, Alexis de, 1805-1859–Political and social views. | Democracy–Philosophy. | Tocqueville, Alexis de, 1805-1859. De la democratie en Amerique. | Tocqueville, Alexis de, 1805-1859. Ancien regime et la revolution.
Classification: LCC JC229.T8 (ebook) | LCC JC229.T8 S45 2018 (print) | DDC 944.0072/02 [B]–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018010024
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For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
My special thanks to my wife Alison Pedicord Schleifer, who carefully reviewed successive drafts of this book, both as an initial copyeditor and as a first reader for style, clarity, and substance. Her advice, suggestions, and support along the way have been invaluable. Any remaining errors, shortcomings, or obscurities are my own.
Pittsburgh
For my grandsons, Blaz and Niko
Alexis de Tocqueville's fame as a political and social theorist rests on two books, Democracy in America, published in two parts in 1835 and 1840, and The Old Regime and the Revolution, published in 1856 near the end of his life. In those works, his essential message is the providential advance of democracy (or equality) in the modern world and the concurrent demise of the old aristocratic order. Tocqueville attempts to define democracy, sketch its march forward, and reveal the potential consequences, both good and bad, of the ongoing democratic revolution. His constant twin goals are, first, to show his readers how to develop and sustain democratic societies that are stable, free, and prosperous, and, second, to persuade his readers to take responsibility for moving toward that first elusive goal.
Various traits, habitual to Tocqueville, should be kept in mind. He insisted on the interrelatedness of all aspects of society and carefully traced the many ways in which increasing democracy influenced all areas of civil and political society, including how it transformed human attitudes and behavior. He also characteristically avoided final answers and definitive solutions. Instead, he raised enduring questions about the likely impact of democracy on the contemporary world and offered a perceptive catalogue of probable results and possible responses.
Tocqueville does not fit the usual categories as a theorist. He called for “a new political science … for a world entirely new.”1 And, in his two master works, he presented a number of original ideas and perspectives that we will examine later. He also assumed an arguably exaggerated stance of impartiality, claiming to speak for no particular political party or viewpoint. He even slips away from any of the easy disciplinary labels that we like to use today: he wrote at various times as a foreign observer and travel commentator, an historian, a legal or constitutional specialist, a sociologist, a psychologist or social psychologist, a literary romanticist, a political theorist, a moralist, and a philosopher.
For more than three decades, from the late 1820s to his death in 1859, Tocqueville, as author and politician, posed the same persistent questions about France, in particular, and about modern society, in general. He considered and reconsidered the same social and political themes, pursued the same fundamental purposes, and imagined much the same solutions for the democratic dilemmas he identified. This book assumes the essential unity of his thought from the first volume of Democracy in America in 1835, to the second volume in 1840, and then to The Old Regime in 1856; it casts these three tomes as almost three parts of the same lifelong work. Numerous parallel passages in his two great books bear witness to this remarkable intellectual consistency.
His ideas were never static, however; to treat them as such would be a considerable error. The story of Tocqueville as a thinker is one of dynamic, ongoing change and development. In the pages that follow, we will examine Tocqueville's mental habits, including his constant reconsideration of ideas, and see him always testing and retesting his views, shifting directions and emphases, and achieving new insights. Unresolved definitions, subtle distinctions, persistent ambiguities, and an impressive intellectual vitality are hallmarks of Tocqueville's thinking and writing. One challenge in our study will be to capture this sense of movement and excitement while presenting the underlying consistency of his bedrock principles and enduring concerns.
Two other serious mistakes would be to rely merely on Tocqueville's principal texts to understand his ideas, or to treat him simply as an author and theorist. Democracy in America and The Old Regime remain essential for grasping Tocqueville as a thinker. But we will also touch upon many of his other writings, including his essays, articles, speeches, and reports, as well as his study Of the Penitentiary System in the United States … (1833), and his book Recollections, published posthumously. We will also make considerable use of Tocqueville's correspondence, his travel diaries to America, England, and Ireland, and the drafts and notes for his major works. All these materials enrich the major texts and frequently clarify Tocqueville's purposes and meanings as a writer and thinker.
This study also assumes the importance of Tocqueville's own experiences (including his journeys to America, England, and Ireland) and especially his role as a political figure. His social and political theories – and particularly what might be called his “political program” – can be better understood against the background of his substantial involvement in the politics of his time. In the pages of The Old Regime, Tocqueville famously denounced the philosophers of the eighteenth century who spun out theories without the slightest practical political experience or exposure. He refused to be such a philosopher, detached from the political life of his day. He felt called by family tradition and personal ambition to active public service. He was a man of action as well as a man of thought, a politician as well as a theorist. As we will see, his profile as a political figure during his lifetime was significant. The full portrait of Tocqueville as a thinker requires an appreciation of theory put into action.
This book is intended to be a useful, but concise, introduction to Tocqueville's thought and work, offering a short sketch of his life, examining his major themes and ideas, and discussing his lasting significance and legacy. A word of warning is in order. Given a necessarily limited format, there is danger of oversimplification, of skipping or shortchanging some of the complications, variations, and secondary developments in Tocqueville's thinking and writing. The following effort touches very little, for example, on Tocqueville's own sources. Readers need to remember that the task of portraying Tocqueville as a political and social theorist is far more complex and nuanced than can be accomplished in such a short introductory volume. Nonetheless, by exploring the tensions in his thought between continuity and change, and by revisiting the interplay between theory and action, we will be able to retrace the greater part of a fascinating intellectual journey.