Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
TOCQUEVILLE (DEMOCRACY (TOCQUEVILLE'S CONCEPT OF DEMOCRACY (After 1840…
TOCQUEVILLE
DEMOCRACY
-
-
Fundamental link between DEMOCRACY and EQUALITY - esp. becomes clear in comparison to LIBERTY: democratic peoples love freedom, but they have an 'insatiable passion' for equality
-
PROBLEMS / CHALLENGES
"SOFT DESPOTISM": A new form of despotism that limits the population's free will and individual thought and would allow for the same ideas to remain prevalent in societies
DEMOCRACY'S STRENGTHS
Democracy's ability to imbue a unique sense of agitation and restive energy among the population accounts for their adaptability
DEMOCRACY VS. REPUBLIC
Tocqueville abandons the distinction in Federalist 10 between democracy (exemplified by ancient republics) and republic (with modern safeguards)
He sees the ancient republics, based on slavery, as a kind of aristocracy and thus irrelevant to democracy, which is modern
LIBERTY
LIBERTY IN AMERICA
It is in the township that the force of free peoples resides - "without the institutions of a township a nation can give itself a free government, but it does not have the spirit of freedom"
In his later writings, Tocqueville defines democracy as a form of government in which the people participate and enjoy political liberty - ruled out the use of "democracy" to denote an état social characterized by social equality but without political liberty
DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY
"My purpose has been to show, using America as an example, that laws and above all, moeurs can permit a democratic people to remain free"
This diagnosis stressed the interaction of the political with the social, because laws were part of what was meant by political, while moeurs were social
Because a democratic social state can sustain both liberty and tyranny, government is the crux, not merely a consequence
MONTESQUIEU AND COMMERCE
Explicitly refers to Montesquieu's thesis that in modern society, the peaceful practice of commerce and trade produces political liberty
Tocqueville reversed the argument: asserted that in all periods, it has been liberty which produces commerce
In England, economic success had been due to the nature of its politics and laws rather than to its état social
REVOLUTIONS
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
Argues that even though the French tried to dissociate themselves from the past, they eventually reverted to a powerful central government
The French, as people, became ever more similar --> They became more isolated from one another and more dependent on central power
Tragedy of the Revolution: its main actors, in their struggle for freedom, created conditions for a more repressive regime than the one they had brought down
-
-
POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY
-
-
For Tocqueville, ordinary American citizens care for rights because they possess them, they obey laws because they vote
EQUALITY
Equality must penetrate to the political world - the egalitarian nature of the society determined its politics
Two different conclusions can be drawn from such a democratic society: one would make all free, the other would deprive all of liberty
-
Both outcomes derive from the nature of democracy defined as a type of society characterized by equality
ÉTAT SOCIAL
The état social is defined as the primary cause of those laws, customs, and ideas which regulate the conduct of nations
That the état social doesn't produce, it modifies (incl. laws and mores)
By a people's état social is meant the extent to which property, knowledge, and morality are more or less equally distributed
Tocqueville describes the American état social as unique in the degree of equality shared by it's citizens
-
PROPERTY
For Tocqueville, there is country in the world where the sentiment for property is more active than in America