Democracy, Freedom And Institutional Arrangement In Democratic Society

Alexis de Tocqueville was a great liberalistic thinker in the nineteenth century. His magnum opus"Democracy in America","Old system and great revolution"has become classic literatures of political science and history. In his early political life, Alexis de Tocqueville had been to America and spent nearly nine months there doing detailed investigation, then he wrote out"Democracy in America".Through his deeply consideration of French old regime and revolution in his late years, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote out"Old system and great revolution". Based on the two literatures, this essay discourses on Tocqueville thoughts of democracy and freedom. As a liberalist, he foresaw there being worldwide tide of democracy. In a scene of praise sound to democracy of whole world, Tocqueville advanced meditatively caution of democracy. He considered that democracy and freedom had conflicts, besides, there existed infringement of democracy to freedom. Therefore, he had portrayed how to rule freedom under the worldwide trend of unstoppable democratization, how to build up freedom standard and right standard country by developing law -systems , so that to guarantee citizen's rights and freedom ,avoid democracy to freedom infringement, and harmonize the relationship between democracy and freedom in a democratic society, besides lay out the harmony of freedom and democracy in a democratic society on the example of America's social system.The essay composes three parts:1: The sources of Alexis de Tocqueville's thoughts of democracy and freedom. His thoughts was partly from Gongsidang, such as, popular sovereignty, tyranny of the majority, and criticism of extreme individualism; partly from Baron de Montesquieu, for example, separation of powers. The author has concluded the source of Alexis de Tocqueville's thoughts of democracy and freedom and directed it in two ways: (1) Rousseau——Gongsidang——Tocqueville;(2)Hobbs——Locke——Montesquieu——Tocqueville2: Democracy freedom and the conflict in Tocqueville's eyes. In this part, Tocqueville's thoughts of democracy and freedom shall be discussed in three parts: democracy theory, freedom theory and the conflict between them. According to Tocqueville, democracy and freedom are totally different and conflicting. Democracy even do some harm to freedom. At the time, when dissertating the conflict of democracy and freedom, Tocqueville particularly addressed two issues: extreme...