Font Size: a A A

Analysis And Evaluation About Tocqueville’s Thought Of Equality

Posted on:2013-04-13Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:J SunFull Text:PDF
GTID:2246330374989763Subject:Political Theory
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
As an enduring issue in political theory, equality has attracted the attention of a large number of political scientists, Tocqueville is one of them. On September of1832,Tocqueville started his works"Democracy in America" whose name was ’Equality impact on human’s mind and emotion" firstly. The main content of this paper is to explore Tocqueville’s thought of equality, including his narrative of the American spirit of equality, the analysis of the social and historical roots of the spirit of equality, and advantages and disadvantages of equality. On these basis, the author will analyze Tocqueville’s concept of equality in the view of historical materialism.Tocqueville’s thought of equality embodied in the two delegates,"Democracy in America" and "The Old Regime and the Revolution. American society has left a deep impression to Tocqueville. Tocqueville attempted to experience the spirit of equality based on the political reality of the United States and discuss about the factors and the reflects of the American spirit of equality, Tocqueville believes that the hierarchical and authoritarian system of the French aristocracy will finally be replaced by an equal social completely.Equality as the trend of times and modern society’s basic characteristics, bring a lot of benefits for the whole world. At the same time, He was also very alert to the abuse of equality because extreme equality lead to the "tyranny of the majority" easily, even pose threat to freedom. Equality and freedom both appeared at the same time,but they don’t promote each other in practice. As far as Tocqueville was concerned, democratic country’s ideal realm was the unity of equality and freedom.However, he didn’t mention economic factors when he was trying find out the roots of equality. In other words, he pay more attention to political equality than economic equality.
Keywords/Search Tags:Tocqueville, Equality, Democracy, Political freedom
PDF Full Text Request
Related items