Tocqueville, Alexis de (1805–59)

Tocqueville once observed that his temperament was the ‘least philosophical’ imaginable. He meant that his mind was governed by passionate commitment, a determination to defend civil and political liberty against threats resulting from social levelling and the growth of state power. Thus, Tocqueville’s most famous work, De la démocratie en Amérique (Democracy in America) (1835, 1840), did not spring from detached curiosity about US institutions. It was rather an attempt to draw lessons from US society and government which could be used to reform French institutions. His belief in local autonomy – he called the New England township a ‘school for citizens’ – led him to develop a distinctive conception of liberty that combined elements of ancient citizenship and modern autonomy. That conception also shaped his own political career and later writings. In L’Ancien régime et la révolution (The Old Regime and the French Revolution) (1856) Tocqueville traced bitter class conflicts in France to the destruction of local autonomy long before 1789.