Harvey Mansfield on Alexis de Tocqueville

I'm bill kristol welcome to conversations and I'm very pleased to be joined today by Harvey Mansfield we're gonna measure and we're going to discuss one thinker Alexis de Tocqueville yeah how about whom you've written a fair amount especially in recent years and of course you and double-width have translated there's great democracy in America and you have a long introduction to that and then you wrote a very su this series a very short introduction to talk vilage is a very very fine book and everyone should read it but I guess I've been struck reading the UN Tocqueville this needs to be more you seem to admire Tocqueville I would say maybe I mean you of course admire I'm sure all these great thinkers but there's a little more of a personal admiration for for Tocqueville is that right sure like the French for one thing and especially especially talk to such a brilliant stylist and such a wonderful thinker such a concealed thinker he's always telling you what he thinks but he never sums it up right so when you read you have to do your own thinking in your own summing up to find his position for example he says he's bringing a new political science for a new world meaning the new world of democracy because the new world's an idea and not just a piece of geography so you need a new political science for it he says that right at the beginning of this book but he never tells you what it is that's the last reference to it right so that's the kind of challenge that's one that's another reason why I like it but then that's true of all the great thinkers but Tocqueville maybe even more did you think just to spend a minute on this the presenting himself as having all these observations but no real not not being systematic the way how jobs or other systematists of his time like gobino his friend and so on so he was not a systematic person or a systematic writer and he was not a he never called himself a philosopher though I think he was he spends a lot of time criticizing philosophy but he wrote the best book on America and the best book on democracy that's what dov'è Winthrop and I said in our introduction to the translation and I can't help but like again it's just just one more point outside but even though he's not he just presented with offices but systematists your argument obviously is that he had this isn't just disconnected observation there is a new political science I don't know it doesn't look like yes there it isn't just something he threw out it's something he placed there for us to think about and for us to to come to a conclusion about guided by the hints and ironic remarks which he makes later so it's it's it's real thinking that he's calling for and not just inspiration or scattered insights around and the real thinking is about democracy I suppose that's first and foremost that's right that's what we live in yeah that's for us as the ancients said there's a difference between knowledge in itself and knowledge for us and Tocqueville's specialty is knowledge for us we live in a democracy and what's more immediate and urgent than for us to know about the ideas and practices we live in and he says it's providential and I suppose inevitable that we democracy was going to develop forth yes let's buy that that's right he's a spoke he said that in the introduction to democracy in America he says it's a providential fact it's several different kinds of facts as he says like a generative fact and I'm but a providential fact and then but that turns out not to mean that it's a mysterious fact because he gives you some evidence for it and he goes back 700 years to the Catholic Church at that time he says the church opened its ranks opened the ranks of the clergy to commoners not just you didn't have to be a noble to be a member of the clergy that already is the principle of merit of rising and which is democratic in its and it's in an initial motion you might say and then all other events especially the various policies of the kings of France and and Spain contrary to the nobility in both cases and that in generally the Kings followed a policy of opposing the nobles by lying with the people and that incidentally not intentionally but incidentally helped bring along democracy meanwhile within the monarchies they they were being administered in a more and more rational spirit this he talks about in his second great book the the old regime which came out in 1856 about 20 years later from after democracy in America and there he speaks of the way in which the various advisors to the King above all Risha and Mazarin advises to louis xiii and we xiv developed a bureaucracy based on rational principles that was intended to replace the feudal government of the nobles and had that effect will there again bureaucracy of rational administration allows people of merit to rise out of the common out of the common people and and become important and useful to the monarchy so you had these two things than the monarchy itself and its policies of rational administration's which weren't meant to be democratic but which brought along democracy so that's the kind of providential fact which is produced democracy he says and so that perhaps he even what he says the reason why he calls it a fact is that he and providential is that he wants you to accept it it's it's not something you can refuse to admit and I think this would be especially directed at the reactionaries of of France his fellow countrymen who wanted those of those of them who wanted to go back to the time before the French Revolution to sort of reverse it repeal it and reverse it and that they couldn't do he said because democracy is here to stay with us and then that that turns out to be a kind of necessity and the acceptance of a fact leads to its understanding as a necessity but it isn't all necessity it's partly choice so you can decide how to how you react to this fact of democracy and you can make democracy useful and compatible with liberty or malicious and leading to a kind of despotism so that's the choice between us and human choice can is just like this generally speaking it's within necessity some things you have to accept the nature of nature the nature of human history are there or what what what events of separate for you but you have freedom to act within them and you could say they I think then this will be part of his philosophy that the whole of democracy in America is intended to establish the possibility and the difficulties of making that choice that choice which turns out to be the choice for political Liberty somehow it's important for him I think - yeah to not emphasize the degree to which democracy itself is a choice as you as you say that that hasn't taken you know granted maybe partly - so the aristocrats don't keep fighting it and maybe in a deeper way also so Democrats themselves aren't too proud I was think about this we're having this conversation October 27th I guess it is the 2014 and I happened to read this morning that occurred to me that this is the anniversary of Federalist wand this was published on October 7th in that newspaper in New York 227 years ago if I've done yeah if I did the math correctly but found it but it's quite a contrast with Federalist one you know emphasizes this is the moment where we choose yes yeah good government by reflection and choice but that also is self-government democratic government yeah it's striking how much Tocqueville's right introduction cuts against I would say that kind of pride in founding and it does wants to somehow yeah well the inflection in choice as opposed to force an accident and so so and it but it turns out I think even in the Federalist that reflection and choice has to take take place together with the the a recognition of the influence of force and accident and in fact the Federalists as you know begins very soon to explain just why the present situation of America 1787 is a crisis and needs to be needs to be faced it's a necessary thing an urgent thing and here is our response to it and the necessity of Union I think is the first yes it was a necessity if he's not simply a choice but yeah right but Tocqueville seems to really want it don't you think you know under commute Democratic pride a little better I think he does he wants he wants to sustain it and limit it and discipline it I think that's true and also liberal pride this goes against the notion that you can just make your government from the start from some from out of no government out of a state of nature in which people are mere individuals no you political situation is always there politics is always there so if you want to think politically you can't begin from the beginning as you would like it that I think is a real truth let's call a profound truth about politics democratic politics to be responsible and democratic posit politics means not to suppose that you can begin from the beginning and not to expect it therefore not to blame too much the people who came before you so this is sort of deep criticism of Hobbes and Locke yeah or at least a modification I suppose I mean I think so yeah yeah it goes against this constructivist notion of liberalism that wants to start from zero at zero base liberalism universe a so talk feels much closer to hear the wisdom of the Ancients and to Aristotle's famous definition of man as a man is by nature a political animal meaning we always have our politics with us even when we don't like it or even when we don't want it I suppose the spirit of Aristotle which is you know live in a democracy or an oligarchy and then you mater moderate them and elevate them as much as possible that does need to be more Tocqueville's in a way of approaching it then it goes construction from the state of nature yes when do you read Aristotle's politics you see Aristotle trying to make you as a reader into a political scientist but not a political scientist suggest judges or watches from the outside but who actually makes arguments political arguments within it within politics so all of his political science you could say is directed towards the possibility of a mixed regime some kind of mixture of the various elements of human nature that otherwise make us partisan and make us want to be either Democrats or aristocrats and talk field doesn't quite follow that he uses the same idea of making you into a political scientist and one who actually has to face concrete practical choices as to how you would legislate say for a democracy if that were your situation or just legislate within one so he makes you into a politician but he says as against Aristotle that the mixed regime is a chimera a fantastic possibility which could never exist in reality I'm not by the way that might not be so far from what Aristotle himself thinks but you but but tomfool doesn't get you in the mode of trying to mix democracy and aristocracy except you could say on the sly or gradually one of the great themes of democracy in America is the difference between democracy and aristocracy that's introduced right away in the introduction and he comes back to it very very frequently I don't know how many times but yeah again and again he makes you see better what democracy is through comparison to this or contrast to this preceding regime two holes it seems that human beings have live in either one hole or another hole and one is called democracy and the other aristocracy democracy means everybody is equal or regards himself as equal such as the power of ideas if we're not exactly equal we can regard each other as equal whereas our stark will see the fewer better if you are better than the many and that's that's a kind of necessary and truth of course he doesn't apply it so much in the notion of aristocracy to the sort of literal definition of aristocracy as Aristotle does rule of the best but Tocqueville's speaks more of a landed aristocracy which is fixed and familial this is how aristocracy was in practice in action in France in early Europe so and indeed everywhere else prior to modern democracy so that's how he he presents it as aristocracy therefore is more of an imposition of the few on the many than as a natural title to rule but still there were there are wonderful things about an era stop Irish doctors say it's pride it's taste for luxury it's love of greatness it's sublime reasonings and it's it's literature philosophy so that you could say the highest and noblest things in humanity have to do with aristocracy according to to talk film so that tells you right away that democracy is going to want to borrow some of those things or to enjoy them and in some in some way and he shows how politically say democracy borrows from aristocracy he says that rights which are so important in our democracy we're originally aristocratic they weren't thought up by John Locke and Thomas Hobbes those names are not mentioned but rather by nobles and Nobles didn't just think of rights they actually stood up for them so that's that's important that rights aren't rights unless you claim them and the nobles stood up for their rights against the king or the monarchy and that give a beautiful example of Liberty political Liberty in action which talk that wants us to remember and think about so rights have a source and English history the Magna Carta we used to learn that in grade school I'm not sure whether we do anymore Magna Carta that's noble standing up for King against King John I remember and and that and then another example is the jury and in aristocracy the jury is a jury of your peers meeting other your if your noble yet tried by other nobles okay so we don't wait to pick that up and we democratize it same as we did with rights and we make it an experience kind of a random experience it is now not very frequent for a citizen for a democratic citizen judging his fellows but this comes out of aristocracy and it teaches you something he says being on a jury is being part of a great free school and what I think it teaches you is that isn't that it isn't so easy just to pass a law in a democracy when something bad happens a shooting our immediate reaction is there ought to be a law there ought to be a law against that as if laws could answer every ill that arises and if you're on a jury you look at a law and you actually have to apply one to human being or a group of human beings who are gonna go to jail according to how you decide so it's a serious thing the responsibility that's put in your hands and just just applying a law is much too mechanical and you see that law in different circumstances can be just and unjust and yet it's your job to uphold the law about your private sense of justice so that brings a kind of thought a kind of turmoil of thinking which i think is still to be found in a democratic jury so that's another example of aristocracy and in democracy and IND explicitly I think so the association's which are so important to preserve Liberty here it's a democratic equivalent of or based on exactly but yeah the Nobel who had the power to stand on a state and so he spends a lot of time telling you not to yearn not to be nostalgic for aristocracy and then a lot of time you know showing us a nostalgia for in how to learn his examination or adopts Mr Craddock modes in a certain way at a Democratic you know society yeah one could say more about associations yeah well so what is the great threat of democracy I guess democratic despotism that says right and tyranny of the majority and all that is she's famous for that right well if I take too much for granted that that's doing that that we would understand that that's a threat since that's not natural to democracy I supposed to assume that democracy can go wrong by being it's not yes it's too democratic so to speak you it's really not not natural to any system of government to think that it can go wrong but right but it well it happens or go wrong eternally and it go wrong not by an imposition from outside but by us the working of its own logic I guess yeah associations one might say a little more that is because democracy has the effect of individualizing if you're all equal then there's no one among you who has any more authority than any any other person so you're oh you're deprived of somebody to look up to and or some principle even to look up to because the principle we'll just reinforces your right to live the way your own reason tells you you want to live so democracy individualizes but as an individual you're weak you can't accomplish anything you're out there and the frontier you build a house other people come around you and build houses you want to communicate with them it's helpful you want to be together so somebody you have to build a road you can't do that by yourself so people come together and they'll form an organization this is how Tocqueville describes some of the origin of the township which is famous discussion of the township in the first volume of democracy in America so association requires of some kind of formal organization often with officers when you have officers you have any qualities you have people who can boss you around or see at least strongly suggest that you do certain things and you begin to see that that obeying is part of being free if the obedience is within certain formal limits and you see the importance of forms and organizations forms have to do make them are also this is almost as important as associations for talk filler and in fact you could say they go together and that's true just as you said that in an hour start will see the associations are there ready-made the feudal lord and his serfs are sort of one big family you don't have that in a democracy there's nobody in charge there's nobody to look up to so you have to bring it together and and so even today I think Americans continue to excel in the making of associations in universities this is the observation that made one like when I go to European University there on the billboards and there's no student organizations advertising their meetings or talks or activities there might be a lecture but that's sponsored by the University whereas in America in my place Harvard has some 200 250 student organizations which have this life of four years because they're often made by someone when he's a freshman where I then leaves after four years because somebody else wants that the honor of being the founder of a new Association and so this continues and and that's a good thing that gives a kind of fresh freshness of activity certain restlessness that is characteristic of democracy allows people to rise and fall allows people to express and satisfy their ambition and also to learn the experience of losing so all this is part of the and and and this and makes certainly you could say is intended to make accordion to talk fill Democratic citizens into so that the the equivalent of a feudal Noble standing up for his Liberty and so it's been yeah it's been this it's the same idea but it's been democratized now what how does no one what democratic despotism is and this we see in volume 2 is the is a situation when these associations begin to decay and when citizens no longer rely on their own doing their own activities and don't think this is my political Liberty I have it's for me to do and me for me and my friends my associates but rather eyes I'm just going to accept the benefits of democratic government and get a check in the mail and not do anything myself not even perhaps take the trouble to vote in sort of half gratitude for their favors I've received so so that so that together with the notion of a fractional administration leads to a great movement towards centralization in in democracy in the administrations of democracy and also the policies more and more things come to be decided by their central government more and more policies come to be made and this that gradually saps the spiritedness and the and the sometimes contrary intractability of a solid democratic citizen and turns him into a heard the talk volume even uses that word that so to anticipate nature that democracies the democratic man is a herd animal Tocqueville saw that coming already or that that danger yeah it seems so struck by the danger of individualism leading to feel like helplessness the passivity and sort of the upper takes up more than there's more passivity no and that seems to have been I guess that's the core of his his fear here is that right and I think so and it's mild despotism it's not harsh it's not oppressive it's even beneficial and it's done benevolently though often very clumsily and this is except a characteristic of French bureaucracy and under the old regime you hit two was clumsy but but and I saw we still see that today but it's but that doesn't become a reason for rejecting it if you've lost your appetite for for ruling yourself ruling yourself that's what freedom requires and so so I think that's that's really important now that's now on the other hand there was a harsh majority tyranny that Tocqueville talks about and that's the tyranny of the majority that's that's a phrase he uses in the first volume and doesn't gives in the second volume and the phrase that he uses in the second volume sort of mild despotism he doesn't use in the first so the first volume of democracy in America was published in 1835 and the second five years later 1840 and so scholars worry that there's a huge difference or that there is a lack of continuity between the two despite tocqueville's words to the contrary but there's obviously some difference in the two at any rate you could say that in the first following he discusses harsh tyranny he gives examples of lynching and in you know a journalist in Philadelphia and also the denial of voting rights to freed blacks I mean they had the rights but they when they came to the polls they weren't allowed to vote and then of course he tells of the very harsh tyranny of our democracy against the black slaves and the Indians who were dispossessed of their lands and many of them killed yes that's right that's the concluding chapter isn't it it is and the first one of the first of all it wasn't exactly upbeat oh damn no those races in America is not a happy no things you're really you're just interested it's a long chapter it is hundred pages it's the only chapter that has its own outline and covers and not just for three races but America's future and actually the very end of volume money as this confrontation between America and Russia right of the two Democratic destinies you wouldn't think of Czarist Russia as a democracy but he does yeah because he sees that the Tsar has followed the same policy he's a despot and he's equalized everybody underneath him so despotism and the worst kind of democracy have the same policy of equalizing levelling down in the case of despotism but levelling up in the better case of democracy if it's aware of itself yeah being aware of itself lets us to be a good way of describing what Tocqueville tries to have his readers yeah I guess the normal account is that he writes for these French aristocrats but he's surely is writing for American and other Democrats as well right sure thoughtful I would say definitely you know to educate them mm-hmm the first volume is more political I guess then the second war in society isn't that clear yes that's right that's what he says it's more on laws and institutions the first volume and the second volume is more on mores sentiments thoughts or as he says civil society a phrase that he was partly responsible for inventing so and we still talked about the necessity of keeping a healthy civil society as as for example associations so you have my colleague Robert Putnam and his book Bowling Alone and though he's worried that bowling bowling groups or associations aren't in vogue anymore but people are bowling alone right so that's an example of the importance of associations as understood today by a political sociologist but being a good moderate liberal I suppose he is you know he doesn't really want to tie that into as much as others might to the rise of the government and so forth right I would suspect so yes but he's my colleague now I respect him villages the Tocqueville does stress that connection I think I mean he's so strong for decentralization and for erring on the side of citizen self-government across too many elections in Miami States you know that's right the part I think is striking I remember when I first read Tocqueville and I was struck by what a wise and judicious observer of democracy and if not just a market secret of human beings he was and that I was so surprised when I discovered that he was what 25 or something like that 26 when he came to America and 31 the first volume was published and 35 I guess when the second volume was published this it's astonishing it is you know he was born in eighteen five and died in 1859 he lived not a long life and and it was sickly he was died of tuberculosis and I guess he had that through most of his adult life suffered from it but he comes from Normandy his name is Alexis de Tocqueville the dermis says he's from Tocqueville so his was an ancient family the clay rail family norman family and and it is got a chateau there and you can still see it today you can visit it there was a accountants count and Countess of Tocqueville living it living in it to the present so he goes on and they're not his heirs they're not his heirs because he never had children that was either not a loss according to him or or perhaps it was that he wants to spoke over having children as as as I was running a lottery you don't know what you're gonna get yeah and yeah he wasn't sure that he was going to make that bet or or on but there are other expressions of sorrow that he never had children anyway so he's he was an aristocrat and his father lived through the French Revolution just barely he was imprisoned was scheduled to be guillotine and was led off either guillotine Unitas I guess of Robespierre so that one and they just stopped in time and he came out of jail he was 22 years old at the time his hair having turned white I was with terror so Tocqueville is is therefore well-placed to see the difference between the old regime of aristocracy in the new regime of democracy and this sets him up ideally for the contrast city presents so often between democracy and aristocracy and in his writings and especially in this book democracy in America so he came he learned some law served as a judge for four years living in Versailles started off as judges at age 23 and then he came to America with a project I guess he got a grant with a project for a study of the penitentiary system in America the new ways of treating criminals which but on but he came here and stayed for nine months travel around the whole country as it was then including going to the frontier which was Michigan at that time once they came back to see how the French were doing went down the Mississippi slept in a log cabin and and and rode in a steamboat went down to Mississippi to New Orleans and then came up through the south so we saw both the slave states and in the free states then left from New York nine months later that was in 1832 then he produced this book 1835 the first volume so he was thirty years old then that it's famous became famous immediately that was a great hit that cellar and he was immediately taken into the French Academy which is there's a good signal honor especially for I don't know one someone so young it strikes me I thought about this I mean oh it doesn't seem to me at the time it would have been an obvious thing to go to America I don't know that that many other later on people did it a lot and you know Dickens and Brice well these people are you know come to America to see it but that's what America's 20 30 40 years further on and yes that's true but still his kinsmen and relation of Chateaubriand Rene - a partnership opium came to America and gave a very different picture yeah I talked with and seen some of this was where he would see the future yes so what cuts against the French yes fried in their own revolution which they was right but look they found morphed in significance that you CUNY American Revolution right historical events were in France not in America it's true I mean but Chateaubriand was coming to America to get away from the French Revolution and he and and he just he came here to see you know how European civilization could survive in the barbarism of the wild so whereas Tocqueville came here to see what was the future of Europe yeah that's of Europe's future was was here America was ahead of Europe yeah that's that's um that's a message that he says yeah so that I think that that is really striking so so that's a little bit of his biography and then he came back and actually ran for office and several times was a member of the Constituent Assembly that produced the constitution of the second Second Republic and the then he was actually a Minister of Foreign Affairs for a few months for him and he was ousted in a series of events which finally ended in the coming of Louie Louie Napoleon in 1851 and talk till then which taco regarded as a disaster for France this kind of bureaucratic Napoleon Napoleon among other things will say it's not only the master of an empire but the creator of bureaucracy and the great have the great schools of France so where the bureaucrats oh I'll get their education still now right so and then so he used this this time the the rest of his life really to work on from 1852 on to work on the old regime and and sort of on the sly secretly a book called souvenir or recollections book of memoirs which is a brilliant treatment of individuals that he knew and that he met in his friendships but also in his politics or his political activity the rest of these other books don't treat of individuals that's kind of interesting for act about so the founders of America are treated as a group hello and so well George Washington is quoted people individuals are quoted I say but George Washington is quoted to show what the American policy could have been and toward the Indians but wasn't said in a noble and beneficial policy so yeah so and it's only in this secret book which he is required not to be published and so it is only published I think in the 1930s very much later and people became aware of this is contains sketches brilliant sketches of of people they know not all of whom we thought so well of know they're not of almost none of whom hey II thought so I love especially those in politics you see he spoke of of seeing people who was everyday whose names and faces he couldn't remember except that he had seen them before and they must have names he says what I I can't remember them they bore me profoundly that is not that statement way of the usual politician you know and probably indicates why he was not that successful but he somehow thought it was important to go into politics for useful he did and the souvenirs he gives an example of a crucial situation where he saw what was necessary to do but wasn't able to do it himself so it was kind of chance defeat of of a good policy or a good result for for the French people French politics so that you know you you get an impression of the importance of chance looking at that memoir it's not forgotten though and in the other books he wants to remind us bits of you know the limits of control of human pride and of human accomplishment he ought by the way there's a remark in a Santa marcozzi in America about how in democracy you have to rise through stages and to do this takes a long time or is an aristocracy even become great when you're young it's like as Paragon Pascal became a philosopher every woman he was the same ages wrongful see but talk full if he'd been here in America he would have had to get a PhD he said I'll be an assistant professor and that kind of thing right rise from the ranks as we say and even in politics in America we have some young people but not quite as much as we think it's young for John Kennedy is 43 or whatever would ya guess Pitt the Younger is why doesn't know just 24 124 but you got ministers to yes any pretty great Minister and 23 when he was translated the Exchequer yeah yes yeah those are possibilities under aristocracy and Tocqueville I'm struck that we all we tend to take him today as warning against the problems of democracy which he certainly does and suggesting various mitigating things one could do and even solutions was probably too strong with you know but he also it's not just you know not avoiding democratic despotism I was struck by that when I reread Tocqueville and as I kind of hoped for something greater at least sometimes it is writing for sure yeah at the end of marcozzi in America ends with with a kind of exhortation to what he calls the true friends of liberty and human greatness so that those two things are connected live and human greatness yeah let you explain that that's not so well that already tells you that there's something iris de Craddock about liberty isn't when your liberty you're free to show yourself or to show your merit and that means free to create an inequality order and and if you're in a free society that's a society of inequality is tolerated or even admired inequalities so but human greatness is also possible under democracy because as with other aristocratic things it gets democratized so we have our love of public monuments she says in in democracies there are huge public monuments and in small individual houses and not much in between I know that's still a case but and was about we're very proud of our monuments for example Washington it's just an artificial city his consists of monuments or especially at the beginning or not right not many inhabitants but it had had a kind of American greatness it showed what we wanted to do with ourselves just as on the first page of the Federalist which he mentioned a lot ago and America is to being an experiment for all of mankind we're taking on a big responsibility no.not and so each one of us sort of feels this pride but also a sincere desire to benefit others now come live with us okay so that's a typical American tourist yeah come over and see you'll see how great it is right yeah and right said people of Finn living where they are for centuries as if as if such blandishments could be effective but that's still our Democratic greatness so we won't want to set an example for all of mankind of a republic that works and that's in the Federalist and Tocqueville picks up on that they're about a dozen references to the Federalists in democracy in America and so he had a high opinion of that book yeah so he picks up on on this desire to improve mankind but it's also much more mundane to when you are free you or you look around for something to occupy your attention and the most immediate objects are material things or material goods so democracy characterized by material love of material enjoyments or material well-being it's not so much capitalism that causes this according to the Torah it's not our economic system but it's our political system he makes a remark about elections and we're not we don't have elections because we're prosperous but we're prosperous because we have elections so the prosperity of the activity the economic activity that makes us prosperous as shown are is given it's is confirmed and nourished and founded in our political activity and in a large number of elections that we have so that is a good thing but it's also a bad thing because material enjoyments are petty and limited and competitive the competition part is not so bad right but because that makes you spirited and dissatisfied but if you live a life of material enjoyments at the end of it you look around and they're dissatisfied with all the things you didn't do or couldn't have done or wished you've done so it makes you wonder whether that was enough and so it's in the in in the human being and the nature of human being talk though says to have a lover or a taste for what is infinite and immortal and democracies don't really live in accordance with this but they show this they show this so we show you you can show your freedom most by keeping yourself free from the enslavement of material goods or or money we're all aware of that even though we don't live that way we wished we live that way and that already is something but the the greatness comes from the ability to strip of show our or exhibit our political Liberty through associating and through participating in politics thinking about politics and making this a successful Republic yeah I mean he stresses self-interest well understood so famously and does stress it yet mature yet on the one hand one has to acknowledge I guess interest and he doesn't resort to a kind of idealism to try to elevate people above you know material interest but he's very worried about material materialism was a great danger right not a moral exhortation against material goods and he describes them what he calls the American doctrine of self-interest well understood I don't think he subscribes to it but but he describes it and yeah that that we don't like to think of ourselves as virtuous so we refashion our virtues as as just oh I you know anyone would have done that ever that was in my interest to do that and I didn't sorry I didn't mean to be virtuous if I was accidentally so you know so this is so we don't give ourselves credit sufficiently for our decency or for our good motives for our virtues so that there's a suggestion there that perhaps who might do so a little more and in that sort of that's also the context for his remark about pride and he would trade this and any number of small virtue of small virtues for the vice of pride it's as a virtue Americans need to had take more pride in what they do if they did then they wouldn't be so attached to material goods because well even so you obviously can take pride in material goods I the cars you own that kind of thing but relieved of that pride might lead you beyond yeah it does you know near material goods makes it into a hobby or even an enthusiasm right something you'll know about you become you become knowing and knowledgeable in that and that sort of thing so that's already that's already better than and the mere desire to have have a car right yeah and as useful as they are and it's the pride is connected to what does he call self a new kind of liberal liberal yeah yes yeah he uses that phrase in a letter when he was very young yes I I'm a liberal but a new kind of liberal so it will be interesting to try to figure out what that new kind of liberal is that's just like his new political science he doesn't define that what I think it is is an improvement on the liberalism of the 17th century of the 17th century English philosophers who founded liberalism Hobbes and Locke and Spinoza and others but those mainly and they founded their liberalism on the state of nature on a state which in which people live without government without civilization without any of the advantages or benefits of society as individuals sort of as and Hobbes is famous description of the state of nature is a war of all against all so when you're all individualized like that and you can't count on anybody but yourself there's no trust there's no virtue there's no society if you say that's the beginning then this then that's the zero beginning that I think Tocqueville wants to avoid because that makes politics into something questionable in itself it suggests that your real nature is not political but is to be an individual out for himself and that can't help but have bad effects on on morals and mores of democracy once it's founded as all virtues are undercut right yes explicitly by Hobbes I guess yes and pride is yes it made it submitted to me to submit to fear you know your fear is more rational than your pride according to Hobbes that's sometimes true but maybe not entirely true so so Tocqueville opposes that he never refers to a state of nature or some kind of beginning foundation of that time which wants to construct government from and society from the beginning from from my beginning in which it doesn't exist so he said always presumes that society and politics are presently existing and you have to work from that and so a political Liberty therefore must can however can be understood as something natural because if you're if you say politics is not natural then political Liberty seems to be something artificial or unnecessary or even impossible if you begin from total Liberty in a state of nature it doesn't seem that you can reach a moderate or political Liberty by liberal means so Hobbes and Locke both the resort to fear or some kind of pressure of necessity which makes us join a political association and that means then that you become free through unfree means order as Tocqueville says satin you won't get freedom that way what you'll get is people looking for government to benefit them because they'll think of themselves it's necessarily selfish and necessarily weak not being able to do anything on their own so totally wants to show Americans that they can do something on their own in fact they aren't doing something on their own and so that's and therefore his argument is not fantastic or imaginary but based on the facts of American life and so when you show the American people that their what they're doing in there they're making their living in towns and their governing themselves to govern yourself you must make it make it make your you must be above yourself in some sense and that means you must have something like a soul a soul is what enables you to rise above yourself your necessities and to make a choice without a soul how can you make a choice so tocqueville's liberalism is liberalism with a soul that's the new kind of liberalism I think that he's whereas Hobbes and Locke were great critics of the soul right because they thought that once you've got a soul you think too much of yourself and you begin to think of God and will ensure that your soul is going to be immortal and this leads to the too much power in the church and and superstition and oppression or as Tocqueville no Christianity is a is a positive influence he says that men never appreciated their natural equality until Christ came to to us so it was already a natural fact he says in that but it took Christ Christianity that make us appreciate appreciate this natural fart I suppose one was sticking out one other one one could say that you know in the 17th century it was necessary in some sense to for Hobbes and Locke to launch such a frontal assault on fried the so all these pretensions yes to do away with what they thought had to be that away with which was the ability of Christianity to use that rhetoric in that way of thinking to dominate yeah politics the dominate people wouldn't get priests all this power and yes took the lot away in the nineteenth century can doesn't have to litigate that anymore so to speak but he doesn't you know he does have to deal with the baleful influence of those who made that change or who thought they had to make venture of Hobbes a lot yes he has to modify them backyards you know very much yeah and he talks explicitly about bringing together that's neither Liberty and village and the the passion of Liberty and the passion oh the spirit the spirit of religion have really yes yeah well we'll be friends friends of levity there's a taste of taste for liberty there's a passion for equality a taste for liberty and a spirit for religion okay yeah so but the friends knows everything should be about yea war with the first village yes yeah yeah he says all right he's he indicates that already in the introduction right democracy in America but all the way through and and another point is to that he gives credit to the Puritans for bringing democracy to America but they were a theocracy they believe that they were directly governing under the under the command of God so that part had to be changed so to make an alliance between religion and liberty it was necessary to make the distinction between church and state and so that part of the 17th century liberalism talk Vil accepts and indeed improves and he says that the Catholic Kurt clergy in America say you know believe in this distinction of church and state but yes Chris Christianity when it medals in politics loses its moral and religious purity because it develops interests of its own and becomes partisan as the French church did when it became when it really fought the revolution or suffered under the revolution in alliance with the monarchy and the nobles thrown an altar so that had to be that had to be changed but but but so he but paradoxically you see the religion will have more political influence if it doesn't try to exercise it because its political influence comes from its morals but its morals in order to be influential have to be pure so so the priest cannot be accused of seeing no evil as Machiavelli did so when was once the church gets itself off by itself then it has more influence and if it were if it were to try to take partisan stands or enter directly into politics so under those conditions religion and Liberty can make an alliance instead of being a part now are eaten and heated in conflict as they had been for the previous century or two yet I suppose that's more it's a newer than once that I mean now almost twelve years later once used to a lot of people saying over literal already can go together should go together yeah do go together politicians routinely appealed they do this thing is probably not sure maybe when Tocqueville was writing that was more especially in France that was me I was more trying innovation so to speak yes struck listening to you just got stuck you did really much earlier but throughout your career you worked on Burke another great Edmund Burke another someone who writes somewhat in the spirit of talk about behalf so let's say that people today who admire Tocqueville often admire Burke and yes I do for example conservatives or conservative liberals or something yeah but actually there's someone there so quite different when you think about it right I would say I just took for Willie refer to Burke or does he seem to know will be yeah yes in the old regime he has a long critique of Burke's understanding of the of the French Revolution as Burke really comes to the support of the French nobility right in a way that Tocqueville does not so so say a word about sort of Berkey and conservatism versus took building a conservatism that's the right way to say it since I think I do think if you talk to yeah intelligent American or European conservatives today those two are probably two of the thinkers they would most you know look to for guidance you know guidance maybe is somewhat that's a slight you didn't directions only so young Burke died in 1797 and so on Tocqueville published this book and eighteen 1835 two generations writers so and the big difference is democracy so Burke did not live under democracy or under the promise of democracy or in any way under the authority of democracy at least in England although we saw many English radicals sort of democratic radicals nonetheless he was able to suppose that some kind of aristocratic or mixed monarchy of yeah with a popular elections and a mixed regime it was possible and and talk Ville does not so I think that's a big political difference between them and in therefore between the conservatism that comes out of them so let's toast Alger and telling me that's why unfair to criticize Burke finger Sasha but Burke berkians berkians tend to become the style Jack way yeah in a way that drive leads to things I think that's right I think that's right talk furfrou for example makes his peace with progress with a liberal notion of progress he certainly criticizes it he points out very sharply keenly that there isn't any definition of progress that the Liberals have that what they're going after is not perfection but perfect ability as if you could go on perfecting yourself without ever no succeeding his errand is that are ever coming to a stop so it's that kind of fundamental irrationality at the heart of of liberal progress nonetheless he sees the importance of it in America in a way that I think Burke would want to deny they're both wonderful stylists if you want to learn French read Tocqueville and English read burke and you can learn they both have more wonderful observations insights formulations both are eminently quotable right in many situations so but TOEFL did criticize Burke's understanding of the history of of the of the French monarchy he says that the Tocqueville says at the French monarchy it was already democratized by the time the Revolution occurred so that this is not a fundamental break yeah at the time but rather just a culmination of a process of rationalization or a rational administration that the monarchy had given itself over to that would gradually make the people want to rebel against the idea rationality of government by a single hereditary ruler and say word about another Englishman that whom Tocqueville knew and who I think helped publicize talk for quite a lot which is Mill yeah another great liberal and yes right I still read still appeal to yes right notice to liberals has burkas to conservative so Milland and talk for both obviously shared democracy and and what somewhat differently mill still wants to do away with aristocratic leftovers in English life and politics that he sees so he's in favor of an increasingly democratic policy in which he ended up with espousing socialism at the end of his life so than which talk feel totally rejected in his private book the souvenirs so but but also mill had much greater reliance on the possibility of rational administration or rational venue a rational policy that of that would be affected by the people today called intellectuals right so he mill is a favorite today of intellectuals and he would have liked them too so I think that would be a mutual admiration society or as Tocqueville and no liking whatsoever for democratic intellectuals he thought that they were trouble they were mischief they took the democratic principle and tried to make everything even more democratic that it already is he believed that to be mistaken you shouldn't nourish the the errors of of democracy first you need to identify them then you need to work against them carefully and not necessarily by confrontation that usually not but by pointing out what's what's missing yeah the two strands in America or I guess in the anglo-american tradition do seem to be the Burkean and the million and tuck fill seems you know maybe a little deeper than not deeper maybe it's not fair bit of yeah not to fall into maybe the errors of either/or beyond limitations of either you could say that I think you know the middle of a very generous review of yes all right you did it yes he did it and ER so you wrote him a consulate or a letter after the second volume come out came out and it wasn't such a success of the first I said don't don't worry there's still a wonderful thing there and I'm pleased to have you and yeah and invited him to write a write for his magazine for Mills magazine it's funny that the first was such a I mean who knows why these things happen I'm sure there's a lot of chance but that the first was such a huge success more than the second was I would say and you talk talk well many more times than I have but I've only done it a little bit and so on the side and summer programs and so I think students today so much more taken with the second by and then the first and I was I personally am too was that these fantastic short chapters were these insights and it turns out what connected that it seems on the servers but yeah they really seemed to speak to what's experience of living in a modern it is democracy whereas the first is a little bit you know thrilling to read it first you learn all the facts you didn't historical necessarily want to know right right Constitution years the second yes sort of formalities maybe the second hit too close to home why was the second not well-received I wonder if it was just too hard to I think they thought it was more theoretical or yeah he does say that and his first of all he was more about America and the second is more about democracy right together democracy in America absolutely well thank you for teaching us about Tocqueville and about democracy in America and thank you for joining us again in conversations thanks Ari

Channel: Conversations with Bill Kristol

Views: 36,586

Keywords: Alexis De Tocqueville (Author), Harvey Mansfield (Author), Harvard University (College/University), Liberalism (Political Ideology), Conservatism (Political Ideology), Democracy In America (Book), John Locke (Author), Thomas Hobbes (Author), Edmund Burke (Author), John Stuart Mill (Author), William Kristol (Politician)

Id: SJ9dIYd-vUQ

Length: 72min 24sec (4344 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 30 2015