Tocqueville Between Two Worlds

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Tocqueville between Two Worlds

Sheldon S. Wolin
Tocqueville between Two Worlds Book PDF

Author : Sheldon S. Wolin
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 697 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2009-02-09
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781400824793

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Tocqueville between Two Worlds by Sheldon S. Wolin Pdf

Alexis de Tocqueville may be the most influential political thinker in American history. He also led an unusually active and ambitious career in French politics. In this magisterial book, one of America's most important contemporary theorists draws on decades of research and thought to present the first work that fully connects Tocqueville's political and theoretical lives. In doing so, Sheldon Wolin presents sweeping new interpretations of Tocqueville's major works and of his place in intellectual history. As he traces the origins and impact of Tocqueville's ideas, Wolin also offers a profound commentary on the general trajectory of Western political life over the past two hundred years. Wolin proceeds by examining Tocqueville's key writings in light of his experiences in the troubled world of French politics. He portrays Democracy in America, for example, as a theory of discovery that emerged from Tocqueville's contrasting experiences of America and of France's constitutional monarchy. He shows us how Tocqueville used Recollections to reexamine his political commitments in light of the revolutions of 1848 and the threat of socialism. He portrays The Old Regime and the French Revolution as a work of theoretical history designed to throw light on the Bonapartist despotism he saw around him. Throughout, Wolin highlights the tensions between Tocqueville's ideas and his activities as a politician, arguing that--despite his limited political success--Tocqueville was ''perhaps the last influential theorist who can be said to have truly cared about political life.'' In the course of the book, Wolin also shows that Tocqueville struggled with many of the forces that constrain politics today, including the relentless advance of capitalism, of science and technology, and of state bureaucracy. He concludes that Tocqueville's insights and anxieties about the impotence of politics in a ''postaristocratic'' era speak directly to the challenges of our own ''postdemocratic'' age. A monumental new study of Tocqueville, this is also a rich and provocative work about the past, the present, and the future of democratic life in America and abroad.

Tocqueville in Arabia

Joshua Mitchell
Tocqueville in Arabia Book PDF

Author : Joshua Mitchell
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 209 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2013-08-27
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780226087450

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Tocqueville in Arabia by Joshua Mitchell Pdf

We live in the democratic age. So wrote Alexis de Tocqueville, in 1835, in his magisterial work, Democracy in America. This did not mean, as so many have believed after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, that the political apparatus of democracy would sweep the world. Rather, Tocqueville meant that as each nation left behind the vestiges of its aristocracy, life for its citizens or subjects would be increasingly isolated and lonely. In America, more than a half century of scholarship has explored and chronicled our growing isolation and loneliness. What of the Middle East? Does Tocqueville prediction—confirmed already by the American experience—hold true there as well? Americans look to the Middle East and see a rich network of familial and tribal linkages that seem to suggest that Tocqueville’s analysis does not apply. A closer look reveals that this is not true. In the Middle East today, citizens and subjects live amidst a profound tension: familial and tribal linkages hold them fast, and at the same time rapid modernization has left them as isolated and lonely as so many Americans are today. The looming question, anticipated so long ago by Tocqueville, is how they will respond to this isolation and loneliness. Joshua Mitchell has spent years teaching Tocqueville’s classic account, Democracy in America, in America and the Arab Gulf and, with Tocqueville in Arabia, he offers a profound account of how the crisis of isolation and loneliness is playing out in similar and in different ways, in America and in the Middle East. While American students tend to value individualism and commercial self-interest, Middle Eastern students have grave doubts about individualism and a deep suspicion about capitalism, which they believe risks the destruction of long-held loyalties and obligations. Where American students, in their more reflective moments, long for more durable links than they currently have, the bonds that constrain the freedoms Middle Eastern students imagine the modern world offers at once frighten them and enkindle their imagination. When pondering suffering, American students tend to believe its causes can be engineered away, through better education and the advances of science. Middle Eastern students tend still to offer religious accounts, but are also enticed by the answers Americans give―and wonder if the two accounts can coexist at all. Moving back and forth between self-understandings in America and in the Middle East, Mitchell offers a framework for understanding the common challenges in both regions, and highlights the great temptation both will have to overcome—rejecting the seeming incoherence of the democratic age, and opting for one or another scheme to re-enchant the world. Whether these schemes take the form of various purported Islamic movements in the Middle East, or the form of enchanted nationalism in American and in Europe, the remedy sought will not cure the ailment of the democratic age. About this, Mitchell comes to the defense Tocqueville long ago offered: the dilemmas of the democratic age can be courageously endured, but they cannot resolved. We live in a time rife with mutual misunderstandings between America and the Middle East. Tocqueville in Arabia offers a guide to the present, troubled times, leavened by the author’s hopes about the future.

Tocqueville and His America

Arthur Kaledin
Tocqueville and His America Book PDF

Author : Arthur Kaledin
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 478 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2011-08-23
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780300119312

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Tocqueville and His America by Arthur Kaledin Pdf

Kaledin offers an original combination of biography, character study and wide-ranging analysis of Toqueville's 'Democracy in America', bringing new light to that classic work.

Tocqueville and the Frontiers of Democracy

Ewa Atanassow,Richard Boyd
Tocqueville and the Frontiers of Democracy Book PDF

Author : Ewa Atanassow,Richard Boyd
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2013-03-29
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781107328327

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Tocqueville and the Frontiers of Democracy by Ewa Atanassow,Richard Boyd Pdf

Alexis de Tocqueville is widely cited as an authority on civil society, religion and American political culture, yet his thoughts on democratization outside the West and the challenges of a globalizing age are less known and often misunderstood. This collection of essays by a distinguished group of international scholars explores Tocqueville's vision of democracy in Asia and the Middle East; the relationship between globalization and democracy; colonialism, Islam and Hinduism; and the ethics of international relations. Rather than simply documenting Tocqueville's own thoughts, the volume applies the Frenchman's insights to enduring dilemmas of democratization and cross-cultural exchanges in the twenty-first century. This is one of the few books to shift the focus of Tocqueville studies away from America and Western Europe, expanding the frontiers of democracy and highlighting the international dimensions of Tocqueville's political thought.

Tocqueville

Lucien Jaume
Tocqueville Book PDF

Author : Lucien Jaume
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 360 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2013-03-21
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781400846726

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Tocqueville by Lucien Jaume Pdf

Many American readers like to regard Alexis de Tocqueville as an honorary American and democrat--as the young French aristocrat who came to early America and, enthralled by what he saw, proceeded to write an American book explaining democratic America to itself. Yet, as Lucien Jaume argues in this acclaimed intellectual biography, Democracy in America is best understood as a French book, written primarily for the French, and overwhelmingly concerned with France. "America," Jaume says, "was merely a pretext for studying modern society and the woes of France." For Tocqueville, in short, America was a mirror for France, a way for Tocqueville to write indirectly about his own society, to engage French thinkers and debates, and to come to terms with France's aristocratic legacy. By taking seriously the idea that Tocqueville's French context is essential for understanding Democracy in America, Jaume provides a powerful and surprising new interpretation of Tocqueville's book as well as a fresh intellectual and psychological portrait of the author. Situating Tocqueville in the context of the crisis of authority in postrevolutionary France, Jaume shows that Tocqueville was an ambivalent promoter of democracy, a man who tried to reconcile himself to the coming wave, but who was also nostalgic for the aristocratic world in which he was rooted--and who believed that it would be necessary to preserve aristocratic values in order to protect liberty under democracy. Indeed, Jaume argues that one of Tocqueville's most important and original ideas was to recognize that democracy posed the threat of a new and hidden form of despotism.

Democracy in America (Complete)

Alexis de Tocqueville
Democracy in America Complete Book PDF

Author : Alexis de Tocqueville
Publisher : Library of Alexandria
Page : 1320 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2020-09-28
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781613105009

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Democracy in America (Complete) by Alexis de Tocqueville Pdf

Amongst the novel objects that attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, nothing struck me more forcibly than the general equality of conditions. I readily discovered the prodigious influence which this primary fact exercises on the whole course of society, by giving a certain direction to public opinion, and a certain tenor to the laws; by imparting new maxims to the governing powers, and peculiar habits to the governed. I speedily perceived that the influence of this fact extends far beyond the political character and the laws of the country, and that it has no less empire over civil society than over the Government; it creates opinions, engenders sentiments, suggests the ordinary practices of life, and modifies whatever it does not produce. The more I advanced in the study of American society, the more I perceived that the equality of conditions is the fundamental fact from which all others seem to be derived, and the central point at which all my observations constantly terminated. I then turned my thoughts to our own hemisphere, where I imagined that I discerned something analogous to the spectacle which the New World presented to me. I observed that the equality of conditions is daily progressing towards those extreme limits which it seems to have reached in the United States, and that the democracy which governs the American communities appears to be rapidly rising into power in Europe. I hence conceived the idea of the book which is now before the reader. It is evident to all alike that a great democratic revolution is going on amongst us; but there are two opinions as to its nature and consequences. To some it appears to be a novel accident, which as such may still be checked; to others it seems irresistible, because it is the most uniform, the most ancient, and the most permanent tendency which is to be found in history. Let us recollect the situation of France seven hundred years ago, when the territory was divided amongst a small number of families, who were the owners of the soil and the rulers of the inhabitants; the right of governing descended with the family inheritance from generation to generation; force was the only means by which man could act on man, and landed property was the sole source of power. Soon, however, the political power of the clergy was founded, and began to exert itself: the clergy opened its ranks to all classes, to the poor and the rich, the villein and the lord; equality penetrated into the Government through the Church, and the being who as a serf must have vegetated in perpetual bondage took his place as a priest in the midst of nobles, and not infrequently above the heads of kings. The different relations of men became more complicated and more numerous as society gradually became more stable and more civilized. Thence the want of civil laws was felt; and the order of legal functionaries soon rose from the obscurity of the tribunals and their dusty chambers, to appear at the court of the monarch, by the side of the feudal barons in their ermine and their mail. Whilst the kings were ruining themselves by their great enterprises, and the nobles exhausting their resources by private wars, the lower orders were enriching themselves by commerce. The influence of money began to be perceptible in State affairs. The transactions of business opened a new road to power, and the financier rose to a station of political influence in which he was at once flattered and despised. Gradually the spread of mental acquirements, and the increasing taste for literature and art, opened chances of success to talent; science became a means of government, intelligence led to social power, and the man of letters took a part in the affairs of the State. The value attached to the privileges of birth decreased in the exact proportion in which new paths were struck out to advancement. In the eleventh century nobility was beyond all price; in the thirteenth it might be purchased; it was conferred for the first time in 1270; and equality was thus introduced into the Government by the aristocracy itself.

Tocqueville and the Two Democracies

Jean-Claude Lamberti
Tocqueville and the Two Democracies Book PDF

Author : Jean-Claude Lamberti
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 1989
Category : Political Science
ISBN : UOM:39015014381142

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Tocqueville and the Two Democracies by Jean-Claude Lamberti Pdf

Why did the French Revolution lead to the Terror when the American Revolution yielded a liberal democracy? Tocqueville spent his life trying to understand the paradox. This book on the genesis of Democracy in America considers themes of democracy and revolution in light of his early political activities and subsequent studies of the past.

The Man Who Understood Democracy

Olivier Zunz
The Man Who Understood Democracy Book PDF

Author : Olivier Zunz
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 472 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2023-11-14
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780691254142

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The Man Who Understood Democracy by Olivier Zunz Pdf

A definitive biography of the French aristocrat who became one of democracy’s greatest champions In 1831, at the age of twenty-five, Alexis de Tocqueville made his fateful journey to America, where he observed the thrilling reality of a functioning democracy. From that moment onward, the French aristocrat would dedicate his life as a writer and politician to ending despotism in his country and bringing it into a new age. In this authoritative and groundbreaking biography, leading Tocqueville expert Olivier Zunz tells the story of a radical thinker who, uniquely charged by the events of his time, both in America and France, used the world as a laboratory for his political ideas. Placing Tocqueville’s dedication to achieving a new kind of democracy at the center of his life and work, Zunz traces Tocqueville’s evolution into a passionate student and practitioner of liberal politics across a trove of correspondence with intellectuals, politicians, constituents, family members, and friends. While taking seriously Tocqueville’s attempts to apply the lessons of Democracy in America to French politics, Zunz shows that the United States, and not only France, remained central to Tocqueville’s thought and actions throughout his life. In his final years, with France gripped by an authoritarian regime and America divided by slavery, Tocqueville feared that the democratic experiment might be failing. Yet his passion for democracy never weakened. Giving equal attention to the French and American sources of Tocqueville’s unique blend of political philosophy and political action, The Man Who Understood Democracy offers the richest, most nuanced portrait yet of a man who, born between the worlds of aristocracy and democracy, fought tirelessly for the only system that he believed could provide both liberty and equality.

American Vertigo

Bernard-Henri Lévy
American Vertigo Book PDF

Author : Bernard-Henri Lévy
Publisher : Random House
Page : 298 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2007-12-18
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780307430625

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American Vertigo by Bernard-Henri Lévy Pdf

What does it mean to be an American, and what can America be today? To answer these questions, celebrated philosopher and journalist Bernard-Henri Lévy spent a year traveling throughout the country in the footsteps of another great Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, whose Democracy in America remains the most influential book ever written about our country. The result is American Vertigo, a fascinating, wholly fresh look at a country we sometimes only think we know. From Rikers Island to Chicago mega-churches, from Muslim communities in Detroit to an Amish enclave in Iowa, Lévy investigates issues at the heart of our democracy: the special nature of American patriotism, the coexistence of freedom and religion (including the religion of baseball), the prison system, the “return of ideology” and the health of our political institutions, and much more. He revisits and updates Tocqueville’s most important beliefs, such as the dangers posed by “the tyranny of the majority,” explores what Europe and America have to learn from each other, and interprets what he sees with a novelist’s eye and a philosopher’s depth. Through powerful interview-based portraits across the spectrum of the American people, from prison guards to clergymen, from Norman Mailer to Barack Obama, from Sharon Stone to Richard Holbrooke, Lévy fills his book with a tapestry of American voices–some wise, some shocking. Both the grandeur and the hellish dimensions of American life are unflinchingly explored. And big themes emerge throughout, from the crucial choices America faces today to the underlying reality that, unlike the “Old World,” America remains the fulfillment of the world’s desire to worship, earn, and live as one wishes–a place, despite all, where inclusion remains not just an ideal but an actual practice. At a time when Americans are anxious about how the world perceives them and, indeed, keen to make sense of themselves, a brilliant and sympathetic foreign observer has arrived to help us begin a new conversation about the meaning of America.

Tocqueville's Discovery of America

Leo Damrosch
Tocqueville s Discovery of America Book PDF

Author : Leo Damrosch
Publisher : Macmillan + ORM
Page : 303 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2010-04-07
Category : History
ISBN : 9781429945738

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Tocqueville's Discovery of America by Leo Damrosch Pdf

Alexis de Tocqueville is more quoted than read; commentators across the political spectrum invoke him as an oracle who defined America and its democracy for all times. But in fact his masterpiece, Democracy in America, was the product of a young man's open-minded experience of America at a time of rapid change. In Tocqueville's Discovery of America, the prizewinning biographer Leo Damrosch retraces Tocqueville's nine-month journey through the young nation in 1831–1832, illuminating how his enduring ideas were born of imaginative interchange with America and Americans, and painting a vivid picture of Jacksonian America. Damrosch shows that Tocqueville found much to admire in the dynamism of American society and in its egalitarian ideals. But he was offended by the ethos of grasping materialism and was convinced that the institution of slavery was bound to give rise to a tragic civil war. Drawing on documents and letters that have never before appeared in English, as well as on a wide range of scholarship, Tocqueville's Discovery of America brings the man, his ideas, and his world to startling life.

Alexis De Tocqueville and the Making of the Modern World

Alan Macfarlane
Alexis De Tocqueville and the Making of the Modern World Book PDF

Author : Alan Macfarlane
Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Page : 158 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2018-02-26
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 1986028445

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Alexis De Tocqueville and the Making of the Modern World by Alan Macfarlane Pdf

Alexis de Tocqueville was one of the greatest political scientists of all time. His Democracy in America (1835, 1840) and Ancien Regime (1856) are classics. Yet his work is not always easy to understand since it needs to be seen as a work which combines his essays, letters, travels and other materials. Through an examination of all of these, we can see that Tocqueville, more than any other thinker, understood the deep roots of individualism, equality and fraternity and in doing so the origins of the modern world. His three-way comparison of France, England, and America is unique and deeply illuminating. Alan Macfarlane, F.B.A., is an Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Cambridge University and a Life Fellow of King's College. His website is alanmacfarlane.com.

Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy

Pierre Manent
Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy Book PDF

Author : Pierre Manent
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 172 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 1996
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0847681165

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Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy by Pierre Manent Pdf

One of France's leading and most controversial political thinkers explores the central themes of Tocqueville's writings: the democratic revolution and the modern passion for equality. What becomes of people when they are overcome by this passion and how does it transform the contents of life? Pierre Manent's analysis concludes that the growth of state power and the homogenization of society are two primary consequences of equalizing conditions. The author shows the contemporary relevance of Tocqueville's teaching: to love democracy well, one must love it moderately. Manent examines the prophetic nature of Tocqueville's writings with breadth, clarity, and depth. His findings are both timely and highly relevant as people in Eastern Europe and around the world are grappling with the fragile, complicated, and frequently contradictory nature of democracy. This book is essential reading for students and scholars of political theory and political philosophy, as well as general readers interested in the nature of modern democracy.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Alan S. Kahan
Alexis de Tocqueville Book PDF

Author : Alan S. Kahan
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 119 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2013-02-07
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781623564384

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Alexis de Tocqueville by Alan S. Kahan Pdf

Alexis de Tocqueville was the author of two masterpieces, Democracry in America and The Old Regime and the Revolution. In this volume, Alan S. Kahan, one of the world's leading authorities on Tocqueville's work, presents an accessible and rigorous account of the French author's ideas set in the context of his life and times. It sets out the essential tensions and ambiguities in Tocqueville's thought and analyzes the idea that made him such a compelling and insightful thinker.

Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America

Alexis de Tocqueville,Gustave de Beaumont
Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America Book PDF

Author : Alexis de Tocqueville,Gustave de Beaumont
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2010
Category : National characteristics, American
ISBN : 0813930626

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Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont in America by Alexis de Tocqueville,Gustave de Beaumont Pdf

A selection of Tocqueville's writings on America together with letters and sketches from his traveling companion, Gustave de Beaumont.

The Art of Being Free

James Poulos
The Art of Being Free Book PDF

Author : James Poulos
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2017-01-17
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781250134042

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The Art of Being Free by James Poulos Pdf

Most of us probably don’t learn about Alexis de Tocqueville in school anymore, but his masterpiece, Democracy in America, is still surprisingly resonant. When he came to America in 1831 to study our great political experiment, he puzzled over our strange struggles with religion and politics, work and money, sex and gender, and love and death. Clearly we haven’t come as far as one might hope. But it wasn’t all doom and gloom—and it isn’t now. Tocqueville didn’t just catalog our problems; he provided a manual on how to flourish despite them. In The Art of Being Free, journalist and scholar James Poulos puts Tocqueville’s advice to work for a contemporary audience, showing us how to live sane, healthy, and happy lives amid our hectic, shifting world. Poulos reveals what Tocqueville’s beloved study tells us about everything from our relationship to technology and our obsession with appearances to our workaholism, our listlessness, and our ways of coping with stress. He explores how our uniquely American malaise can be alleviated—not by the next wellness fad or self-help craze, but by the kind of fearless inventory-taking that has fallen out of fashion.