DOCSLIB.ORG

Alexis De Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill and Thomas Carlyle on Democracy

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Alexis De Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill and Thomas Carlyle on Democracy ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, JOHN STUART MILL AND THOMAS CARLYLE ON DEMOCRACY GEORGE HENRY WILLIAM CURRIE SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 1 STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY I, George Henry William Currie, confirm that the research included within this thesis is my own work or that where it has been carried out in collaboration with, or supported by others, that this is duly acknowledged below and my contribution indicated. Previously published material is also acknowledged below. I attest that I have exercised reasonable care to ensure that the work is original, and does not to the best of my knowledge break any UK law, infringe any third party’s copyright or other Intellectual Property Right, or contain any confidential material. I accept that the College has the right to use plagiarism detection software to check the electronic version of the thesis. I confirm that this thesis has not been previously submitted for the award of a degree by this or any other university. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author. Signature: Date: 2 ABSTRACT The aim of this thesis is to examine and compare the thought of Alexis de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill and Thomas Carlyle on modern democracy. Throughout their works, Tocqueville, Mill and Carlyle showed a profound engagement with the phenomenon of democracy in their era. It was the crux around which their wider reflections on the period revolved. Tocqueville, Mill and Carlyle located democracy’s causes deep in history. They defined its contours broadly and contextualized it within ancient and modern notions of democracy. Each approached democracy with a significant degree of scepticism and outlined its negative consequences for their contemporaries. But, Tocqueville, Mill and Carlyle also offered solutions to the problems they saw in the modern democratic world, many of which were novel. The present thesis suggests that in these areas there exists a profound similarity between the ideas of Tocqueville, Mill and Carlyle. It has become commonplace to compare the thought of Tocqueville and Mill. Equally, it has become just as commonplace to draw a sharp division between the ideas of Tocqueville and Mill, on the one hand, and Carlyle, on the other. However, the similarities between their respective conceptions of democracy, its causes, problems and the solutions these men offered suggest that such a division could be arbitrary and, consequently, allow us to reassess the intellectual relationship of these three men. 3 CONTENTS Acknowledgments 5 Abbreviations 6 Introduction 8 Chapter One Revolution Past, Present and 41 Future Chapter Two The Coming of Democracy 75 Chapter Three The Contours of Democracy 106 Chapter Four On the Problems of a Democratic 137 Political State Chapter Five Democracy and Society: The 165 Decline of the Individual Chapter Six Reconfiguring State and Society 208 Chapter Seven Securing Society: The Utility of 252 Religion Chapter Eight Reforming the Individual: The 286 Politics of Education Conclusion 318 Bibliography 329 4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the Department of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary College, University of London for the generous support it provided. Without the funding the Department gave me, it would not have been possible to write this thesis. I would also like to thank Professors Jeremy Jennings and Michael Kenny for supervising my research. The comments and criticism they provided were precise and enlightening. 5 ABBREVIATIONS Abbreviations have been used in the footnotes of this thesis in order to make the source of citations clearer than it would otherwise be. CW followed by the volume number in roman numerals refers to The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill. Those that have been cited are listed below. Volume I - Autobiography and Literary Essays. Volume II - The Principles of Political Economy with Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy (Books I-II). Volume III - Principles of Political Economy Part II. Volume IV - Essays on Economics and Society Part I. Volume VIII - A System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive Part II. Volume X - Essays on Ethics, Religion, and Society. Volume XI - Essays on Philosophy and the Classics. Volume XII - The Earlier Letters of John Stuart Mill 1812-1848 Part I. Volume XIII - The Earlier Letters of John Stuart Mill 1812-1848 Part II. Volume XIV - The Later Letters of John Stuart Mill 1849-1873 Part I. Volume XV - The Later Letters of John Stuart Mill 1849-1873 Part II. Volume XVIII - Essays on Politics and Society Part I. Volume XIX - Essays on Politics and Society Part 2. Volume XX - Essays on French History and Historians. 6 Volume XXII - Newspaper Writings December 1822 - July 1831 Part I. Volume XXV - Newspaper Writings December 1847 - July 1873 Part IV. CE followed by the volume number in roman numerals refers to The Works of Thomas Carlyle in Thirty Volumes Centenary Edition. Those that have been cited are listed below. Volume VI Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches I. Volume XX Latter-Day Pamphlets. Volume XXVII Critical and Miscellaneous Essays II. Volume XXVIII Critical and Miscellaneous Essays III. Volume XXIX Critical and Miscellaneous Essays IV. Carlyle Letters Online followed by a web address refers to letters from The Carlyle Letters Online, an online collection of the collected letters on Thomas Carlyle and his wife Jane Welsh Carlyle. The links cited were correct as of the 5th May 2015. 7 INTRODUCTION Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) and Thomas Carlyle (1795- 1881) lie at the root of modern British attempts to demarcate the contours of modern democracy. Numerous contemporary thinkers were grappling with the emergence of democracy in Western Europe and the United States. However, influential thinkers in the sphere of British political thought reflected far less deeply on the historical significance and ethical foundations of democracy prior to the intervention of Tocqueville, Mill and Carlyle. Formerly, the idea of democracy had been little more than a rallying cry – a banner behind which radicals of all shapes and sizes stood arrayed against a range of reactionary and conservative forces. Democracy was a little more than a rhetorical device that was poorly defined. Traditionally, Tocqueville, Mill and Carlyle have been separated and understood through the prism of different political traditions. To a large extent, this division is just. On many political and social issues, they held opposing views. Even Tocqueville and Mill, two figures that it has become commonplace to compare and, almost, unite intellectually, disagreed on many areas of political and social practice. However, when considered in the light of the ideas each held about democracy this division seems, to a large extent, to be arbitrary. These men shared a singular and highly similar understanding of democracy, its meaning, history and problems. Moreover, although they did not suggest similar measures about how to solve the difficulties presented by the onset of democracy, their ideas on this subject were often grounded on similar principles. Fundamentally, Tocqueville, Mill and Carlyle were united in their analysis of democracy and this marks them out and connects them together. 8 The novelty of these men was to place the idea of democracy in a richer ethical context. In its broadest terms, the present thesis is an account of the efforts these men made to comprehend the birth of the modern democracy, its meaning and its consequences. It is, therefore, an attempt to understand how they re-imagined democracy and gave it a fuller ethical identity, which incorporated diverse historical and contemporary strands of thought. This was particularly significant in the British context, where ideas about democracy were much less sophisticated than those that were circulating in continental European spheres. This thesis demonstrates the extent to which British thinkers benefitted from engagement with continental European ideas about democracy. The impact of these ideas, as the choice of Mill and Carlyle shows, diffused throughout different British political traditions. This has not been sufficiently recognized in the existing literature. In comparing Tocqueville, Mill and Carlyle, we can start to see ideas about democracy emerge that are characteristically modern and, more significantly for the purposes of the present thesis, we can also understand how continental European notions of democracy exerted an influence over the development of British conceptions of this idea. Tocqueville, Mill and Carlyle each believed that the modern era was signally democratic. The choice between democracy and some alternative system of politics and society was denied to Tocqueville, Mill and Carlyle, not to mention their contemporaries. The modern age into which their generation had been born was not isolated from the stream of history. It was squarely placed, according to Tocqueville, Mill and Carlyle, in the midst of a protean historical sequence at the end of which lay democracy. In fact, these three men saw their era as the dénouement of this process. The French Revolution had announced the triumph of democracy, but it was merely the final blow to an antiquated system of politics and society. 9 The emphasis that their works place on democracy’s advent is equalled only by their analysis of it as a phenomenon. Democracy connoted a number of distinct institutions, ideas and means of interaction in the eyes of Tocqueville, Mill and Carlyle. Principally, they divided it into two forms – the social and the political. It is through this division that the analysis of democracy in their works proceeds. Unsurprisingly, the separation of the political and social spheres of democracy that Tocqueville, Mill and Carlyle engineered was also reflected in the criticisms they levelled at it. For, democracy appeared to these men to be neither benign nor entirely desirable.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Constantly Approximating Popular Sovereignty: Seven Fundamental Principles of Constitutional Law
    William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal Volume 19 (2010-2011) Issue 2 Article 2 December 2010 Constantly Approximating Popular Sovereignty: Seven Fundamental Principles of Constitutional Law Wilson R. Huhn Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmborj Part of the Constitutional Law Commons Repository Citation Wilson R. Huhn, Constantly Approximating Popular Sovereignty: Seven Fundamental Principles of Constitutional Law, 19 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 291 (2010), https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/ wmborj/vol19/iss2/2 Copyright c 2010 by the authors. This article is brought to you by the William & Mary Law School Scholarship Repository. https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmborj CONSTANTLY APPROXIMATING POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY: SEVEN FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW Wilson R. Huhn* constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated . .1 In 1988, renowned historian Edmund S. Morgan published Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America.2 In that brilliant and wide-ranging book Morgan traces how, between the time of the English Civil War in the mid-seventeenth century and the adoption of the American Constitution in 1787, the idea of “popular sovereignty”—the right of the people to govern themselves— replaced the notion of “the divine right of kings” as the acknowledged source of political power.3 The central theme of Morgan’s work is that while popular sover- eignty is a “fiction” in the sense that the people of a nation cannot actually rule them- selves without creating a government,4 over the centuries our ancestors constantly labored to create a society and a government which gradually came closer to the realization of that principle—a closer approximation of the ideal of popular sover- eignty.5 At the end of Inventing the People, Morgan concludes: * C.
    [Show full text]
  • Popular Sovereignty, Slavery in the Territories, and the South, 1785-1860
    Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2010 Popular sovereignty, slavery in the territories, and the South, 1785-1860 Robert Christopher Childers Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Childers, Robert Christopher, "Popular sovereignty, slavery in the territories, and the South, 1785-1860" (2010). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 1135. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/1135 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY, SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES, AND THE SOUTH, 1785-1860 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of History by Robert Christopher Childers B.S., B.S.E., Emporia State University, 2002 M.A., Emporia State University, 2004 May 2010 For my wife ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Writing history might seem a solitary task, but in truth it is a collaborative effort. Throughout my experience working on this project, I have engaged with fellow scholars whose help has made my work possible. Numerous archivists aided me in the search for sources. Working in the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill gave me access to the letters and writings of southern leaders and common people alike.
    [Show full text]
  • Seven Atheisms
    SEVEN ATHEISMS Andrew Walker SEVEN ATHEISMS Exploring the varieties of atheism in John Gray’s book Seven Types of Atheism Andrew Walker Emeritus Professor of Theology, Culture and Education, King’s College London Christian Evidence Society christianevidence.org Text copyright © Andrew Walker 2019 Published by the Christian Evidence Society, London, 2019 christianevidence.com All rights reserved Editing and design: Simon Jenkins Cover photograph by PhotoDu.de / CreativeDomainPhotography.com. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) license Contents Introduction 5 The seven atheisms 19th century atheism 6 Secular humanism 8 Science as religion 12 Modern politicial religion 15 God-haters 18 Atheism without progress 22 The atheism of silence 25 Conclusion 27 Index 30 Introduction John Gray’s Seven Types of Atheism (Allen Lane, 2018) is an important book for both religious and non-religious readers. John Gray, who describes himself as an atheist, is nevertheless critical of most versions of atheism. His attitude to atheism is the same as his attitude to certain types of religion. This attitude is predicated upon Gray’s conviction that human beings are intrinsically dissatisfied and unpredictable creatures who can never get along with each other for any length of time. His view is based on a reading of human nature that sails close to the wind of the Christian concept of original sin, and is out of step with most modern forms of atheism. In particular, Gray is allergic to any forms of cultural progress in human behaviour especially if they are couched in positivistic or evolutionary terms. 5 ATHEISM 1 19th century atheism Gray sets out his stall in his first chapter, ‘The New Atheism: A Nineteenth- century Orthodoxy’.
    [Show full text]
  • Twenty-Four Conservative-Liberal Thinkers Part I Hannes H
    Hannes H. Gissurarson Twenty-Four Conservative-Liberal Thinkers Part I Hannes H. Gissurarson Twenty-Four Conservative-Liberal Thinkers Part I New Direction MMXX CONTENTS Hannes H. Gissurarson is Professor of Politics at the University of Iceland and Director of Research at RNH, the Icelandic Research Centre for Innovation and Economic Growth. The author of several books in Icelandic, English and Swedish, he has been on the governing boards of the Central Bank of Iceland and the Mont Pelerin Society and a Visiting Scholar at Stanford, UCLA, LUISS, George Mason and other universities. He holds a D.Phil. in Politics from Oxford University and a B.A. and an M.A. in History and Philosophy from the University of Iceland. Introduction 7 Snorri Sturluson (1179–1241) 13 St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) 35 John Locke (1632–1704) 57 David Hume (1711–1776) 83 Adam Smith (1723–1790) 103 Edmund Burke (1729–1797) 129 Founded by Margaret Thatcher in 2009 as the intellectual Anders Chydenius (1729–1803) 163 hub of European Conservatism, New Direction has established academic networks across Europe and research Benjamin Constant (1767–1830) 185 partnerships throughout the world. Frédéric Bastiat (1801–1850) 215 Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859) 243 Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) 281 New Direction is registered in Belgium as a not-for-profit organisation and is partly funded by the European Parliament. Registered Office: Rue du Trône, 4, 1000 Brussels, Belgium President: Tomasz Poręba MEP Executive Director: Witold de Chevilly Lord Acton (1834–1902) 313 The European Parliament and New Direction assume no responsibility for the opinions expressed in this publication.
    [Show full text]
  • A Critique of John Stuart Mill Chris Daly
    Southern Illinois University Carbondale OpenSIUC Honors Theses University Honors Program 5-2002 The Boundaries of Liberalism in a Global Era: A Critique of John Stuart Mill Chris Daly Follow this and additional works at: http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/uhp_theses Recommended Citation Daly, Chris, "The Boundaries of Liberalism in a Global Era: A Critique of John Stuart Mill" (2002). Honors Theses. Paper 131. This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the University Honors Program at OpenSIUC. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of OpenSIUC. For more information, please contact [email protected]. r The Boundaries of Liberalism in a Global Era: A Critique of John Stuart Mill Chris Daly May 8, 2002 r ABSTRACT The following study exanunes three works of John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, Utilitarianism, and Three Essays on Religion, and their subsequent effects on liberalism. Comparing the notion on individual freedom espoused in On Liberty to the notion of the social welfare in Utilitarianism, this analysis posits that it is impossible for a political philosophy to have two ultimate ends. Thus, Mill's liberalism is inherently flawed. As this philosophy was the foundation of Mill's progressive vision for humanity that he discusses in his Three Essays on Religion, this vision becomes paradoxical as well. Contending that the neo-liberalist global economic order is the contemporary parallel for Mill's religion of humanity, this work further demonstrates how these philosophical flaws have spread to infect the core of globalization in the 21 st century as well as their implications for future international relations.
    [Show full text]
  • Christianity, Natural Law and the So-Called Liberal State
    Christianity, Natural Law and the So-called Liberal State James Gordley According to the Book of Genesis, “God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” (Gen. 1:26–7) Here, my former colleague Jeremy Waldron has said, is “a doctrine [that]is enormously attractive for those of us who are open to the idea of religious foundations for human rights.”1 What is special about man is that he is created in the image of God. Waldron noted that “[m]any object to the political use of any deep doctrine of this kind. For some, this is a special case of a Rawlsian commitment to standards of public reason generally.”2 He quotes Rawls: “In discussing constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice we are not to appeal to comprehensive religious or philosophical doctrines” but only to “plain truths now widely accepted, and available, to citizens generally.”3 I will come back to this objection later. Rawls’ claim is particularly important for present purposes since he has said the most about what other people can and cannot say in the public forum. Waldron’s own difficulty is with “the further question of what work [this doctrine] can do.”4 Why does it matter? He quoted Anthony Appiah who said, “[w]e do not have to agree that we are created in the image of God ... to agree that we do not want to be tortured by government officials.”5 Towards the end of his article Waldon noted that “[c]onsistently, for almost the whole of the Christian era imago Dei [the image of God] has been associated with man’s capacity for practical reason...”6 He quoted Thomas Aquinas: “man is united to God by his reason or mind, in which is God’s image.”7 I think if he had pursued this point further he could have answered his question.
    [Show full text]
  • Heroic Individualism: the Hero As Author in Democratic Culture Alan I
    Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2006 Heroic individualism: the hero as author in democratic culture Alan I. Baily Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Baily, Alan I., "Heroic individualism: the hero as author in democratic culture" (2006). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 1073. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/1073 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. HEROIC INDIVIDUALISM: THE HERO AS AUTHOR IN DEMOCRATIC CULTURE A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Political Science by Alan I. Baily B.S., Texas A&M University—Commerce, 1999 M.A., Louisiana State University, 2003 December, 2006 It has been well said that the highest aim in education is analogous to the highest aim in mathematics, namely, to obtain not results but powers , not particular solutions but the means by which endless solutions may be wrought. He is the most effective educator who aims less at perfecting specific acquirements that at producing that mental condition which renders acquirements easy, and leads to their useful application; who does not seek to make his pupils moral by enjoining particular courses of action, but by bringing into activity the feelings and sympathies that must issue in noble action.
    [Show full text]
  • Revolution and Modern Political Thought FALL 2014, Government 150W 06
    Revolution and Modern Political Thought FALL 2014, Government 150W 06 Professor Ross Carroll E mail: [email protected] Class time: TR 3:30- 4:50pm Office: Blow Hall 151 Classroom: Morton Hall 4 Office Hours: Wed, 9am-12 and by appointment Course Description The concept of revolution stands at the center of our understanding of modern politics. Journalists and political scientists routinely use the term ‘revolution’ to capture phenomenon as disparate as the Arab Spring and the Tea Party movement, while the roster of celebrated revolutionaries has included communist guerrillas (Che Guevara) and conservative US Presidents (Reagan). Yet the casualness with which the language of revolution is employed conceals the fact that few concepts in the history of political thought have had their meaning as heavily disputed. Focusing primarily on the American and French revolutions of the late eighteenth century we will trace the troubled conceptual career of revolution, posing the following questions as we go: What distinguishes a revolution from a mere rebellion, revolt or other tumultuous event? What sources of authority or legitimacy have modern revolutionaries drawn upon? Are revolutions inextricably associated with political violence and if so how can that violence be tempered? Are attempts to remodel society in accordance with some rational scheme necessarily doomed to fail? Accompanying us in our engagement with these questions will be a group of eighteenth and nineteenth century political theorists and polemicists who came to grips with the phenomenon of revolution, its promises and its dangers, like few others before or since: John Locke, Thomas Paine, Edmund Burke, Abbé Sieyès, the Marquis de Condorcet, Benjamin Constant, Mary Wollstonecraft, Alexis de Tocqueville, Karl Marx and Hannah Arendt The course concludes with a set of reflections on contemporary attempts to revive and reinterpret the eighteenth century revolutionary tradition in contemporary American and world politics.
    [Show full text]
  • From Liberalisms to Enlightenment's Wake
    JOURNAL OF IBERTARIAN TUDIES S L S JL VOLUME 21, NO. 3 (FALL 2007): 79–114 GRAY’S PROGRESS: FROM LIBERALISMS TO ENLIGHTENMENT’S WAKE JEREMY SHEARMUR The progress of that darkness . from its first approach to the period of greatest obscuration. William Robertson, History of the Reign of Charles the Fifth I HAVE KNOWN JOHN Gray for quite a few years, and have long admired his work. We were among the (very few) political theorists in the U.K. who, in the early 1970s, had an interest in the work of Hayek, and more generally in issues relating to classical liberalism. During the 1980s, he emerged as the most powerful and effective theorist of classical liberalism in the U.K., notably through his re- interpretations of John Stuart Mill in Mill on Liberty (1983a), his Hayek and Liberty (1984), and his overview and critical assessment of the lib- eral tradition, Liberalism (1986). We had, over the years, various dis- cussions about Hayek and liberalism—as Gray mentions in his Hayek on Liberty—and in that connection we shared many intellectual con- cerns; notably, with problems about how classical liberalism related to particular traditional cultures, and about the value of lives that did not involve autonomy in any significant sense. Our discussions about these and related matters were occasional, and typically by telephone or at Liberty Fund conferences. In the course of one of these conversations, I suggested to Gray that he might consider col- lecting some of his essays on liberalism into a volume, as he kindly JEREMY SHEARMUR is Reader in Philosophy at the Australian National University.
    [Show full text]
  • The Restless Liberalism of Alexis De Tocqueville
    FILOZOFIA ___________________________________________________________________________Roč. 72, 2017, č. 9 THE RESTLESS LIBERALISM OF ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE JAKUB TLOLKA, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK TLOLKA, J.: The Restless Liberalism of Alexis de Tocqueville FILOZOFIA, 72, No. 9, 2017, pp. 736-747 This essay attempts to contextualise the purported novelty of Alexis de Tocqueville’s particular brand of liberalism. It regards the author not as an heir or precursor to any given political tradition, but rather as a compelled syncretist whose primary philosophical concern was the moral significance of the democratic age. It suggests that Tocqueville devised his ‘new political science’ with a keen view to the existential implications of modernity. In order to support that suggestion, the essay explores the genealogy of Tocqueville’s moral and political thought and draws a relation between his analysis of democracy and his personal experience of modernity. Keywords: A. de Tocqueville – Modernity – Liberalism – Inquiétude – Religion Introduction. Relatively few authors in the history of political thought have produced an intellectual legacy of such overarching resonance as Alexis de Tocqueville. Even fewer, perhaps, have so persistently eluded ordinary analytical and exegetical frameworks, presenting to each astute observer a face so nuanced as to preclude serious interpretive consensus. As writes Lakoff (Lakoff 1998), ‘disagreement over textual interpretation in the study of political thought is not uncommon’. However, ‘it usually arises around those who left writings of a patently divergent character’ (p. 437). When we thus consider the ‘extraordinarily coherent and consistent nature’ of Alexis de Tocqueville’s political philosophy, it appears somewhat odd that the academic consensus surrounding that author relates almost exclusively to the grandeur of his intellectual achievement (Lukacs 1959, 6).
    [Show full text]
  • American Civil Associations and the Growth of American Government: an Appraisal of Alexis De Tocqueville’S Democracy in America (1835-1840) Applied to Franklin D
    City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 2-2017 American Civil Associations and the Growth of American Government: An Appraisal of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1835-1840) Applied to Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and the Post-World War II Welfare State John P. Varacalli The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1828 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] AMERICAN CIVIL ASSOCIATIONS AND THE GROWTH OF AMERICAN GOVERNMENT: AN APPRAISAL OF ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE’S DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA (1835- 1840) APPLIED TO FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT’S NEW DEAL AND THE POST-WORLD WAR II WELFARE STATE by JOHN P. VARACALLI A master’s thesis submitted to the Graduate Program in Liberal Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, The City University of New York 2017 © 2017 JOHN P. VARACALLI All Rights Reserved ii American Civil Associations and the Growth of American Government: An Appraisal of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1835-1840) Applied to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and the Post World War II Welfare State by John P. Varacalli The manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Liberal Studies in satisfaction of the thesis requirement for the degree of Master of Arts ______________________ __________________________________________ Date David Gordon Thesis Advisor ______________________ __________________________________________ Date Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis Acting Executive Officer THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii ABSTRACT American Civil Associations and the Growth of American Government: An Appraisal of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (1835-1840) Applied to Franklin D.
    [Show full text]
  • Alexis De Tocqueville Chronicler of the American Democratic Experiment
    Economic Insights FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF DALLAS VOLUME 5, NUMBER 1 Alexis de Tocqueville Chronicler of the American Democratic Experiment The Early Years bring Tocqueville fame and honors. In Born in Paris in 1805, Alexis- 1833, about a year after Tocqueville We are pleased to add this piece on Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville returned to France, the report on Alexis de Tocqueville to our series of profiles entered the world in the early and most American prisons, The U.S. Penitentiary powerful days of Napoleon’s empire. System and Its Application in France, that began with Frédéric Bastiat and Friedrich His parents were of the nobility and was published. von Hayek. Both Bastiat and Hayek were had taken the historical family name of Things in France changed for Beau- strong and influential proponents of indi- Tocqueville, which dated from the mont and Tocqueville upon their return early 17th century and was a region after 10 months in America. Both men vidual liberty and free enterprise. While they of France known previously as the left the judiciary. Beaumont was offi- approached those topics from a theoretical Leverrier fief. cially let go, and Tocqueville resigned perspective, Tocqueville’s views on early Tocqueville’s father supported the in sympathetic protest. Tocqueville then French monarchy and played no seri- had ample time to work on his master- American and French democracy were based ous role in public affairs until after piece, Democracy in America. Volume 1 on his keen personal observations and his- Napoleon’s final defeat at Waterloo, was published in 1835.
    [Show full text]