Tocqueville Between Two Worlds

by Wolin, Sheldon S.

• ISBN13: 9780691114545
• ISBN10: 0691114544
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-01-06
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

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 portraysDemocracy 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 portraysThe Old Regime and the French Revolutionas 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.

Author Biography

Sheldon S. Wolin is Emeritus Professor of Politics, Princeton University. He also taught for many years at the University of California, Berkeley

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction	3	(8)
PART ONE: THE ABUNDANCE OF POWER	11	(46)
Modern Theory and Modern Power	13	(21)
Theoria: The Theoretical Journey	34	(23)
PART TWO: ENCOUNTERING THE AMAZING	57	(112)
Discovering Democracy	59	(17)
Self and Structure	76	(26)
Doubt and Disconnection	102	(11)
``...The Theory of What is Great''	113	(19)
Myth and Political Impressionism	132	(17)
The Spectacle of America	149	(20)
PART THREE: THE THEORETICAL ENCAPSULATION OF AMERICA	169	(118)
Social Contract Versus Political Culture	171	(31)
The Culture of the Political: ``The Rituals of Practice''	202	(27)
Feudal America	229	(12)
Majority Rule or Majority Politics	241	(19)
Centralization and Dissolution	260	(15)
The Image of Democracy	275	(12)
PART FOUR: PERSONA AND THE POLITICS OF THEORY	287	(120)
Tragic Hero, Popular Mask	289	(15)
The Democratization of Culture	304	(35)
Despotism and Utopia	339	(26)
Old New World, New Old World	365	(9)
Tocquevillean Democracy	374	(9)
The Penitentiary Temptation	383	(24)
PART FIVE: SECOND JOURNEY TO AMERICA	407	(166)
The Political Education of the Bourgeoisie	409	(19)
Souvenirs: Recollections In/Tranquillity	428	(28)
Souvenirs: Socialism and the Crisis of the Political	456	(42)
The Old Regime and the Revolution: Mythistoricus et theoreticus	498	(33)
The Old Regime: Modernization and the Politics of Loss	531	(30)
Postdemocracy	561	(12)
Notes	573	(68)
Index	641