The Crisis Of Democratic Society And Overcoming: Tocqueville’s Political Philosophy

Scholars usually neglect the sort of study that help us understand Tocqueville’s thought by a perspective of political philosophy. As a greatly and profoundly political philosopher of classic, Leo Strauss analyses the history of political philosophy which is near twenty-five centuries from ancient Greece to Heidegger in contemporary age,so that this work makes him develop a particular thought of political philosophy. It mostly starts with the exposition that political philosophy is to explore the natures of the political to obtain the knowledge and truth of them, then to put up with the complicated relationship between the politics and the philosophy, which the philosophy is negative to the politics and the philosophy doesn’t depart from the politics. Eventually, based on the former analysis, it point out the difference between classically political philosophy and modernly political philosophy.After know the main ideas of Strauss’ s political philosophy, the article firstly uses it to explain that Tocqueville is a political philosophy who attempts to obtain the truth of modern democracy, then to analyse that as a political philosophy, he has three characters of exploring the natures of modern democracy, keeping prudence and sobriety for democracy and pursuing people’s virtue in democratic age. Next, the article mostly analyses the context about democratic subject, this is the main part of Tocqueville’s political philosophy. It includes the generation of democratic society and the justice of democracy; the crisis of democratic society, this part contains two aspects, first, it indicates that the root of crisis lies in the natures of democracy, and then focuses on formulating five representations of crisis; overcoming the crisis of democratic society, this part also contains two aspects, namely the keynote and concrete ways to overcome. After elaborating above three subjects about democracy,in the end, the article uses the thought of Strauss’ s political philosophy again to evaluate the Tocqueville’s thought of political philosophy about democracy as a whole.This helps us recognize that the profoundity of his thought consists in seeking the best regime of modern democracy, its defect lies in the lack of judgement of value between Aristocracy and Democracy, so it inevitably goes to the direction of historical determinism. And it also makes us understand that even though there is tune of historical determinism with regard to Tocqueville’s thought of political philosophy, itstill has perpetual reference value for contemporarily democratic society, as well as the enlightenment and warning for contemporarily democratic people.