Tocqueville (ebook)

Argumento de Tocqueville (ebook)

"Jaume's book fills an important gap in the literature about Tocqueville. It highlights the blind spots of many admirers who have only looked to America to understand Democracy."--Andreas Hess, Dublin Review of Books

"[R]eaders who have previously studied Tocqueville's themes will find that Jaume's multilayered narrative leads them into rarely recognized sources of his thought and provides new perspectives on the dialogical construction of his best-known texts."--Lloyd Kramer, Canadian Journal of History

"Through an in-depth analysis of primary sources, cleverly combined with the vast collection of letters and handwritten notes yet unpublished, and paying a remarkable attention to the context, Jaume convincingly shows that Tocquevilles sympathy towards the American idea of citizenship does not come from a modern form of republicanism."--Danilo Breschi, European History Quarterly

Winner of the 2008 Prix François Guizot, Académie française

"[Jaume's] erudite study offers readers an abundance of specific insights based on intimate acquaintance with primary sources from the nineteenth century and careful attention to the historical and linguistic nuances of Tocqueville's texts."--Aristide Tessitore, Review of Politics

"[T]he book is extremely well researched and rich. . . . [T]he book will not be exclusively of interest to Tocqueville scholars but also, and perhaps mainly, to students of the early French nineteenth century."--Tommaso Giordani, European Review of History

"There are certainly many interesting insights and new observations in the book. Jaume's erudition is obvious on every page."--Helena Rosenblatt, Intellectual History Review

"Tocqueville remains the most endlessly fascinating of all modern writers about democracy. Lucien Jaume, one of France's leading intellectual historians, is an outstanding interpreter of his thought, in all its political variety. Jaume wants to re-establish the distance between 'our' Tocqueville and the man himself, a product of his time and of a distinctive aristocratic social and intellectual milieu. In doing so, he allows us to see why Tocqueville is still such an appealing and unsettling figure for our own times. A wonderfully lucid book and an indispensable guide."--David Runciman, University of Cambridge

"Long in gestation, this is a major work by a major political theorist who is insufficiently known in the Anglophone world. Lucien Jaume succeeds admirably in providing a fresh reading of Tocqueville's Democracy in America. Based on deep and wide knowledge, this magisterial interpretation will immediately be recognized as significant by Tocqueville scholars, and it also makes an important contribution to current debates about the complex relationships between religion, democracy, and liberalism."--Cheryl B. Welch, Harvard University

"Lucien Jaume pushes our understanding of Tocqueville's intellectual biography and political theory in . . . many new directions. . . . His book will not be the final word in Tocqueville studies, but it will be one of the first books read and cited by a generation of Tocqueville scholars."--David Selby, Register of the Kentucky Historical Society

"Jaume has given us a brilliant reading of one of the most important books about America: one that is erudite, compelling, and frustrating. The culmination of Jaume's career, it provides much more than a deeper understanding of the arguments among French intellectuals in the 1830s and '40s. . . . Jaume shows how the question of America's future was part of a vigorous debate among French intellectuals over the meaning of liberty, aristocracy, democracy, and the role of the state in social life. And though Jaume argues against such a reading, these are debates we can still learn from today."--Shamus Khan, Public Books

"Jaume has written a good book in the category of contextual studies, from which anyone can learn relevant facts of his life and thought useful for understanding [Tocqueville]."--Harvey C. Mansfield, New Criterion

"[E]xhilarating. . . . Jaume, who probably knows Tocqueville's intellectual world better than anyone else alive, has reconstructed his reading in intricate detail, and brilliantly demonstrates the way particular themes and passages in Democracy in America relate to it."--David A. Bell, London Review of Books

"[P]rofound, elegantly written and translated."--Choice

"[I]mpeccable scholarship."--Jeremy Jennings, Standpoint

"Tocqueville is a serious book written by an immensely learned man, rich in suggestions for future research."--Ashraf Ahmed, Cambridge Humanities Review

"This astute study of Alexis de Tocqueville and his landmark political study, Democracy in America (published in two volumes, in 1835 and 1840, respectively), offers insights into the Frenchman's life and times and how they shaped his perspective on the newborn American republic. . . . Jaume does a fine job of interpreting Tocqueville's concept of the authority exercised by the public at large in a democratic America as (in Tocqueville's words) 'a sort of religion, with the majority as its prophet.' His volume provides a thorough understanding of Tocqueville's timeless work as a product of its time."--Publishers Weekly

"This is one of the finest studies of Tocqueville in years. It will prove invaluable to scholars."--Library Journal

"[E]xcellent. . . . Tocqueville knew well his own class's reservations about democracy, and Jaume shows how, like Shakespeare playing with Plutarch's plotting, Tocqueville deftly repurposed conservative French ideas for his American drama. . . . [Jaume] sees in Tocqueville a political scientist, sociologist, moralist and writer, and discusses in detail his labors in each guise, the wonderful effect of which is to reveal how unified the man was--like the country he visited, vast and containing multitudes, as if Tocqueville saw himself in his portrait of America."--Elias Altman, The Nation0Introduction 1
PART ONE. WHAT DID TOCQUEVILLE MEAN BY "DEMOCRACY"? 15
1. Attacking the French Tradition: Popular Sovereignty Redefined in and through Local Liberties 21
2. Democracy as Modern Religion 65
3. Democracy as Expectation of Material Pleasures 82
PART TWO. TOCQUEVILLE AS SOCIOLOGIST 95
4. In the Tradition of Montesquieu: The State-Society Analogy 101
5. Counterrevolutionary Traditionalism: A Muffled Polemic 106
6. The Discovery of the Collective 115
7. Tocqueville and the Protestantism of His Time: The
Insistent Reality of the Collective 129
PART THREE. TOCQUEVILLE AS MORALIST 145
8. The Moralist and the Question of l'Honnête 147
9. Tocqueville's Relation to Jansenism 159
PART FOUR. TOCQUEVILLE IN LITERATURE: DEMOCRATIC LANGUAGE WITHOUT DECLARED AUTHORITY 193
10. Resisting the Democratic Tendencies of Language 199
11. Tocqueville in the Debate about Literature and Society 226
PART FIVE: THE GREAT CONTEMPORARIES: MODELS AND COUNTERMODELS 249
12. Tocqueville and Guizot: Two Conceptions of Authority 251
13. Tutelary Figures from Malesherbes to Chateaubriand 291
Conclusion 319
Appendix 1. The Use of Anthologies and Summaries in Tocqueville's Time 327
Appendix 2. Silvestre de Sacy, Review of Democracy in America 328
Appendix 3. Letter from Alexis de Tocqueville to Silvestre de Sacy 335
Index 337