Abstract
This chapter contributes to the literature on Tocqueville’s “strange liberalism” by wondering: Would Tocqueville endorse a “free market of ideas”? In order to answer this question, it explores the salutary limits he would set to the democratic imagination through religion, mores, and the leadership and authority of public intellectuals. To do so, it enlists comparisons with Plato and Rousseau as thinkers similarly concerned with the relationship between ideas and political life. Standing at the margins of democratic and aristocratic society, Tocqueville tries to temper democratic materialism with spiritualism and aristocratic virtue and liberty. Given scholarship continues to try to define Tocqueville as belonging to one ideological party or another, it remains crucial to highlight where his normatively thick liberalism differs from that of other liberals.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
A note on the interpretation of the Liberty Fund edition: There is a methodological debate to be had regarding the use of manuscript notes, as are included in the Liberty Fund edition, as opposed to using the final published text. In my reading of the manuscript notes alongside the published text, there is nothing of which I am aware, which I have pulled from the notes that directly contradicts the content of the published text. This I feel gives me a certain license to interpret the manuscript notes as included in the Nolla Liberty Fund edition as clarifications of or a working out of ideas that appear in the main text.
- 2.
Jean Yarbrough has a recently published article exploring these ideas, which I did not discover until after my original paper had been submitted, refereed, and returned with edits. Though we have similar concerns, our framing and upshot differ. That said, I nonetheless cite her now in this final draft of the paper.
- 3.
The original Winthrop: “There is a liberty of corrupt nature, which is affected by men and beasts, to do what they list; and this liberty is inconsistent with authority, impatient of all restraint, by this liberty, Sumus Omnes deteriores; ’tis the grand enemy of truth and peace, and all the ordinances of God are bent against it. But there is a civil, moral, a federal liberty, which is the proper end and object of authority; it is a liberty for that only which is just and good; for this liberty you are to stand with the hazard of your very lives.” Tocqueville (2000: 42).
- 4.
For helping me make this connection, I thank my colleague Dimitrios Halikias in the Department of Government at Harvard University, and cite his thoughts on the subject here: http://dhalikias.blogspot.com/2018/07/protagoras-and-marketplace-of-ideas.html
- 5.
From Tocqueville’s notes: “I am firmly persuaded that if you sincerely applied to the search for the true religion the philosophical method of the 18th century, you would without difficulty discover the truth of the dogmas taught by Jesus Christ, and I think you would arrive at Christianity by reason as well as faith.” Tocqueville (2010: 707).
References
Barbeau, A. (2017). Ethics in a Commercial Age: McCloskey, Constant, and Tocqueville on the Bourgeois Virtues. Journal of Private Enterprise 32 (4): 59–70.
Bilakovics, S. (2016). Capitalism as a Road to Serfdom? Tocqueville on Economic Liberty and Human Flourishing. In: Michael R. Strain, and Stan Veuger (eds) Economic Freedom and Human Flourishing: Perspectives from Political Philosophy. Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute.
Boesche, R. (2005). The Dark Side of Tocqueville: On War and Empire. The Review of Politics 67 (4): 737–52.
Boesche, R. (1987). The Strange Liberalism of Alexis De Tocqueville. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.
Boesche, R. (1988). Why Did Tocqueville Fear Abundance? Or the Tension Between Commerce and Citizenship. History of European Ideas 9 (1): 25–45.
Boyd, R. (2001). Tocqueville’s Algeria. Society 38: 65–70.
Boyd, R., and E. Atanassow. (2013). Tocqueville and the Frontiers of Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ceaser, J. (2011). Alexis De Tocqueville and the Two-Founding Thesis. The Review of Politics 73 (2): 219–43.
Craintu, A. (2003). Liberalism under Siege: The Political Thought of the French Doctrinaires. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books.
Craintu, A. (2005). Tocqueville’s Paradoxical Moderation. The Review of Politics 67 (4): 599–630.
Femia, J. (2012). The Antinomies of Conservative Thought. Political Studies Review 10: 221–237.
Gordon, J. (1997). John Stuart Mill and the ‘Marketplace of Ideas’. Social Theory and Practice 23 (2): 235–49.
Hewlett, N. (2000). Tocqueville’s Ghost: The Emergence of the New Liberal Intellectual. Contemporary French Civilization 24 (2): 192–219.
Janara, L. (2001). Commercial Capitalism and the Democratic Psyche: The Threat to Tocquevillean Citizenship (‘Democracy in America’). History of Political Thought 22 (2): 317–50.
Jaume, L. (2013). Tocqueville: The Aristocratic Sources of Liberty. Trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kahan, A. (2009). Alexis De Tocqueville: Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers, volume 7 of Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers. Bloomsbury US.
Kahan, A. (1992). Aristocratic Liberalism: The Social and Political Thought of Jacob Burckhardt, John Stuart Mill, and Alexis De Tocqueville. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kahan, A. (2010). Mind vs. Money: The War between Intellectuals and Capitalism. New York: Transaction Publishers.
Kahan, A. (2015). Tocqueville, Democracy, and Religion: Checks and Balances for Democratic Souls. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kahan, A. (2006). Western Intellectuals and Commercial Society. Society 43 (2): 45–52.
Kaledin, A. (2011) Tocqueville and His America: A Darker Horizon. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Lamberti, J. (1989). Tocqueville and the Two Democracies. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Lawler, P. (1993). The Restless Mind: Alexis De Tocqueville on the Origin and Perpetuation of Human Liberty, Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield. The Libertarian Reader: Classic and Contemporary Writings from Lao-Tzu to Milton Friedman. Ed. David Boaz, New York: Simon and Schuster. 1997.
Manent, P. (1993). Tocqueville Et La Nature De La Démocratie. L’esprit De La Cité. Paris: Fayard.
Manent, P. (1995). An Intellectual History of Liberalism. Trans. Rebecca Balinski. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Manent, P. (2006). Tocqueville, Political Philosopher. In Cheryl B. Welch (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Tocqueville, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 108–20.
Mill, J.S. (1977a). The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XVIII – Essays on Politics and Society Part I. John M. Robson. Online Library of Liberty.
Mill, J.S. (1977b). ‘On Liberty’ and Other Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mitchell, J. (1995). The Fragility of Freedom: Tocqueville on Religion, Democracy, and the American Future. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Mitchell, J. (2007). Tocqueville for a terrible era: Honor, religion, and the persistence of atavisms in the modern age, Critical Review 19 (4): 543–64.
Ostrom, V. (1974). The Intellectual Crisis in American Public Administration. University of Alabama Press.
Ostrom, V. (1997). The Meaning of Democracy and the Vulnerability of Democracies: A Response to Tocqueville’s Challenge. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Plato. (2004). Protagoras and Meno. Trans. Robert Bartlett. Agora Editions: Cornell University Press, 2004.
Pitts, J. (2000). Empire and Democracy: Tocqueville and the Algeria Question. Journal of Political Philosophy 8 (3): 295–318.
Rosanvallon, P. (1985). Le Moment Guizot. Bibliothèque Des Sciences Humaines, Paris: Gallimard.
Rousseau, J. (2012). The Major Political Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Two Discourses and the Social Contract. Trans. John T. Scott. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Smith, S. (2016). Modernity and Its Discontents: Making and Unmaking the Bourgeois from Machiavelli to Bellow. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Tocqueville, A. (2010). Democracy in America. Ed. Eduardo Nolla. Trans. James Schliefer. Liberty Fund: Indianapolis, IN, 2 vols.
Tocqueville, A. (2000). Democracy in America. Ed., trans., introduction by Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Tocqueville, A. (1985). Selected Letters on Politics and Society. Ed. Roger Boesche. Trans. James Toupin and Roger Boesche. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Welch, C. (2006). The Cambridge Companion to Tocqueville. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Wilson, F. (1942). Tocqueville’s Conception of the Elite. The Review of Politics 4 (3): 271–86.
Wolin, S. (2001). Tocqueville between Two Worlds: The Making of a Political and Theoretical Life. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Yarbrough, J. (2018). Tocqueville on the Needs of the Soul. Perspectives on Political Science, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10457097.2018.1440861.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Gustafson, S. (2020). A Tocquevillian Marketplace of Ideas? Spiritualism and Materialism in Tocqueville’s Liberalism. In: Boettke, P., Martin, A. (eds) Exploring the Social and Political Economy of Alexis de Tocqueville. Mercatus Studies in Political and Social Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34937-0_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34937-0_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-34936-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-34937-0
eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceEconomics and Finance (R0)