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25 June, 2013<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/standpointmag.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/files_u28_books-jennings_1.jpg\" "\\"Feature")
<\/p>\nThere were many books written about America by Europeans in the 19th century. But one book above all continues to command our attention: Alexis de Tocqueville\u2019s Democracy in America<\/em>, published as two volumes in 1835 and 1840. On both sides of the Atlantic it was immediately received as a masterpiece and this has largely remained the case to this day.<\/p>\n
Yet, as Lucien Jaume observes, this is perplexing, as little of the content of Democracy in America<\/em> was original to its author. \u201cAll the themes that Tocqueville developed,\u201d Jaume writes, \u201cwere being debated, and had already been debated, at the time he published his book.\u201d In particular, Tocqueville\u2019s contemporaries shared a passionate interest in the nature and future of democracy; and all observers agreed that here was a subject on which America had much to teach the old world. In short, Tocqueville reworked ideas that were long familiar, without adding anything that was truly new.<\/p>\n
Why then did Tocqueville write Democracy in America<\/em>? How deeply did Tocqueville share the preoccupations of his time? How, in turn, should we read Tocqueville\u2019s text?<\/p>\n
According to Jaume, to answer these questions we have to understand something about Tocqueville the man. Tocqueville was imbued with the culture of the French aristocracy but he was also a young aristocrat in conflict with the beliefs of his milieu. Thus, in Jaume\u2019s phrase, if Tocqueville became a democrat by reason, he always remained an aristocrat by emotion. This, for example, is how Tocqueville described himself not long after he had set foot on American soil: \u201cTied to the royalists by shared principles and a thousand family connections, I see myself as somehow chained to a party whose conduct strikes me as often not very honourable and nearly always extravagant.\u201d <\/p>\n
In political terms this meant that there was no point lamenting the loss of a bygone age of aristocracy and aristocratic values. Democracy was on the march and the best that could be hoped for was that it would conduct itself wisely. But it also meant that Tocqueville\u2019s liberalism was to remain unambiguously anti-bourgeois and that he was to retain a fear of the unruly masses.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jaume therefore reads Democracy in America<\/em> as a text that \u201cbristles with contradictory voices\u201d. Legitimists, counter-revolutionaries, liberal aristocrats, republicans, followers of the so-called doctrinaires, not to mention Tocqueville\u2019s staunchly monarchist family and friends, jostle for position in a \u201chidden dialogue\u201d. Consciously or not, Jaume tells us, Tocqueville saw America through the eyes of his illustrious uncle, Fran\u00e7ois \u2014 Ren\u00e9 de Chateaubriand. Both favoured liberty while rejecting the power of money: both came to believe in God\u2019s presence in history. By contrast, Tocqueville\u2019s writing style was shaped by the moralists of the French 17th century. From this flowed his desire to resist a use of language that mirrored the confusion prevailing in democratic society.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Most intriguing of all is Jaume\u2019s examination of Tocqueville\u2019s relation to Pascal and the broader tradition of Jansenism. What emerges is a picture of a man drawn by temperament and philosophical outlook to Jansenism\u2019s tragic vision of human finitude and the duality of soul and body. What Pascal portrayed as characteristic of the human condition, Jaume argues, was transposed by Tocqueville into a description of democratic society condemned to permanent agitation and restless anxiety. Like man himself, democracy cannot perceive its own good and is drawn fatally to the pursuit of material pleasures.<\/p>\n
It was Pascal\u2019s Jansenist vision that Tocqueville deployed to highlight the unease and dissatisfaction at the heart of democratic society. The Pens\u00e9es<\/em> tell us that, as soon as we try to moor ourselves to a fixed point, it flees in eternal flight, the abyss reappearing beneath our feet. In a democracy, Tocqueville contends, that fixed point is seen as a condition of equality. However, no sooner does equality appear to be within our grasp than it too eludes us, the desire for equality only becoming more insatiable as we see it hovering in the near-distance. The more equal we are, the more the slightest inequality offends us. <\/p>\n
Herein lies democracy\u2019s greatest peril. Democratic man would give up liberty in favour of equality and the promise of material plenty. Here too, according to Jaume, are found \u201cthe two great ideas that animated all of Tocqueville\u2019s thought\u201d: the resurgence of despotism and the advent of equality. And it is precisely the prominence given to these two themes by Tocqueville that explains why we still read Democracy in America<\/em> and why we do so with such profit. Tocqueville, with greater clarity than anyone before him, saw that the equality of conditions typical of democratic society could give rise to a new form of despotism.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tocqueville also saw that America had contrived ways to counter these tendencies: religion and the family as checks upon individualism; administrative decentralisation and the separation of powers: \u201cself-interest properly understood\u201d. All served to maintain a flourishing local life and thus to preserve liberty.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Of course, Tocqueville did not intend that America should be seen as a model to be copied slavishly. Nor, Jaume concludes, did Tocqueville need to observe the vitality of the New England townships to appreciate the dangers of centralisation. As an aristocratic liberal, family tradition alone would have taught him how an absolutist monarchy could suck the life out of a country.<\/p>\n
Why then did Tocqueville write Democracy in America<\/em>? No clearer answer is to be found than in a letter written by Tocqueville to Silvestre de Sacy in 1840, usefully printed as an appendix to this volume. It reads as follows: \u201cMy purpose in writing [my] book was to reveal the frightening prospects in store for our contemporaries . . . To show . . . that in order to prevent this equality, which we rightly hold dear, from becoming the leprosy of the human race, one must work tirelessly to sustain the flight of ideas, to lift souls toward \u2014 and \u2014 to show that in the democratic age that is just beginning, political liberty is not only beautiful but also necessary for nations to become great and even to remain civilised.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lucien Jaume\u2019s impeccable scholarship helps us better to understand how Tocqueville attained this goal.<\/p>\n
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Inventing the sublime<\/a><\/p>\nWhat to read next<\/h6>\n
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