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The Making of Tocqueville's Democracy in America The Online Library of Liberty A Project Of Liberty Fund, Inc. James T. Schleifer, The Making of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America [1980] The Online Library Of Liberty This E-Book (PDF format) is published by Liberty Fund, Inc., a private, non-profit, educational foundation established in 1960 to encourage study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals. 2010 was the 50th anniversary year of the founding of Liberty Fund. It is part of the Online Library of Liberty web site http://oll.libertyfund.org, which was established in 2004 in order to further the educational goals of Liberty Fund, Inc. To find out more about the author or title, to use the site's powerful search engine, to see other titles in other formats (HTML, facsimile PDF), or to make use of the hundreds of essays, educational aids, and study guides, please visit the OLL web site. This title is also part of the Portable Library of Liberty DVD which contains over 1,000 books and quotes about liberty and power, and is available free of charge upon request. The cuneiform inscription that appears in the logo and serves as a design element in all Liberty Fund books and web sites is the earliest-known written appearance of the word “freedom” (amagi), or “liberty.” It is taken from a clay document written about 2300 B.C. in the Sumerian city-state of Lagash, in present day Iraq. To find out more about Liberty Fund, Inc., or the Online Library of Liberty Project, please contact the Director at [email protected]. LIBERTY FUND, INC. 8335 Allison Pointe Trail, Suite 300 Indianapolis, Indiana 46250-1684 Online Library of Liberty: The Making of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America Edition Used: The Making of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, Foreword by George W. Pierson (2nd edition) (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2000). Author: James T. Schleifer Foreword: George W. Pierson About This Title: A model of intellectual history which documents where, when, and under what influences Alexis de Tocqueville wrote different sections of his Democracy in America and how the central themes of that work - democracy, individualism, centralization, despotism - emerged. PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011) 2 http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/667 Online Library of Liberty: The Making of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America About Liberty Fund: Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals. Copyright Information: The copyright to this edition, in both print and electronic forms, is held by Liberty Fund, Inc. Fair Use Statement: This material is put online to further the educational goals of Liberty Fund, Inc. Unless otherwise stated in the Copyright Information section above, this material may be used freely for educational and academic purposes. It may not be used in any way for profit. PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011) 3 http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/667 Online Library of Liberty: The Making of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America Table Of Contents Foreword Preface to the Liberty Fund Edition Preface to the First Edition Part I: Tocqueville’s Second Voyage to America, 1832–1840 Chapter 1: The Writing of the First Part of the Democracy Chapter 2: An Expanding Task Resumed Part II: How to Account For America? Tocqueville Looks At Some Particular Causes Physiques Chapter 3: An Hypothesis Weighed and Rejected Chapter 4: Further Considerations of Environment Chapter 5: Was Race a Sufficient Explanation of the American Character? Chapter 6: The Transformation of a Continent Part III: Tocqueville and the Union: the Nature and Future of American Federalism Chapter 7: The Bond Between the States and the Central Government Chapter 8: A Prophet In Error Chapter 9: How Large Might a Republic Be? Part IV: Democracy, Centralization, and Democratic Despotisms Chapter 10: Centralization and Local Liberties Chapter 11: Where Would Power Accumulate? Chapter 12: Administrative Centralization and Some Remedies Chapter 13: Tocqueville’s Changing Visions of Democratic Despotism Part V: Democracy, the Individual, and the Masses Chapter 14: The Tyranny of the Majority Chapter 15: The Tyranny of the Majority: Some Paradoxes Chapter 16: Would Démocratie Usher In a New Dark Ages? Chapter 17: Démocratie and Egoïsme Chapter 18: From Egoïsme to Individualisme Part VI: What Tocqueville Meant By Démocratie Chapter 19: Some Meanings of Démocratie Chapter 20: Tocqueville’s Return to America Epilogue How Many Democracies ? Selected Bibliography PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011) 4 http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/667 Online Library of Liberty: The Making of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America [Back to Table of Contents] Foreword Tocqueville? In this second half of the twentieth century—in our age of social anxieties and national self-questioning—thoughtful people have been turning more and more to the complex but extraordinarily illuminating work that the young Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, composed about us almost a century and a half ago. This work was entitled Democracy in America (De la Démocratie en Amérique), and it appeared, as we know, in four volumes. The first two volumes, published in 1835 and translated in England and republished in an American edition in 1838, described and analyzed the American experiment with a clarity, balance, and penetration that were astonishing, and with an overall approval that surprised and delighted American readers. Overnight they became classic and were printed and reprinted, with editions for use in our schools. The second two volumes, only finished and translated in 1840, seemed to focus on equality, or egalitarianism in the modern world, at least as much as on American democratic self-government. Obviously they were philosophic and more remote. Less obviously, we were not culturally ready to assimilate Tocqueville’s pioneering projections into the psychology and sociology of the masses. We regarded ourselves as exceptions, as under a special destiny. So volumes three and four were accepted, but much less read. Then times changed. After the Civil War, as nationalism replaced federalism, and as industrialism took over and the cities grew, Tocqueville’s institutional descriptions of what had been an agrarian republic (volumes one and two) became more and more out of date, while his anxieties about the democratic masses (volumes three and four) appeared to have been refuted by the dazzling expansion and prosperity of the nation. In 1888 James Bryce published his American Commonwealth. And in short order this new classic replaced the old Democracy in schools or private libraries. So Tocqueville was almost forgotten—but has now been revived. A part of the Tocqueville revival (which began about 1938 and which bids fair to continue for many years) was the rediscovery of the Democracy in America, and especially of the second two volumes. What Tocqueville had had to say about American materialism and money-mindedness, about the cultural shallowness of an activist and problem-oriented society, about the instincts and jealous mediocrity of the masses, about the tyranny of the majority and suffocation by sheer numbers, about what wars might do to substitute centralization for freedom, or about the risks of despotism from a democratized bureaucracy, or about the loss of private energy in a welfare state—indeed about an astonishing range of contemporary discomforts and anxieties—rather suddenly and irresistibly, after the Great Depression and World War II and the disillusionments of our worldwide responsibilities, came to seem prophetic, and not only prophetic but challenging and profoundly instructive. So the Démocratie has been partially or wholly retranslated in two important new editions, has reentered the curriculum in our colleges and universities, and is resorted to and quoted by PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011) 5 http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/667 Online Library of Liberty: The Making of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America writers of all parties and persuasions (see the able analysis by Robert Nisbet, “Many Tocquevilles,” in American Scholar, winter 1976–77). A second element contributing to the Tocqueville revival on both sides of the Atlantic has been the recovery, publication, and study of a fascinating variety of Tocqueville and Tocqueville-related manuscripts. This began with the discovery of the existence of the U.S. travel notes and diaries and letters home of Alexis de Tocqueville and his friend and traveling companion Gustave de Beaumont. These were first used in my Tocqueville and Beaumont in America and have now in considerable part been printed in the Oeuvres complètes d’ Alexis de Tocqueville: a still-growing edition which since 1951 has been in the process of republishing all of Tocqueville’s works, together with his published and unpublished papers and conversations and letters. Recently the head of the editorial working committee, André Jardin, and I have also brought out Beaumont’s Lettres d’ Amérique, 1831–1832. And over the years a collection has been forming at Yale which includes not only the many other surviving Beaumont documents but copies of lost Tocqueville materials and the original drafts and the working manuscript of the Democracy itself. So there has come into existence, or been recovered, a wide and informative range of materials on the background, circumstances, composition, and reception of Tocqueville’s masterpiece. Rediscovery of Tocqueville—recovery of his papers—yet there has been one thing missing. Critics and commentators have reread him. Scholars and students have been focusing on particular aspects of Tocqueville’s life, his experiences in England or the revolution of 1848, his religious beliefs or his social and political thought—almost to the point of generating a small but flourishing Tocqueville industry. Yet up until now no one has had the courage to tackle the great volume (I should say the formidable mass) of Tocqueville’s difficult and sometimes almost indecipherable notes and drafts and essays and working manuscript for his celebrated masterpiece—to find out how and why it was put together.
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