Tocqueville

Contemporary philosophy

Tocqueville was a nineteenth-century French philosopher (1805-1859). Born into a family of Norman nobility, he obtained a law degree and was appointed auditing judge at the court of Versailles. He travelled to the United States to study the American prison system. On his return, he became a lawyer and published Democracy in America, which was enormously successful. He was elected Member of Parliament, then General Councillor for La Manche, and finally Minister of Foreign Affairs. Hostile to Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, he was arrested and subsequently withdrew from political life.

Tocqueville's Works Summarised on This Site

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Democracy in America

In this work, Tocqueville shares the political reflections suggested to him by his trip to America. He compares France and America, but also democracy and the Ancien Régime

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Bibliography

Here are the essential books if you wish to gain a better understanding of this author's thought:

Mansfield, Harvey C. Tocqueville: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Mitchell, Joshua. The Fragility of Freedom: Tocqueville on Religion, Democracy, and the American Future. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Wolin, Sheldon. Tocqueville Between Two Worlds. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001.
Schleifer, James T. The Chicago Companion to Tocqueville's Democracy in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012
Welch, Cheryl. The Cambridge Companion to Tocqueville. Cambridge, Eng., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006

Biography: Life of Tocqueville

Youth

Alexis de Tocqueville was born in 1805 in Paris, into a family of Norman nobility. His parents, staunch royalists, were connected through family ties to Malesherbes, the lawyer who had defended Louis XVI. They were arrested by the revolutionary government and narrowly escaped the guillotine, surviving only with the fall of Robespierre in 1794, after which they went into exile.

They returned to France when Napoleon came to power, and Henri de Tocqueville, the philosopher's father, became a peer of France and a prefect.

Tocqueville studied at the Jesuit college in Metz, where he studied philosophy and rhetoric. He then went to Paris, took a law degree, and was appointed auditing judge at a court in Versailles.

These were the years of the July Monarchy: power had passed not to the Bourbons but to the younger Orléans branch of the royal family. As a judge, Alexis de Tocqueville agreed to swear allegiance to the new government — a decision that caused friction with his family, who remained loyal to the Bourbons.

Travel and Writing

In 1831, he was sent on a mission to the United States to study the American penitentiary system. The July Monarchy government hoped to draw useful lessons from observing practices in other countries.

He spent nine months in America. On his return, he became a lawyer and had a significant encounter with the Attorney General of the State of Louisiana, who was visiting France and furnished him with extensive information about American law, demographics and the economy.

His travels and conversations provided ample material for his major work, Democracy in America. The first volume appeared in 1835 to great acclaim.

After a trip to England, where he met John Stuart Mill, he was made a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur and elected to the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. Following the publication of the second volume in 1840, he was appointed to the Académie française.

Politics

He then entered politics and was elected deputy for La Manche, a seat he held for ten years until 1851.

Unlike his family, Alexis was no ultra-royalist. A liberal, he accepted the principles of the Revolution while condemning its excesses — a position that set him apart from the supporters of the Restoration.

He wrote three significant reports on the abolition of slavery, prison reform and the colonisation of Algeria, which had just begun. He predicted a new revolution — a prophecy that came true less than a year later, to general astonishment, in 1848.

He served as general councillor of the Manche department from 1842 to 1852, and as president of its general council from 1849 to 1851.

After the 1848 Revolution, Tocqueville took part in the Constituent Assembly and in the drafting of the new Constitution. Aligned with the conservative camp, he approved the repression of the June Days.

He became vice-president of the Legislative Assembly in 1849, then Minister of Foreign Affairs under Napoleon III. He opposed the coup d'état staged by Napoleon III at the end of his presidential term, was briefly imprisoned as a result, and then retired from public life.

He turned to writing a new work, The Old Regime and the Revolution, of which only the first volume was completed.

Stricken by tuberculosis, Tocqueville died in Cannes in 1859.

Main Works

Democracy in America
The Old Regime and the Revolution