Tocqueville’s Defense of Aristocratic Literature

See Democracy in America, I.I.2, II.I.5, II.II.15, and II.IV.7. The relevant statements in these sections may be found, respectively, in Pléiade, II.47, II.532, II.657, and II.846. Roman and Arabic numerals following “Pléiade” will refer to the volume and page numbers, respectively, in André Jardin, ed., Tocqueville: Oeuvres (Paris: Gallimard, 1991). See also Tocqueville’s letter to Claude-François de Corcelle, dated September 17, 1853, where he remarks that “man’s true greatness lies only in the harmony of the liberal sentiment and religious sentiment,” in Roger Boesche, ed., Alexis de Tocqueville: Selected Letters on Politics and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 295.

For the sake of convenience, I have included page references to the relevant sections in English-language editions of Tocqueville’s works:

For an interpretation of the aristocratic implications of this silence, see Edward T. Gargan, “The Silence of Tocqueville on Education,” Historical Reflections 7, no. 2/3 (1980): 565–575.

See The Old Regime and the Revolution, I.III.3; Pléiade, III.188; Furet and Mélonio, I.211. All translations of Tocqueville’s work, including his letters, are my own unless otherwise noted.

Democracy, II.I.15; Pléiade, II.573–575; Nolla, II.815–817.

Notable studies addressing the theme of education in Tocqueville’s thought include: Alan S. Kahan, Aristocratic Liberalism: The Social and Political Thought of Jacob Burckhardt, John Stuart Mill, and Alexis de Tocqueville (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 83, 106–107, 125–134; Jan H. Blits, “Tocqueville on Democratic Education: The Problem of Public Passivity,” Educational Theory 47, no. 1 (March 1997): 15–30; “Tocqueville: the Aristocrat as Democratic Pedagogue,” in Teachers of the People: Political Education in Rousseau, Hegel, Tocqueville, and Mill, Dana Villa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 173–227.

Democracy, II.I.15; Pleiade, II.574; Nolla, II.816.

Democracy, ibid.; Pléiade, ibid.; Nolla, ibid.

Democracy, ibid.; Pléiade, ibid.; Nolla, II.817.

Democracy, ibid.; Pléiade, ibid.; Nolla, ibid.

Democracy, II.I.13; Pléiade, II.570; Nolla, II. 808.

Democracy, II.I.15; Pléiade, II.574; Nolla, II.817.

Democracy, ibid.; Pléiade, II.575; Nolla, ibid.

Plutarch’s Lives was one of Tocqueville’s favorite ancient works, as his letter of April 6, 1838, to Royer-Collard, attests. There Tocqueville writes: “I return to my work [writing the second volume of Democracy in America] that I do not interrupt but from time to time, when I am fatigued, in order to reread Plutarch.” See Oeuvres Complètes, Tome XI: Correspondance d’Alexis de Tocqueville avec P.-P Royer-Collard et avec J.-J Ampère (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), 60. Moreover, in a letter to Gustave Beaumont, dated March 21, 1838, Tocqueville describes his stirring experience reading Plutarch’s Lives: “This reading has captured my imagination so well that there are moments when I fear becoming mad in the manner of Don Quixote. My mind is completely crammed with a heroism that is hardly of our time, and I fall very flat when I come out of these dreams and find myself face to face with reality.” See Selected Letters on Politics and Society, 125. Trans. James Toupin and Roger Boesche.

The French noun Tocqueville uses here is not nature but naturel, which can mean “nature,” “character,” “naturalness,” and “ease.” In this last two senses, the term is akin to the way we use “natural” in English, as when we say that “someone is a natural” in a given activity. An alternative translation here would be “natural talent” or, if one is in an audacious mood, “innate knack.”

Democracy, II.I.15; Pléiade, II.575; Nolla, II.817. See Alan S. Kahan’s clear-eyed treatment of this view in “Tocqueville and Liberal Education,” The Tocqueville Review 34, no. 2 (2013): 159–168.

The most reproachable thing in ancient literature for Tocqueville was the inhumanity inherent in its indifference to or acceptance of slavery. In this connection, Tocqueville argues earlier in Volume II that because ancient writers were limited by the aristocratic horizon of their time, they could not understand what Jesus Christ “had to come to earth to make understood,” namely, “that all members of the human species were naturally similar and equal.” He is particularly hard on Aristotle, who famously distinguishes between natural and conventional slavery and thereby denies that slavery is simply unjust. In the privacy of a note on the chapter rather than in his published work, Tocqueville writes that, rather than discover slavery in nature, he would have preferred that Aristotle had “look[ed] for truth only in his own heart.” See Democracy, II.I.3; Pléiade, II.526; Nolla, II.733n. Trans. James T. Schleifer.

Democracy, II.I.15; Pléiade, II.575; Nolla, II.817.

For example, Tocqueville briefly describes Napoleon and his critical role in influencing the character of post-revolutionary France at the very beginning, and at the beginning of Book Three, of his unfinished second volume of The Old Regime and the Revolution. See Old Regime, “Idée Originaire, Vue Générale, Sentiment Général et Primitif du Sujet,” “Projets;” Pléiade, III.455, III.635–640; Furet and Mélonio, II.27, II.185–189.

For an exploration of Tocqueville’s understanding of both the destructive and salutary potential of liberal education in democratic times, see Luke Foster’s “Tocqueville on the Mixed Blessing of Liberal Learning: Higher Education as Subversive Antidote,” in Exploring the Social and Political Economy of Alexis de Tocqueville, eds. Peter J. Boettke and Adam Martin (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 63–81.

Democracy, I. “Introduction;” Pléiade, II.8; Nolla, I.16–18.

Democracy, ibid.; Pléiade, II.15; Nolla, I.28.

This is not to deny that Tocqueville thought democratic statesmen should be concerned with preserving or recovering the conditions under which active and public-spirited citizens are most likely to emerge. For two nuanced treatments of this dimension of Tocqueville’s thought, see: (1) Dana Villa, “Religion, Civic Education, and Conformity,” in The Spirit of Religion and the Spirit of Liberty, ed. Michael Zuckert (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017), 217–237; and (2) Brian Danoff, “A School or a Stage? Tocqueville and Arendt on Politics and Education,” Perspectives on Political Science 41, no. 3 (July 2012): 117–124.

In this connection, see Democracy, II.I.13, II.I.16; Pléiade, II.570–571, II.577–578; Nolla, II.808–809, II.824.

Democracy, II.I.10; Pléiade, II.554, 557; Nolla, II. 781, 785.

Democracy, II.I.17; Pléiade, II.583–589; Nolla, II.831–842.

Democracy, ibid.; Pléiade, II.583; Nolla, II.832. In a set of notes on the chapter, Tocqueville indicates that he is here using “poetry” as a term of art suitable to his broader thematic concerns, rather than in its more restricted, technical sense: “So what definitively is poetry? This could become the topic for a dissertation, with which I do not intend to fatigue the reader. So instead of trying to find out what language has wanted to include in the word poetry, I will say what I include in it myself and I will fix the meaning that I give to it in the present chapter.” See Nolla, II.831n. Trans. James T. Schleifer.

Democracy, II.I.17; Pléiade, II.583; Nolla, II.832.

Democracy, ibid.; Pléiade, II.584; Nolla, II.833.

Democracy, II.I.7; Pléiade, II.541–542; Nolla, II.757–758.

Democracy, II.I.17; Pléiade, II.586–587; Nolla, II.836, II.838.

Democracy, II.I.17; Pléiade, II.589; Nolla, II.840.

Democracy, ibid.; Pléiade, ibid.; Nolla, ibid.

A part, and perhaps the most important part, of the utility of religion in Tocqueville’s view resides in its power to help man “to solve the greatest problems that human destiny presents” so that he may avoid being “cowardly reduced to not thinking about them.” See Democracy, II.I.5; Pléiade, II.532; Nolla, II.745. For a study of the Romanticist resonances in Tocqueville’s understanding of democratic poetry, see Reino Virtanen, “Tocqueville on a Democratic Literature,” The French Review 23, no. 3 (January 1950): 214–222.

For a study that describes Pascal’s influence on Tocqueville’s view of the human condition as well as the crucial point of contrast between them, see Alexander Jech, “Tocqueville, Pascal, and the Transcendent Horizon,” in The Spirit of Religion and the Spirit of Liberty, ed. Michael Zuckert (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017), 99–121.

Tocqueville refers to the “monsters” and “imaginary realms” that the democratic passion for generalization fosters in democratic writers, as well as “the crowd” that reads and is inflamed by these writers, in Democracy, II.I.18; Pléiade, II.591; Nolla, II.844. Tocqueville also refers to “the natural aristocracy that arises from enlightenment and virtue” in Democracy, I.I.3; Pléiade, II.56; Nolla, I.86. Moreover, his famous distinction between the manly and unmanly passion for equality (Democracy, I.I.3; Pléiade, II.58–59; Nolla, I.89) implies that democratic man’s regard for human excellence and strength of soul is crucial to the good order of democracy.

Tocqueville distinguishes between the code of honor with which societies of various kinds, whether aristocratic or democratic, have conventionally rewarded different kinds of actions and given preeminence to different virtues, on the one hand, and “the simple notions of the just and the unjust,” “the natural order of conscience,” the “obscure but powerful instinct” that is “more ancient and more holy” than any code of honor, on the other. The latter, unlike the former, stems from the “permanent and general needs” of humanity, as opposed to those of a social state, class, or country. In terms of its moral content, simple virtue in contrast to honor seems to give humanity as a virtue pride of place. See Democracy, II.III.18; Pléiade, II.745–758; Nolla, II.1093–1115.

Democracy, II.IV.6; Pléiade, II.837; Nolla, II.1251.

Democracy, II.II.15; Pléiade, II.658; Nolla, II.957.

Democracy, ibid.; Pléiade, II.655–660; Nolla, II.954–962. Tocqueville expresses his admiration for Plato’s spiritualism in a letter to Gustave de Beaumont, dated April 22, 1838. See Selected Letters on Politics and Society, 130.

Tocqueville’s general treatment of democratic man’s passion for material well-being, and the restlessness that is partly engendered by that passion, spans Chapters 10–17 in part II of volume II of Democracy. He at one point describes this passion as “the useless pursuit of a complete felicity that always flees” (Democracy, II.II.13; Pléiade, II.649; Nolla, II. 944). Elsewhere, Tocqueville remarks that equality of conditions, notwithstanding the great good it does for men, also “opens their souls excessively to the love of material enjoyments” (Democracy, II.I.5; Pléiade, II.532–533; Nolla, II.745). And he observes that the democratic code of honor of American society carried out a moral rehabilitation of “the love of wealth” (Democracy, II.III.18; Pléiade, II.751; Nolla, II.1103).

Democracy, II.II.15; Pléiade, II.655; Nolla, II.954.

Democracy, ibid.; Pléiade, II.656; Nolla, II. 955.

Democracy, ibid.; Pléiade, II.659; Nolla, II.959.

One might wonder what Tocqueville himself thought was true concerning the human soul and its fate. For a treatment worthy of the subject, see Jean M. Yarbrough, “Tocqueville on the Needs of the Soul,” Perspectives on Political Science 47, no. 3 (2018): 123–141.

Democracy, ibid.; Pléiade, ibid.; Nolla, II.958–959.

Democracy, ibid.; Pléiade, ibid.; Nolla, II.959.

Democracy, ibid.; Pléiade, ibid.; Nolla, ibid.

Democracy, II.II.15; Pléiade, II.656; Nolla, II.955.

Aristocratic times in this context refer primarily to the social and political state of Medieval Europe.

See Tocqueville’s letter to Kergorlay, dated August 5, 1836 in Gustave Beaumont, ed., Memoir, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville, Vol. 1, Liberty Fund, December 18, 2021, https://​oll.​libertyfund.​org/​title/​tocqueville-memoir-letters-and-remains-of-alexis-de-tocqueville-vol-1. Where the original English translator of Beaumont’s edition of Tocqueville’s works used “middle course,” I have opted for “middle way” as a term that more readily conveys the sense that Tocqueville is thinking about a way of life.

Democracy, II.II.15; Pléiade, II.659; Nolla, II.960.

A point of clarification regarding Tocqueville’s terminology must here be made. As the preceding suggests, it is not the case that “the liberal spirit” merely represents the materialistic pole in Tocqueville’s middle way. The liberal spirit certainly entails a materialistic dimension. Tocqueville often underlines and extols the fact that liberty produces material benefits in an amount and variety, and distributes them to an extent, far surpassing the greatest achievements and even the greatest hopes of the aristocratic world. He sometimes even defends the love of liberty for the sake of these benefits. But the deepest dimension of liberty in Tocqueville is intellectual and moral. He regards the intellectual pleasure that is coeval with the awareness of living, and of being the kind of being that ought to live, free from arbitrary constraint, “under the sole government of God and the laws,” as one of the most sublime experiences man can have. See The Old Regime, I.III.3; Pléiade, III.195; Furet and Mélonio, I.216–217.

One way in which Tocqueville further develops his notion of the middle way is by appealing to the idea of “the future,” that is, of man’s long-range view of his life and its interests, as a kind of mean between the passion for immediate gratification in the present and the life devoted to contemplating the hereafter. See Democracy, II.II.17; Pléiade, II.662–665; Nolla, II.965–968. As to the view that man cannot be fully at home in the world, see Democracy, II.II.12; Pléiade, II.647; Nolla, II.940.

See footnote 52.

An indication that Tocqueville at least considered reading Plato more deeply is found in a crossed out remark on Plato that he wrote for Volume II of Democracy, in the margins of his chapter on the overly excited spiritualism of certain American sects (II.II.12): “When I see Plato in his sublime reveries want to forbid commerce and industry to the citizens and, in order to release them better from coarse desires, want to take away even the possession of children, I think of his contemporaries, and the sensual democracy of Athens makes me understand the laws of this imaginary republic whose portrait he has drawn for us.” See Nolla, II.940n. Trans. James T. Schleifer.

“Analyse de Platon,” 555.

Ibid.

“Analyse de Platon,” 556.

Democracy, I.II.7; Pléiade, II.287–291; Nolla, I.410–415.

Democracy, ibid.; Pléiade, II.288; Nolla, I.410.

“Analyse de Platon,” 556.

Democracy, I.II.7; Pléiade, II.288–289; Nolla, I.411–412.

“Analyse de Platon,” 556.

Ibid.

See Plutarch’s “Life of Poplicola.”

See Democracy, I.I.8, I.II.9, II.I.20, II.II.4, II.II.15; Pléiade, II.180, II.364, II.601, II.617, II.657; Nolla, I.258, I.508, II.859, II.889, II.957.

See Democracy, II.III.18; Pléiade, II.745–758; Nolla, II.1093–1115. See also footnote 37.

“Analyse de Platon,” 557.

In his Recollections, for example, Tocqueville describes Jules Dufaure, who in 1848 served briefly as the French Minister of the Interior under the provisional government of Louis-Eugène Cavaignac, as someone “who remained at the bottom of his heart a true bourgeois of the West, enemy of nobles and priests….” See Recollections, III.3; Pléiade, III.912; Mayer and Kerr, 218.

Democracy, II.II.15; Pléiade, II.660; Nolla, II.962.

A statesman or legislator or public intellectual influenced by this teaching understands religion not simply in terms of its power to reveal the truth about God and the fate of the human soul, but also, and more importantly, in terms of its power to regulate morality and preserve the conditions that make civilized life possible. Tocqueville summarizes this understanding when he writes: “one must recognize that, if it [religion] does not save men in the other world, it is at least very useful to their happiness and their greatness in this one.” See Democracy, II.I.V; Pléiade, II.532; Nolla, II.744. This view is implicit in Tocqueville’s Introduction to Democracy, where he criticizes the logical inconsistency of Europeans who advocate democracy while rejecting religion. See Pléiade, II.14; Nolla, I.25–26. Tocqueville finds this prudent or political understanding of religion present in America, as when he writes: “I do not know if all Americans have faith in their religion, for who can read the bottom of hearts? But I am sure that they believe it necessary for the maintenance of republican institutions.” See Democracy, I.II.9; Pléiade, II.338; Nolla, I.475. In the same chapter, Tocqueville gives an admiring account of American missionaries who propagated Christianity as they moved West, partly in order to secure the moral conditions of republican self-government in the West and, due to the political connection between the states, help preserve them in the East. Of these missionaries Tocqueville writes, “you think that these men act only with a view to the other life, but you are wrong: eternity is but one of their concerns. If you interrogate these missionaries of Christian civilization, you will be very surprised to hear them speak so often of the goods of this world and to find politicians where you thought to see only religious men.” See Pléiade, II.339; Nolla, I.476. In this connection, see also Democracy, II.II.9; Pléiade, II.641; Nolla, II.929. In Pierre Manent’s reading of Tocqueville, the authority provided by religion helps to keep democratic man from succumbing to two temptations: feeling disgust for liberty as a result of having to face the fundamental questions of human existence by oneself, and believing that liberty gives men the right to dare anything for the good of society, regardless of whether such projects conflict with the rights of individuals. See Tocqueville et la nature de la démocratie (Paris: Gallimard, 1982), 125–126.

“Sur la Morale,” 223.

“Sur la Morale,” 223–224.

See Democracy, I.II.6; Pléiade, II.281–282; Nolla, I.400–401.