Tocqueville between two worlds : the making of a political and theoretical life / Sheldon S. Wolin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wolin, Sheldon S.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Tocqueville, Alexis de, 1805-1859--Contributions in political science.

Tocqueville, Alexis de.

Tocqueville, Alexis de, 1805-1859--Contributions in democracy.

State, The.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (659 p.)

Edition:

Core Textbook

Place of Publication:

Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2003]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Alexis de Tocqueville may be the most influential political thinker in American history. He also led an unusually active and ambitious career in French politics. In this magisterial book, one of America's most important contemporary theorists draws on decades of research and thought to present the first work that fully connects Tocqueville's political and theoretical lives. In doing so, Sheldon Wolin presents sweeping new interpretations of Tocqueville's major works and of his place in intellectual history. As he traces the origins and impact of Tocqueville's ideas, Wolin also offers a profound commentary on the general trajectory of Western political life over the past two hundred years. Wolin proceeds by examining Tocqueville's key writings in light of his experiences in the troubled world of French politics. He portrays Democracy in America, for example, as a theory of discovery that emerged from Tocqueville's contrasting experiences of America and of France's constitutional monarchy. He shows us how Tocqueville used Recollections to reexamine his political commitments in light of the revolutions of 1848 and the threat of socialism. He portrays The Old Regime and the French Revolution as a work of theoretical history designed to throw light on the Bonapartist despotism he saw around him. Throughout, Wolin highlights the tensions between Tocqueville's ideas and his activities as a politician, arguing that--despite his limited political success--Tocqueville was ''perhaps the last influential theorist who can be said to have truly cared about political life.'' In the course of the book, Wolin also shows that Tocqueville struggled with many of the forces that constrain politics today, including the relentless advance of capitalism, of science and technology, and of state bureaucracy. He concludes that Tocqueville's insights and anxieties about the impotence of politics in a ''postaristocratic'' era speak directly to the challenges of our own ''postdemocratic'' age. A monumental new study of Tocqueville, this is also a rich and provocative work about the past, the present, and the future of democratic life in America and abroad.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

PART ONE. The Abundance of Power

Chapter I: Modern Theory and Modern Power

Chapter II: Theoria: The Theoretical Journey

PART TWO. Encountering the Amazing

Chapter III: Discovering Democracy

Chapter IV: Self and Structure

Chapter V: Doubt and Disconnection

Chapter VI: " . . . the theory of what is great"

Chapter VII: Myth and Political Impressionism

Chapter VIII: The Spectacle of America

PART THREE. The Theoretical Encapsulation of America

Chapter IX: Social Contract versus Political Culture

Chapter X: The Culture of the Political: "the rituals of practice"

Chapter XI: Feudal America

Chapter XII: Majority Rule or Majority Politics

Chapter XIII: Centralization and Dissolution

Chapter XIV: The Image of Democracy

PART FOUR. Persona and the Politics of Theory

Chapter XV: Tragic Hero, Popular Mask

Chapter XVI: The Democratization of Culture

Chapter XVII: Despotism and Utopia

Chapter XVIII: Old New World, New Old World

Chapter XIX: Tocquevillean Democracy

Chapter XX: The Penitentiary Temptation

PART FIVE. Second Journey to America

Chapter XXI: The Political Education of the Bourgeoisie

Chapter XXII: Souvenirs: Recollections In/Tranquillity

Chapter XXIII: Souvenirs: Socialism and the Crisis of the Political

Chapter XXIV: The Old Regime and the Revolution: Mythistoricus et theoreticus

Chapter XXV: The Old Regime: Modernization and the Politics of Loss

Chapter XXVI: Postdemocracy

Notes

Index

Notes:

Originally published: 2001.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786612087509

9781282087507

1282087509

9781400824793

1400824796

OCLC:

519480177