Always of fragile health, Tocqueville retired to Cannes in , where he died in In his Old Regime and the Revolution, Tocqueville reorients himself toward Europe but retains his focus on the development of democratic conditions.
In The Old Regime , he demonstrates this by questioning the revolutionary character of the French Revolution. By contrast to those who claimed that the French Revolution swept away deeply entrenched class distinctions, Tocqueville explains how such distinctions had been eroded over centuries throughout Europe.
Kings, noblemen, and bourgeois had all played an unwitting part in producing the real revolution, the equality revolution, that had long preceded the French Revolution. In , while leading an expedition in search of gold, he sighted Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Recommended for you. How the Troubles Began in Northern Ireland. Hernando de Soto. Cinco De Mayo. Cinco De Mayo Foods: Tacos.
French Revolution The French Revolution was a watershed event in modern European history that began in and ended in the late s with the ascent of Napoleon Bonaparte. A deputy in the July Monarchy and minister of foreign affairs in the Second Republic, Tocqueville recounted his political life and times in his autobiographical Souvenirs. This work offers a revealing glimpse of the political activity of a thoughtful individual.
It follows a nine-month trip to America that Tocqueville made with Gustave de Beaumont in and It is not a travelogue or even a comprehensive study of the political institutions of the United States. The work contains many interesting and singular insights about America: its regime, its laws, and, above all, the habits or mores of Americans, by which Tocqueville means the full panoply of their political, intellectual, religious, and social life. Over the two volumes of the work, Tocqueville discusses America through the prism of democracy, or the equality of conditions.
Tocqueville distinguishes individualism from selfishness. Individualism, characteristic of modern democracy, is an erroneous theoretical doctrine that holds that each man is fundamentally alone in the world. There is society only to the extent that all others are alike and in the same position of radical solitude. Democracy could thus pose a danger to both intellectual and political freedom.
Tocqueville notes that this new despotism is perhaps more insidious than the traditional despotism, because it threatens to enslave the souls of men rather than simply their bodies.
In his study of America, Tocqueville investigates possible remedies to the dangers posed by democracy. He writes admiringly of the American tendency to form associations in pursuit of political, social, and religious goals.
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