0415339510.Routledge.Tocquevilles.Political.and.Moral.Thought.New.Liberalism.Jun.2004

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90 See also Owen Chadwick, The Secularization of the European Mind in
the Ninteteenth Century (London: Cambridge University Press, 1975),
pp. 39 41.
91 Tocqueville, Conversations with Nassau Senior, April 26, 1858.
92 Tocqueville, Conversations with Nassau Senior, April 26, 1858.
93 Harvey Mansfield, Statesmanship and Party Government (London: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1965), ch. i.
94 Tocqueville, Souvenirs, Pt. II, ch. xi.
95 Tocqueville, Souvenirs, Pt. I, ch. i.
96 Ibid., Pt. II, ch. xi.
97 John Stuart Mill, M. de Tocqueville on Democracy in America , Edin-
burgh Review.
98 Tocqueville, D�mocratie, Vol. I, Pt. II, chap. v.
99 Tocqueville, D�mocratie, Vol. II, Bk. I, ch. i.
100 Tocqueville, D�mocratie, Vol. II, Bk. I, ch. xvii.
101 Tocqueville, Correspondance avec Ernest de Chabrol, October 7, 1831.
102 Larry Siedentop, Democracy in Europe (Allen Lane: The Penguin Press,
2000), p. 3.
103 Tocqueville, Ecrits Politiques (Tome III, 2), p. 720.
Liberties 115
104 Tocqueville, Ancien R�gime, Pt. II, ch. iii.
105 Ibid., Pt. I, ch. iv.
106 Tocqueville, D�mocratie, Vol. I, Pt. I, ch. v.
107 Cheryl Welch, De Tocqueville (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001),
p.28.
108 Tocqueville, Etat Social et Politique de la France avant et depuis 1789,
p. 61.
109 Tocqueville, Ancien R�gime, General Notes.
110 Tocqueville, Ecrits Politiques (Tome III, 2), p. 156.
111 Tocqueville, D�mocratie, Intro; Tocqueville, Ancien R�gime, Pt. II, ch. iii,
notes 18, 19.
112 Tocqueville, Ancien R�gime, Pt. I, ch. v.
113 Tocqueville, Ancien R�gime, Pt. II, ch. x.
114 Tocqueville, Souvenirs, Pt. I, ch. i.
115 Tocqueville, Etat Social et Politique de la France avant et depuis 1789,
pp. 36, 53, 57.
116 Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (Indianapo-
lis: Liberty Fund, 1991), pp. 453 4.
4 Democracy and history
Tocqueville s providential history
Tocqueville draws a crucial distinction between providential (sacred)
and political (secular) history. Like St Augustine and Bossuet, he nar-
rates the events on earth, but sees them as directed from Heaven.
History, for Tocqueville, is a providentially guided movement towards
democracy; a movement towards a more or less discernible order of
things. Tocqueville is convinced that divine laws govern the course of
events and that God s will can be discerned in the fortunes of civiliza-
tions. The course followed by human history ultimately amounts, for
Tocqueville, to much more than a meaningless sequence of events. He
sets himself the task to search for an overarching pattern or design
endowed with an intellectually and morally acceptable meaning.
According to Tocqueville, Providence shapes the conditions for making
choices. All particular accidents are drawn together by God according
to His will. Hence the reality of historical activity is not doubtful for
Tocqueville, but has its place within a providential order. The relation-
ship between historical change, the transition from aristocracy to
democracy, and the providential order is intimate. The belief in the
existence of a providential history implies faith in a divine purpose of
history the belief that principles for action guide humankind towards
moral distinctions. For Tocqueville, history must always be interpreted
on the grounds of faith. That is, he tries to comprehend what has taken
place in the history of civilization by accepting Revelation in history as
a guide and he gives an interpretation of the contents of the providen-
tial works.
Tocqueville divides the history of civilization, guided, according to
him, by Providence, into different stages, whereby each has its own
divine purpose. Hence, the purpose of antiquity was to shape the social
and political conditions, to enable the spread of Christianity. God
chose the Jewish people as the chosen ones, charging them with main-
Democracy and history 117
taining and defending the worship of the true God throughout the
pagan centuries. It was Providence that developed the features of
Europe out of the disorder of barbarous invasions and reconciled the
two antiquities under the law of Christ. Roman imperialism prepared
the advent of Christ:
When the Christian religion first appeared upon earth, Providence,
by whom the world was doubtless prepared for its coming, had
gathered a large portion of the human race, like an immense flock,
under the sceptre of the Caesars . . . This novel and peculiar state of
mankind necessarily predisposed men to listen to the general truths
that Christianity teaches, and may serve to explain the facility and
rapidity with which they then penetrated into the human mind.1
Christianity abolished personal and common (or social) servitude by
obedience to God, so as to reconcile master and slave. The Romans
degenerated when their potential reached its natural limits and Chris-
tianity extended their boundaries when they could not progress any
further. Hence, Tocqueville propounds the thesis of the continuity of
providential history: antiquity prepared for the advent of Jesus Christ
and the consequent spread of Christianity took away the natural limits
the pagans saw themselves confronted with:
The most profound and capacious minds of Rome and Greece were
never able to reach the idea, at once so general and so simple, of
the common likeness of men and of the common birthright of each
to freedom; they tried to prove that slavery was in the order of
nature and that it would always exist . . . Their mind, after it had
expanded itself in several directions, was barred from further
progress in this one; and the advent of Jesus Christ upon earth was
required to teach that all the members of the human race are by
nature equal and alike.2
Tocqueville believes in the created equality among people, but he does
not believe that it is via individual reasoning that one has arrived at the
notion of a fundamental equality. The Enlightenment takes equality
among peoples as an a priori truth accessible to individual reason, but
according to Tocqueville, Revelation has been necessary to enlighten
reason and reveal that all individuals possess by nature an equal
dignity. Though the Stoic sages had eventually come to embrace the
notion of equality intellectually, the pagans had failed to embrace it in
practice. The principle of equality was not self-evident, but only came [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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