The result could be a democratic “tyranny of the majority” in which individual rights were compromised. He admired American individualism but warned that a society of individuals can easily become atomized and paradoxically uniform when “every citizen, being assimilated to all the rest, is lost in the crowd.” He felt that a society of individuals lacked the intermediate social structures-such as those provided by traditional hierarchies-to mediate relations with the state. Tocqueville set to work on a broader analysis of American culture and politics, published in 1835 as “Democracy in America.” Alexis de Tocqueville: “Democracy in America”Īs “Democracy in America” revealed, Tocqueville believed that equality was the great political and social idea of his era, and he thought that the United States offered the most advanced example of equality in action. They quickly published their report, “On the Penitentiary System in the United States and Its Application in France,” written largely by Beaumont. The travelers returned to France in 1832. How the Battle of Stalingrad Marked a Turning Point in WWII After attending college in Metz, Tocqueville studied law in Paris and was appointed a magistrate in Versailles, where he met his future wife and befriended a fellow lawyer named Gustave de Beaumont. Both of his parents had been jailed during the Reign of Terror. Alexis de Tocqueville: Early LifeĪlexis de Tocqueville was born in 1805 into an aristocratic family recently rocked by France’s revolutionary upheavals. With its trenchant observations on equality and individualism, Tocqueville’s work remains a valuable explanation of America to Europeans and of Americans to themselves.
Alexis de Tocqueville: “Democracy in America”įrench sociologist and political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) traveled to the United States in 1831 to study its prisons and returned with a wealth of broader observations that he codified in “Democracy in America” (1835), one of the most influential books of the 19th century.Alexis de Tocqueville: American Travels.
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