Last Wednesday, July 29th, the writer known as father of sociology would complete 210 years old. This post is a tribute to him, for his fight for democracy, political effectiveness and better education, in short, a better world. This post is a summary of four articles. The first was published at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_de_Tocqueville. The second was published at http://www.telospress.com/from-europe-to-america-and-back-tocqueville-and-democracy-as-legacy-and-future-of-the-west/. The third was published at http://www.gradesaver.com/democracy-in-america/study-guide/summary-vol-i-part-1-chapters-1-5. The fourth was published at http://theconversation.com/why-read-tocquevilles-democracy-in-america-
Tocqueville (1805-1859) was a French political thinker and historian best known for his work, "Democracy in America," published in two volumes: in 1835 and 1840. Where he analyzed the improved living standards and social conditions of individuals, as well as their relationship to the market and state in Western societies. This book was published after Tocqueville's travels in the U.S. and is today considered an early work of sociology and political science. He was active in French politics, he argued that the importance of the French Revolution was to continue the process of modernizing the French state which had began under King Louis XIV. The failure of the Revolution came from the inexperience of the deputies who were too wedded to abstract Enlightenment ideals. Tocqueville was a liberal who advocated parliamentary government. In 1831, he obtained the mission to examine prisons in America. While he visited some prisons, he traveled widely and took extensive notes about his observations. He returned within 9 months, and the real result was his famous book. Beaumont, his lifelong friend also wrote an account of their travels called, "Marie or slavery in the U.S." Tocqueville had supported Cavaignac against Napoléon Bonaparte for the presidential election of 1848. He was among the deputies who gathered in Paris in an attempt to resist the coup and have Napoléon judged, as he had violated the constitutional limit on terms of office. The biographer Joseph Epstein has concluded:"Tocqueville could never bring himself to serve a man he considered a despot. He fought as best he could for the political liberty in which he so ardently believed. He would spend the days remaining to him fighting the same fight, but conducting it now from libraries and his own desk." In Democracy in America, he wrote of the new world and its burgeoning democratic order. One purpose of this book was to help the people of France get a better understanding of their position between a fading aristocratic order and an emerging democratic order. Tocqueville saw democracy as an equation that balance liberty and equality, concern for the individuals as well as for the community. He was an ardent supporter of liberty. He wrote of "Political consequences of the social state of the Anglo-Americans," by saying, "but one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom." Tocqueville's main purpose was to analyze the functioning of political society, although he brought some reflections on civil society too. For him as for Hegel and Marx, civil society was a sphere of private entrepreneuship. As a critic of individualism, he thought that through associating for mutual purpose people are able to overcome selfish desires, thus making both a self-conscious and active and vibrant civil society. He warned that modern democracy may be adept at inventing new forms of tyranny, because excessive materialism lead to the selfishness of individualism, in such conditions we lose interest in the common future. He worried that if despotism were to take root in a modern democracy, it would be much more dangerous than of the past. A despotism under a democracy could see "a multitude of men", uniformly alike, "constantly circling for petty pleasure", unaware of fellow citizens, and subject to the will of a powerful state. Tocqueville compared a despotic democratic government to a protective parent who wants to keep its ctizens as perpetual "children".
Tocqueville took an unprecedented step when he associated democracy with equality. According to Aristotle, equality is an aspect of justice, not democracy. The equality that Tocqueville had in mind was not political or economic, but social; it referred to a social condition arising from equality of condition. Tocqueville's lesson can give us today with regard to the future of democracy within and without the borders of the West. The comparison between America and Europe, between his time and 18th century, enables tocqueville to distinguish two different genealogies of freedom. To reread Tocqueville today, and to reflect on the concept of democracy acquired in the 19th century, may be a useful way a building a bridge between the history of political thought and political theory, especially a theory of democracy that urgently needs updating.
Recognizing the sovereignty of the people is essential for a democratic government. The Americans have done this and followed this principle to its logical conclusions to an extraordinary degree, largely as a result of their strong passion for equality. This principle can become dangerous, however, in that it may lead to a tyranny of the majority. In America, through the division of power, authority is kept in check without diminishing its effectiveness. In the U.S., the revolution was guided by mature desire for freedom. While the law has much force, no one person has extreme power.
Tocqueville's Democracy in America is said to be among the greatest works of 19th political writing. When approached one hundred and seventy years after its first publication, Democracy in America, teach us more than a few things about the subject of democracy. But what exactly can we learn from it? It may seem far-fetched, but the first striking thing about the text is not just that it is the first-ever analytic treatment of the subject of democracy but a treatement the dynamic openness of its subject matter: a way of life and a method of handling power.
Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes
"The concentration of power and the subjection of individuals will increase amongst democratic nations, in the same proportions as their ignorance."
"The arrogance of wealth and the dejection of wretchedness, capital cities of unwonted extent, a lax morality, a vulgar egotism, and a great confusion of interests, are the dangers which almost invariably arise from the magnitude of States.”
"Americans of all ages, and all types of disposition are forming associations...In democratic countries knowledge of how to combine is the mother of all other forms of knowledge; on its progress depends that of all the others."
