“Tocqueville’s limitations,” by Glenn Ellmers (original) (raw)
Editors’ note: “Democracy in America: a symposium” examines the status of popular sovereignty in the United States today, nearly two centuries after the seminal work of the political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville. Other participants include Roger Kimball, Victor Davis Hanson, Daniel J. Mahoney & James Piereson.
Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America is justly regarded as a pathbreaking investigation into the nature of modern politics. A staunch friend of republican self-government, Tocqueville is in this work particularly concerned with identifying those elements that bolster healthy opinions and habits, while also warning against dangerous tendencies that he regards as inherent to the democratic spirit. He is especially percipient on the vital role of religion in promoting the moral habits of self-government, as well as the related emphasis that Americans placed on local institutions and individual initiative for solving problems.
Tocqueville’s understanding of democracy, in its strength as well as its weaknesses, is inseparable from his sympathetic appreciation for the aristocracy he knew in France—the moderate July Monarchy that lasted from 1830 to 1848. Following Aristotle in some respects, he seemed to think that a mild aristocracy and a law-abiding democracy represented the two most reasonable and most achievable “middle” regimes. The just rule of the few (constitutional aristocracy) and the just rule of the many (constitutional democracy) have a certain symmetry or complementarity, and one of Tocqueville’s greatest achievements is to show how elements of aristocracy could enhance democracy’s best features and curb its
Glenn Ellmers is the author of The Narrow Passage: Plato, Foucault, and the Possibility of Political Philosophy (Encounter).
This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 43 Number 2, on page 32
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