Alexis de Tocqueville
For Tocqueville, democracy makes people equal, but equality can endanger freedom: without local self-government and free associations, the majority becomes a tyrant and the state a gentle guardian that keeps citizens in childhood.
Placement
French jurist, deputy and briefly foreign minister who travelled the United States in 1831–32: democracy is above all an “equality of conditions”; it can sustain liberty through local self-government and associations, or slide into a tyranny of the majority and a mild, tutelary despotism.
Key ideas
- Equality of conditions
- Tyranny of the majority
- Associations and local self-government
- Soft despotism
Influence
Influenced by 3
Blaise Pascal
influenced by ✓
Tocqueville counted Pascal among three authors he ‘lived with’ daily (1836); Democracy in America (1840) holds up his disinterested passion for truth against democracy’s taste for useful science. A. de Tocqueville, letter to L. de Kergorlay (Nov. 1836); De la démocratie en Amérique II (1840); P. A. Rahe, Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift (2009)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Blaise Pascal › 1623–1662
Montesquieu
influenced by ✓
Like Montesquieu, Tocqueville explained a people’s laws through its mores and circumstances (Democracy in America, 1835–40); Raymond Aron placed both among the founders of sociology. A. de Tocqueville, De la démocratie en Amérique (1835–40); R. Aron, Les étapes de la pensée sociologique (1967)
Montesquieu › 1689–1755
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
influenced by
Tocqueville named Rousseau, with Pascal and Montesquieu, as authors he ‘lived with’ a little each day (1836); P. A. Rahe finds all three present in Democracy in America. A. de Tocqueville, letter to L. de Kergorlay (Nov. 1836); P. A. Rahe, Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect (2009)
Evidence: AI draft
Jean-Jacques Rousseau › 1712–1778
Influenced 1
John Stuart Mill
influenced
Mill reviewed both volumes of Democracy in America (1835, 1840) and took up Tocqueville’s ‘tyranny of the majority’ in On Liberty (1859). J. S. Mill, reviews of De la démocratie en Amérique, London and Westminster Review (1835), Edinburgh Review (1840); On Liberty (1859); SEP “John Stuart Mill”
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
John Stuart Mill › 1806–1873
Criticism
Criticizes 1
Arthur de Gobineau
criticised
Tocqueville wrote to Gobineau that his racial doctrines were probably false and certainly pernicious, a fatalism that denies human freedom (letter of 17 November 1853). Tocqueville to Gobineau, 17 Nov. 1853, in Œuvres complètes IX (Correspondance d’Alexis de Tocqueville et d’Arthur de Gobineau, 1959)
Evidence: AI draft
Arthur de Gobineau › 1816–1882
Works
Two volumes (1835, 1840) on the United States as a laboratory of equality: townships, associations, the tyranny of the majority and a new, mild despotism.
The Revolution continued the centralisation of the monarchy instead of breaking with it.
Position
Tocqueville held that the great movement of modern history was the spread of “equality of conditions”: the end of inherited ranks and the belief that no one is by nature above anyone else. The process could not be stopped, but its outcome was open. In the United States he found a democracy that preserved liberty through township self-government, the jury, a free press, religion separated from the state, and above all the habit of forming associations for every purpose. He also described its dangers: a “tyranny of the majority” that shapes opinion more thoroughly than any king, an individualism that withdraws into private life, and a new kind of despotism, mild and tutelary, that would keep citizens in childhood by providing for all their needs. In The Old Regime and the Revolution he showed that centralised administration, often credited to the Revolution, had been built by the monarchy, which the Revolution completed rather than reversed. John Stuart Mill reviewed both volumes of Democracy in America and took the idea of the majority’s tyranny into On Liberty. Raymond Aron later placed Tocqueville beside Montesquieu among the founders of sociology. A darker part of his work has drawn more attention since the 1990s: as a deputy he supported the conquest and colonisation of Algeria and in his writings of 1841 and 1847 defended harsh methods of war against its population.
Life & context
Alexis de Tocqueville was born in Paris in 1805 into an old Norman noble family; his great-grandfather Malesherbes was guillotined in 1794, and his parents escaped the same fate only through the fall of Robespierre. He studied law and became a junior magistrate at Versailles. In 1831 he and his friend Gustave de Beaumont obtained an official mission to study American prisons. For nine months they travelled from New England to New Orleans and into the frontier regions of the Great Lakes, and their prison report appeared in 1833. The two volumes of Democracy in America (1835, 1840) made him famous; in 1841 he was elected to the Académie française. He sat in the Chamber of Deputies from 1839, helped draft the constitution of the Second Republic in 1848 and was foreign minister from June to October 1849. Briefly arrested after Louis-Napoléon’s coup of December 1851, he withdrew from politics and wrote The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856). He died of tuberculosis in Cannes in 1859. His Recollections of 1848 appeared only in 1893.
Further main works
- On the Penitentiary System in the United States (with Gustave de Beaumont, 1833)
- Essay on Algeria (Travail sur l’Algérie, 1841)
- Recollections (Souvenirs, posthumous, 1893)
Appears in
- Journey ‘How Sociology Emerged from Philosophy’ · Stop 10 of 12
- Debate ‘Free Speech and Its Limits’
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