The liberal education of democracy: A study of Tocqueville's 'Democracy in America' (Alexis de Tocqueville)

I examine Tocqueville's assessment of our historical situation---the inevitability of a ubiquitous equality of conditions---seeking to find the standard by which he judges "democracy." This standard, which I argue is a conception of human happiness including greatness, is revealed in his subtle comparisons of the laws, mores, and ideas that predominate in American and French democracy as opposed to those he recalls from "aristocratic times." It comes to the fore in his advice to legislators and moralists, whom he teaches to know the penchants of the present "social state" in order to steer it towards the "unmoving goal" that is natural to the human race itself, a goal that Tocqueville closely associates with the sublime needs of the human soul. I attempt to explicate Tocqueville's conception of human nature and the types of human flourishing it makes possible, including philosophic, religious, and political virtues; and I demonstrate how his concern for the promotion of these forms of human greatness links together salient features of Democracy in America, including Tocqueville's idiosyncratic treatment of political rights, his fear of majority tyranny and administrative despotism, and his emphasis on political decentralization and the role of religion in maintaining liberal democracy. I try to show that the central intention of Tocqueville's political philosophy is to promote true human greatness by outlining the kind of greatness and happiness proper to democratic times.