Tocqueville and his America : a darker horizon

by Arthur Kaledin

Hardcover, 2011

Status

Available

Tags

Biography

Genres

Publication

New Haven [Conn.] : Yale University Press, c2011.

Description

Arthur Kaledin's groundbreaking book on Alexis de Tocqueville offers an original combination of biography, character study, and wide-ranging analysis of Tocqueville's Democracy in America, bringing new light to that classic work. The author examines the relation between Tocqueville's complicated inner life, his self-imagination, and his moral thought, and the meaning of his enduring writings, leading to a new understanding of Tocqueville's view of democratic culture and democratic politics. With particular emphasis on Tocqueville's prescient anticipation of various threats to liberty, social unity, and truly democratic politics in America posed by aspects of democratic culture, Kaledin underscores the continuing pertinence of Tocqueville's thought in our own changing world of the twenty-first century.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member LeeCheek
In this discursive study dedicated to interpreting the “character and thought” (xiii) of Tocqueville, Kaledin (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) concentrates upon the ancillary and “darker” (less than optimistic) legacies of Tocqueville’s writings and views on politics and society.
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 While expressing admiration for Tocqueville, Kaledin is more devoted to explicating the weaknesses of Tocqueville as a political thinker, concluding he “was a disharmonious man, full of disunited passions and impulses” (p. 9). The book is divided into four sections. The first part attempts to survey the formative influences upon Tocqueville and his Democracy in America, stressing his “triple-alienation,” ambivalence, and aristocratic tendencies. As the most rewarding and succinct part of the study, part two analyzes Tocqueville’s “political passion” (p. 104), and situates the great Frenchman within his own political tradition. The third part examines Tocqueville’s writing of Democracy in America as an effort to critique the “fate of liberty” in the modern world (p. 263). The final part attempts to defend Tocqueville’s “darker, more apprehensive” (p. 279) view of the American polity. Unfortunately, Tocqueville’s defense of a constitutionally-restrained political order, premised upon the diffusion of authority, cannot be easily reconciled with the author’s interpretation of Tocqueville.
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Language

English

Barcode

11298

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