Harvey Mansfield on Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America"

[Music] hi I'm Bill Kristol welcome to conversations and I'm pleased to be joined again today by Harvey massachio professor of government at Harvard thank you it's always good to be here and with you thank you and so let's talk about Tocqueville's democracy in America which you've translated with double Winthrop and written about in several many articles and I guess a short book and Tocqueville all of which I recommend needless to say but but particularly about liberalism I mean you forty years ago you wrote a book the spirit of liberalism in which you said you wanted to I think defend a defensible liberalism I think is that right I think that's right and I think you found Tocqueville to be important in that enterprise he's the man is that right okay well we can end this conversation now that's a very bold statement he he rode 150 years ago so we have to bring him up bring him up to date but he's the one to start from anyway that's the very least and more okay so why why start with Tocqueville rather than other famous well he was inside this defensible liberal liberalism as I think a political liberal liberalism so he tries to make liberalism more political and to see what that means you have to begin from the standard theory of liberalism which i think is rather a political standard theory is the 17th century founders of founding philosophers of liberalism Hobbes and Locke and Spinoza and but also you can see it in in democratic theorists today and and liberal theorists like John Rawls and this liberalism the standard liberalism begins from an apolitical situation which in the 17th century was called the state of nature and that's a state which is imagined or sometimes said to be historical but at any rate imagined or posited as coming before government it it is it's a situation of primitive equality from which government is constituted so each person starts out in an unpalatable situation and has to create politics through a system of consent and that means that the politics that comes after is somewhat stunted because it doesn't take account of the political character of human situations and by that I mean especially the character which is embodied in the word rule the original or standard liberalism doesn't like the notion of rule rule it's a principle by which a society is ruled that is which gives it its particular character and and which it continually tries to indoctrinate or enforce or just insinuate into its its citizens so ruling has to do with what society intends to do for itself but it also includes I mean not every rule is is perfect or correct in fact one could even say none of them is to be to rule is to take things in a certain direction and that certain direction is always partisan so politics in this view this is an older view of Aristotle politics is always partisan partisan no fundamental that's a fundamental character of politics and what liberalism tries to do is to take out take away this partisanship and to create an impartial society a society which doesn't have a particular path and I mean it does this more or less but it in the that's always it's a presiding intention so and why did they do this well the original liberals in the 17th century were afraid of the government of the church and their general prescription for preventing this or hindering this was to get rid of the notion of rule altogether so you want you're not going to be ruled by the church because you're not going to be ruled at all by Dennie by any founding principles other than those that come out of the society which is not constituted for the sake of a particular form of rule neutral principle neutral formal neutrals neutral and impartial that's that's that's that's the idea for a political liberalism and from this come individual rights and individual Maxim's and especially the notion of of self-interest so what now what so what Tocqueville tries to do is to bring back the notion of rule he doesn't do it under the that word so in that way he adopts he adapts adapts himself to the hostility of liberalism toward rule but he does it in in other ways so what he has métiers in mind I think can be seen in the idea that he attributes to America and so his liberalism is an attributed liberalism that he finds in America and that's why he calls his book democracy in America that's the book I'm going to discuss if you want to look at Tocqueville's political liberalism you could also look in his other two books one is on the old regime in France before the French Revolution and that has to do with a surprising in incipient liberalism of the French monarchy that the French monarchy sort of undermined and finally destroyed itself by becoming more and more liberal so to speak without recognizing it so that's this surprising and very interesting thesis and in that book and then talk velocerator book called souvenirs which his particular it's a description and defense of his particular political life this is another sign of his political liberalism that he was not just a philosopher of liberalism but actually practiced it ran for office held office and in the French Ministry not for very long but wasn't it was definitely involved in that politics and this is his description of his personal experiences in in the 1840s late 1840s and in the French Republic and and from which you learned interesting things about his political liberalism but I want to talk mainly about democracy in America because that's where everything has brought together I think and and and and made a package was made political where that's where liberalism is made it's definitely made political democracy in America so he takes us liberalism from actual political practice and he takes it not from France which was not yet an advanced liberal country they have recently had a revolution but in America so where democracy was at its most advanced most progressive embodiment and and that's where so and so that's where he he begins from and he finds in America and this is the principle of liberalism might say in Tocqueville the maxim of self-interest well understood that Americans like to understand everything they do in terms of self-interest they don't they don't claim to be virtuous they don't claim to sacrifice themselves for the common good although they do those things they are sometimes virtuous and they do sacrifice themselves but they claim less than they could so in a way they sell themselves short and that by vice like always saying that they act only according to their self-interest in this self-interest can be individual but also national the way we here today of America's interests America's foreign policy should be governed solely by America's interest so self-interest but self-interest well understood the self-interest by itself could be that would be the standard liberalism but you have to understand it well no yeah so there's all American you know discussion of self-interest in a way is they've read or imbibed without reading Locke or something like that and they think that's the only ground to then a state that's right and then and if they read contemporary theorists I see pretty much the same thing so Rawls John Rawls didn't speak of the state of nature but he spoke of the original position as he called it and in general you read these did read Democratic theorist and you see that they begin from this a political sick so the well understood is a very important modification very very very important yes yeah that is just like in the old days before your translation was that often translated or rendered properly understood I somehow think of that phrase as being the right dress it is it is a question yes but the usual phrase is rightly understood rightly rightly understand actually Tocqueville once use that phrase and so some people some other translators I use it in this case but the French is being on concert is really literally literally being on canoe means well well understood and you can see the resistance or theoretical issue or complexity in this that when you add something to self-interest is that something which is part of self interest or is it something which is outside self-interest but added to it so is it is everything under the name of self-interest and that's correct and that would be that would be self-interest rightly understood so to do something Sakura Sakura sacrificing act that would be self-interest you know rightly understood or is it you or do you say that that's that sacrificing act isn't self-interest but you add it to it so it's self-interest plus X or plus virtue or in of some kind I think it's the latter and that's why I why we delve and I translated it as self-interest well understood so so the self-interest well understood so everything then depends on what is included and well understood and and so there's a number of items and the first one that you could begin with his rights and Tocqueville just in the book presents I mean he doesn't really walk you through these and the no cross the systematic way that at least yeah no I'm trying to reconstruct right you know at the beginning he speaks of the need for a new political science a political science that is altogether new in a new world by what she meant the new world of not just of America but of democracy modern the modern world is is democratic and so it needs a new political science for that but then when you read through the pokey never says this is my new political science that's appropriate for the new world I'm describing so you have to put that together and that's part of it and you put it together out of the things that he says about the political practices of America and that's somehow important to tuck those you know attention that he wants you to that's really extract yeah that's not to simply present you some docum right that's exactly right so yeah so you have to be kind of a political person yourself to put together his his political theory and and he gives you the ingredients and a lot of signals and hints but some of them going on in different directions and so it's it's not an easy thing it turns out turns out to be quite difficult to put Tocqueville together but I think that that's you're right that was intentional that's he wants us to do the work and he thought there was something almost dangerous perhaps about giving people this formulaic doctrine yeah yeah yes yeah yeah well they did sufficiently political liberalism is about self-government and self-government isn't something that can be a gift it's you can't just mechanically I mean I guess that would be what his objection to the formal simple ism you can't mechanically apply the rules that's right yeah yeah he somehow helps you there questions of judgment and so yeah and also you have to look to the circumstances of each country so democracy in America is going to be different from democracy in France say and he says that his book is about is about the nature of democracy but also about the character of America and you have to watch out for things that he says are true of America which might not be true elsewhere and so he says of this principle self-interest well understood that is what Americans believe he doesn't say they do it correctly this is I did this this isn't my necessarily my principle or the true principle but it's what you find in America so that's what we start from I would say yeah and so what is self-interest well understood all right so these two films yeah it's a it's a number of number of things that that he discusses and we can run through some of them though so the the first that I would mention is is rights and individual rights see in standard liberal theory your right is connected to your interest you have a right to pursue your interest as you see it so that's an individual thing again a political and it doesn't take account of the actual situation in democracy democracy is a situation which all are if not equal all think themselves equal so you don't think that there's another person or class of persons or institution that's smarter and better suited to rule than you and yet you also realize that you're everyone else is in the same situation as you so there isn't any particular person that you can look to to be to be sure as a guide for what you should do and what your country should do so in this situation you sort of look at what others are doing and what others are doing are also looking in the same way that you are and it comes out that the ruling set of factor in a democracy is public opinion or which public opinion is ruled by its majority so the majority and then so rights are then therefore are much more difficult to sustain when there's a powerful majority that you either follow or have to defy or not not conform to you could say that one of the best things you can learn from an education or get from an education is how to stand in a democracy is how to stand up against the majority so so therefore Tocqueville tries to understand rights as standing up for your principle not just following it or let me because the the idea of just following your your self-interest is it overlooks the weakness of each individual so so he he he derives therefore he divides rights not from this state of nature when all are equal but from the Middle Ages and he goes in and especially in England so this is when because this is where he gives America's English heritage credit I think in grade school Spode the kids still learn about the Magna Carta but that's that's what talk feel like sand he likes the Magna Carta better than the state of nature as the Magna Carta is the noble standing up to the king and in doing some of some risk to their their property and and even their lives so at risk so you've got to have you gotta have that kind of strength of character does he like it because it is actually truly the origin of Rights or because it's better that people take the fights in that war yeah that's right erratic way yes yes all right you might say we and our minds find a Democratic equivalent to the noble standing up to the king but ya know not that we have careful students of English medieval history evidence or or even that we those are our heroes but no though what we do this is talk ville looking into us and and seeing the kind of a formidable aristocratic element in the notion of rights and so and so this would be an example of of the well understood and political character that he wants to infuse but he's adding sort of worthiness he's both seeing it in us s-see adding it to us though yes that's right that's foraging us too encouraging us to more of ourselves were that way I guess almost all of his description is has this curvature he's describing how he wants us to behave and and so therefore it's often he makes us more perfect than we actually are we'll see especially when it comes to American women but she but then also then another element would be Maurice Maurice and the French word mirrors that notion that came to be added to standard liberalism of the 17th century necessary seed in 18th century writers especially for Tocqueville Montesquieu and Rousseau and or more RAZR vital element and then talk Phil himself in fact he gets his reputation for sort of one of the founders of sociology right for them because he so much relies on the notion of of mores Maurice have a certain relation to law the standard liberalism just relies on law it wants to supply you with limits to your freedom that will keep your freedom secure and other people's too and so that Hobbes compares the laws to hedges a hedge that keeps you on there keeps you from getting off the wrong path what Maury sir what you actually do or where you actually want to go and so they have a relationship relationship he says that Maurice is often the the source of a law but then it can the lock and the country can also be a source of Maurice customs well we invited a translation Jesus I mean actual it actually yeah more like yeah that's a Latin word well it's a knavish now yeah yeah habits or customs or yeah ways yeah it's informal yeah you're right I guess these days I in the context of our current president what often here is that he's challenging both the rule of law and you know constitutional norm norm sorbs I guess that's not a Maurice is a capture that sort of so this yo so this informal thing as opposed to a statutorily declared law which formally requires you usually not to do something but also sometimes to do something yeah so so more reason laws and then and then also Maurice also have to do how you actually how you actually live right and and so in democracy and then so in the first volume that democracy in America has two volumes in the first volume he takes up more ease and laws and also brings in religion that will come to next maybe and in the second one he talks about more ease as work and work in America is this is democratized as compared to aristocracy so there's a new relationship between master and servant or you could say just between employer and employee that you might think is a source of inequality and obviously it is but in a democracy inequality only on the job and so then so this servant or the employee doesn't belong to a lower class of human being yeah but he gets paid he gets a salary and actually so does so does the boss so the president United States has the salaries and this equalizes us you might not think we we don't tend to think of having a salary as a democratic thing because it's a source of inequality but it's it's a great source of equality that everybody gets paid for for what he does and as compared to an aristocracy we're getting paid as a sign of being in the lower-class right and the ruling class doesn't get paid so so that's what an example of democratic mores and then that the to turn also next to religion in the first volume Tocqueville speaks of religion as in the form of as a ton of social force in the form of mores that direct your attention to things that are beyond material gain so the characteristic activity of democracy is a love of material well-being this isn't something extra or added on to democracy but it's in the very nature of democracy and that it doesn't seek immaterial Goods and that's because once again in a democracy everyone's equal and there's no great Authority so there's nobody to tell you to direct your activity to something which is beyond your view and your view is what is materially good for you what is right in front of you what is your your immediate goal is to gain a living and gain a certain status which goes with a living and and beyond that you need a church or a king to tell you that you should sacrifice your life and devote it to something that you don't really see and appreciate so democracy about the life of democracy is in the life of material enjoyments and Tocqueville thinks that this is a great danger to democracy that it doesn't fully appreciate and he tries to find ways to combat this and to elevate democracy and the main one that he sees his his religion I suppose that would particularly be a case maybe where the recourse to the liberal philosophers who founded a liberal democracy personally Rho isn't helpful because they are or seem to be fairly materialist in their you know actual foundations of Hobbes and so yes often connection with your material is a democracy and young liberalism pretends to be neutral between materialism and spiritualism or whatever it is it's not materialism yeah but it it isn't right so it wants materialism and that goes together with not being political and not having rule because materialism gives you a goal what seems to be politically neutral and you've judged you you judge your president say are you better off now right if that's famous question of Jimmy Carter and of Ronald Reagan like this and are you safer which is also over yes are you safer that's another one yes yes are your bodily safety it's a security yeah yeah so that's both domestic and foreign policy are judged by this material well-being so religion has this is first presented as as a as a force social force that makes ennobles the life of democracy and that keeps us devoted to something especially Christianity gives you a soul every every human being has an as a as a soul that is his and his alone and this gives him a duty to perfect or cultivate his soul to make it as as good as he can this is this is a goal in life which is quite different from taking money or gaining security it it it gives you something hopeful and and inspiring so and this is just what democracy needs to lift it to lift itself out of its doldrums and then in the second volume he takes up religion again and this is in the first part which is on the intellectual movements of democracy and there he contrasts it with philosophy he says that Americans are followers of Descartes with the French philosopher the Tocqueville identifies contrary to most scholarly opinion as a philosopher of democracy and so we live democracy and therefore we don't need Descartes the philosopher so we're we're we're avid followers of Descartes without ever reading him and we don't need to read him because we already have the conclusion so this is a kind of comical way of kidding I was saying kidding Americans for their perhaps lack of interest in philosophy and even in French philosopher Descartes a French philosopher of a 17th century one of the standard liberals he would say and so yeah the whole principle of Descartes philosophy is to doubt all authority and here he is and that here in America he appears as the authority which no one doubts so there's a kind of play here between doubt which is characteristic of philosophy and faith which is characteristic of religion and Americans have a kind of religious faith in the philosopher of doubt you might say or in the principle of doubt and so he goes on bent this is the question of whether religion is true or not and there's it's not only socially effectual and powerful but is it true and if there is this truth in it he says that well if you're if you doubt your yeah you you can't move or act until you somehow resolve your doubt so you can you get up and wake up in the morning what are you going to do next so you've got to have an answer to what some what's good about your life that you want to pursue in order to in order to get up well but once you get up then you've put your doubt behind you you said you've either dismissed it or or put it aside in order to act so acting requires faith or belief that all action even the action of atheists of requires that you believe in something you can't just be an agnostic because to in order to act here at urine you're assuming that it's safe to do so or that it's reasonable to do so when in fact you don't really know that so so this is the kind of truth of religion that it gives a principle of action of action that on your own behalf or on behalf of God same or both together it makes sense out of life in a way that philosophy which is doubt cannot and took those well disposed to these dispersion of religion I suppose this understanding of really understanding yeah right he's less fearful than Hobbes a lock that will go off and so you can take everything over yeah that's right he is as especially in Christianity which gives you the the possibility of a distinction between church and state with Christianity when Christianity is a political strangely enough and this is this what liberalism imitates this characteristic of of Christianity those so the Christianity doesn't have a law attached to it as as Judaism and Islam do and this means that it's but it's possible to be to have a pure Christian soul without its having any political consequences and this is what Americans believe and this is what they practice and so I think that's you can take that as another feature of the new political science of of Descartes religion is absolutely necessary but it's very important and necessary to keep it out of politics so in this way he finds a way to keep religion out of politics without disposing of it without dismissing it as or without transforming it into something purely purely political or purely democratic as all of which the standard liberal as liberals of the 17th century attempted to do that's part of mores really or or comes from or supports worry sir you know something you know you know religion in this particular religion she seems to recommend that although perhaps his own faith there was a letter he wrote early in his life in his own faith is he seems to seems to have been questioned or law or even lost I said one once when his father led him into a library full of atheist books so yeah it's something he recommends and sees the value of and even the truth of didn't quite follow or didn't quite himself believe right yeah so that's so that's that's doubt and and and faith in religion and there in the first part of the second volume now religion can take us to the question of women women are taken up as part of the mores in there's five chapters on women in the third part of the second volume or Tocqueville takes up when in the connection between women and religion is that he says in the first volume that the soul of woman is religion it's interesting and I don't know how to understand that fully but it is true that they're traditionally known as the pious sex right yeah I think that's that's the case and then what wondering when it comes to the to the chapters on women those are very interesting yeah how does this supposed in equality of the sexes any inferiority of women to men how does democracy deal with that and the answer he says again it is found in America in what Americans do and believe and it's not something which he claims to impose or to have us a personal solution for but this is again to be found in in in the practice of American life and there he says that women are made they are found equal in to two men in in American life they're equal in everything except that they have to submit to the bonds of matrimony that's a phrase which is yes they have to be married this is a necessity of life in those days it would be very much more difficult for a woman to have lived by herself in those days than it was than it is today for sure but when but since women necessarily have to marry provide anything to someone to find someone to protect them and to get make and and and support them they they they do this willingly and voluntarily so they submit to this to the authority of men or husbands it is really because there's no alternative but they're sensible enough to see that there's no alternative and also they get a choice as to which one yeah again that's that not every man is available but but your York Shaw it's a necessary thing which is also a chosen thing then there get there you have another criticism both of standard liberal theory standard liberal theory sets were all free perfectly free that's one within the bounds of the law of nature that's how Locke describes the state of nature but then it turns out we have to give up our freedom in order to because it's necessary to do so so liberalism is come is composed of promises of freedom and laws of necessity that's everything the kind of contradiction and weakness and in standard liberalism well it is true that we human beings face this problem if things are necessary for us but also we want to be ourselves and this means we have to be free and so I think Tocqueville puts that together in a better way he says he finds us he finds the model for submission to necessity in women the behavior of American women and especially in the bonds of matrimony the marriage contract he might say as opposed to the social contract here's another way of well understanding self-interest he doesn't say that men are by nature superior to women it just seems that the greater physicality may be of a the husband make make similar the authority and the family but then women with their example of willing acceptance willing that they voluntarily is there it's not reluctant or submissive in the it's neither of those two things but willing as equal you know he finds that example so impressive that he says if you wanted to understand what makes Merritt America itself said you I you should look to the superiority of its women and there's a he doesn't say whether that's when American women are superior to other people women or whether American women are superior to American men but so if this superiority of behavior and of thought and that and and and that's why women's sort of stand for morals or mores they they they give this example of willingness to be good or to do the right thing morally and they do this freely because as girls they haven't been brought up in convents or given an education which tries to maintain their innocence nothing like like being taught by nuns and a convent or but they they so they're they're not chaste in their minds but they're correct and there were behavior so they so they they're aware of the possibilities of immorality their morality is not ignorant right and also don't you think in I've always been struck by those chapters that even if the current situation of men and women is different the lesson there of accepting the limits of what one could do but then as the ethic Tocqueville says they're very powerful or very influential at least you know in America by accepting their right their role you might say that's a model for you know not just for women right but maybe funny legislators or aristocrats or philosophers I mean it's sort of a model of not what you have to accept democracy you have to accept that in this era you know this picture of the Democratic family or the American democratic family is not that flattering to men right you know because I'm a man American men are are engaged in making money right they are out of the house so you know the American women represent the private sphere of the authority of their parts here that in private sphere that you can live a dignified and free life in in private life as well as in public and what are American men doing and in making money they're engaging in this very ironic activity that makes them rather boring husbands this is again a trial to their wives to the point that Tocqueville says that American women are sad and resolute yeah well as if she says that of the Pioneer Woman but I think the Pioneer what woman is they assume is the essential woman and so they so that they're yes so the the so the economics is sort of put down I would say in this picture of of political liberalism he doesn't offer her the economic life as the example of the private sphere as as today people tend to do and especially conservatives say well let's rely on the private sphere and by that they mean the economy they don't mean the family you know incidentally that though the word economy you know originally meant in Greek and in Aristotle's presentation the household management so together they you could say they talk though wants to return the attention of today's liberalism to to the private sphere in the family and and and what goes on there more than the economic sphere which is actually to him the public sphere because it's out of the home and it's and it's and it's making money so yeah so the economics is that is something is rather is less praised and admired I think in his presentation he yeah I would guess that he doesn't think highly of Adam Smith's so-called system of Liberty which is an economic Liberty that doesn't rely on political and political guidance to put it mildly it's directed against that right yeah so this sort of this anti political character of today's conservatism I think would not be shared by by Tocqueville but also making the I think the mores is so important there because I know that what was passed but he has the wealth of nations so that's the economics and then Theory of Moral Sentiments so that's morality but nothing of politics in a certain you might say so most an exam and that nothing he's too strong of course but I mean yeah and he talked to us seems so you know that by itself isn't or not either the economics or the right let's say sentiments or you know not connected to politics is not not enough for to provide liberalism from young declining it what kind of watch yeah for Adam Smith when an economic person turns to politics that heat that's bad sign yeah that's corruption or have ya materialism + sentimentality or something that would be too harsh but I mean you know this that doesn't cut it for tuck phone right yeah materialism morality but not the politics is so central for self oh yes yes yeah right so that now that takes us to another point and uh you know non well understood which is self government yeah so the most valuable Liberty is political Liberty and you mustn't eat so pursue other liberties to the extent that you forget about political Liberty because that's the one which makes all the other liberties possible economic Liberty requires political are pretty and this also would apply to artistic liberty or philosophical Liberty so philosophers should take an interest in in political Liberty and in the question whether human freedom is as as possible so the first volume of of democracy in America is mostly about political Liberty and it has two parts there are two parts to the first volume in the first is about the formal institutions of self-government and here talk eclipses famous analysis of the township is spontaneous when a pioneer most two into the forest he finds others living nearby and he wants to connect her with them or to be able to see them or or deal with them it needs a road a road is something that you can't build by yourself you need others so there's sort of these these useful needs sort of bring people together and they cooperate and to cooperate they need a little bit of of government and to have a little bit of government they need a little bit of formality offices people elected so this is democracy in its sort of original or primitive spontaneity that there is something in the in the human in the human soul that just the need for useful things that you can't do by yourself and that send you into into political relationships into the creation of them of political institutions that is continuing institutions and which are electable because he would want to get the best person to run the show and take advantage of differences or inequalities in this common enterprise that's very low level and then then he goes up through state governments interesting discussion you know discussion of Governors what they do and the judiciary that not only do democracies sort of create institutions of ruling but they create judges who check or watch over the rule so you need freedom requires both legislating and then checking on the legislators so a certain distinction of function that again doesn't come from any theory but is seen in actual practice and then finally the Constitution the American Constitution is is based on a theory so but there was this difficulty it's based on two theories so in a way the importance of theory is is is lessened by the fact that there are two that were chosen that whether a union is a is a union of individuals or a league of states whether States and so the Constitution combines those two opposite definitions of Union a so you've got in the formal institutions of self-government in America a spectrum from what is pure spontaneity to what is almost pure artificiality requiring a lot of thought and referring to theories and if you look at the Federalists you see that the American Constitution isn't een based on political science and on and on theory to a surprising extent so this is a formal these are formal institutions of self-government but again they turn out not to be as important as they think they are and here you could say enters talk fills criticism of the Federalist because in the second part of the first volume of democracy in America he introduces you to the informal of institutions their non institutions really of self-government like parties and the Free Press lawyers their importance and also to the problem that in a democracy in American democracy the people really rule he speaks of the sovereignty of the people now in Hobbes standard liberal theorists you've got a theory of sovereignty in which the sovereign is is given authority but it doesn't say how the sovereign will use that authority that's again the neutrality or impartiality of standard liberal theory but in America the people are sovereign in a much more definite and principled sense and they and they they overrule or override their representative institutions which are designed to take government sort of a little bit away from them and to take it out of their hands and to give them the power to say yes or no every four years or two years but but not really to wield it so here is where he discloses his definite I think conclusion that that rule in a democratic societies is there and has to be there and will always be there and there isn't any neutral or impartial way of avoiding what the people want in a democracy is a government in which the people role and that means also one in which they can miss role and so we come to the famous phrase of the tyranny of the majority and in the second part of the first volume and the tyranny of majority is and as as checks in it in their ways in which it doesn't operate fully and that's because of the influence of lawyers and and the in the decentralization of administration things like that but still the tyranny of the majority issues in the American institution of slavery it is striking it as I recall at the end of that thought to have that long chapter though which is an example of democracy terrorizing and yeah brutalizing you might say in terms of the Indians the Native Americans and and it's I mean historically I think this is true I don't know so clearly makes this point the treatment of the blacks and the Indians gets worse under democracy not better that is that's right more slavery gets more bedded young time toklas here you don't do jackson the great democrat the first real it's a democratic president as opposed to the aristocracy sightly aristocratic that's right founders is mmm a much more unabashed harness of slavery and more unabashed destroyer of the yeah i introduction who was president when Tocqueville came to america so democratized support for slavery and they then the firm yes I made it necessary to have a civil war was new you weren't just it wasn't just that the slave owners a an aristocracy very few in the South was a simple one in slavery but but all it's a great majority of the whites down there so you know so that means that's cutting things a lot their picture of I suppose a majority on uneducated on elevated on tempered by all these yeah these things yeah yeah that brings us to well the the the purpose of the second volume you could say in democracy in America is to solve this Versailles some of this the problem that the that the first one ends with that democracy in Russia and democracy in America demise as democracy with slavery or servility versus democracy with freedom so which which is it going to be and the answer you get in that in the second one well it may be America yeah not for sure but but maybe and so in and here's what and what comes out of this is is the importance of associations that associations stand between the individual and the government or the central authority and they enable and in a weak individual to become stronger by being in in an association that isn't everybody and so if Tokyo seems to think that they that is that the American gift of forming associations is the best cure for the remedies of democracy I mean for the ills of democracy that is which focus on the weakness of the individual how to strengthen the individual is to understand him as an associate and a being who associates so you have to understand what he calls both the art and the science of Association the science of Association how it is that being with human necessities can also be free and choose how to deal with those necessities by cooperating with other people in the art of association that's just how to do it and the experience of it so I compare American universities with European to look at to see the difference in American University as hundreds of you know Harvard that we have about 250 student organizations or in a European University these don't exist but and what happens happens because the central authority Institute's that are recommends it or requires it so you don't have all these student-run activities extracurricular in a minute American University is more important than curricular part these days especially which Tocqueville wouldn't entirely objective no habited that's right sort of self don't see you there's a price to be paid in that for for this associating and that's in efficiency it's good it's better for people to get it up on their own and then then for it to be done more efficiently by a central bureaucracy and so and you and you learned something by you learn the art of art of being free there's an art of it by being able to be with other people who were also free and and getting something done or espousing some principle or some policy so all that is the art of Association even speaks of the human Association as if all humanity could be associated in some way and he certainly speaks over it as the nation as an association and he also speaks of the marriage Association so all of this is associating is so he's is the standard liberal theory has us as individuals so fundamentally individuals entering then we add and then then the state that comes from our consenting to the state but it doesn't come from this associating so what so talk Phil wants is wants us to look at what people actually do and especially in America to see how Association can be an essential part of human nature the essential activity and this brings about we're getting towards the end now the importance of honor but just out Association I mean making that fundamental it's a pretty fundamental challenge I suppose to the liberal the formal ritual liberal view of things I mean it seems so much like Aristotle or saying that when Iran is by nature political and something like that I certainly see that just an Associated animal in real life I mean the habit of having to make decisions and take responsible for those decisions to see the consequences of it whatever Neighborhood Association or Civic or religious or you know million kinds it does lead people to think in a different way or don't know I was being a different act at it live in a different way then thinking of yourself as voting once and then submitting for four years to dig tot so it really is a very different I suppose I suppose tough would say that the original levels didn't think enough about now all right people becoming yeah well wholly free but actually servile or something like and this applies to economics to then what is important about economics is getting together a startup company that's what always students want to think what color students wanted want to do when they graduate a startup company but error or joining an association which exists and and getting a job there so it's it's not so much individual decision making or looking at it looking at economics from the standpoint of the consumer choosing what to buy and and so not so much a free market in the sense of individualized choices with a spontaneous order that emerges from this kind of individualized freedom so you would understand an economy you would have to look at it to see what actual companies there what industries and how those industries are organized say in order rather than just thinking of an economy as a purely theoretical construct so do that now on a rampage and ambition yeah this comes in under the discussion of mores and in in the second and a third part of the second volume so here again it might honor might seem to be a totally aristocratic thing and it is essentially in this aristocratic thing Tocqueville says that those who live their life according to honor they relieve it that's a very different life from democracy in particular there is a the distinction between what is honorable and what is honest Sarah what is just and this is particularly characteristic of aristocratic society so fighting duels it's unjust or to fight a duel King doesn't like that because the waste of our talent and energy but honor requires it so a thing can be honorable but not just or not not really honest or not sensible and but and democracy tends to bring those two things together than what is the honor is made more sensible so it brings within the family it brings fathers and sons together that's a that's even sort of the essential thing of a Democratic family that the son is not the successor to his father the eldest son but the two are are closer and they can have a more natural so loving bond of affection he's pointing out to aristocrats were their families that there's attractions to a more democratic way of thinking and living that you want you can have more you just have a more genial more congenial family and life is sweeter in this in this way so but still honors still remains and you see this he says when Americans travel abroad each of them tries to make out some way in which he is different from all other Americans so this makes Tocqueville think that every American has a secret desire to live in an aristocracy where he is the noble and the average aristocrat so that democracy is not so not so far it's had within a democracy is a hidden lowering aristocracy that in which each individual actually wants a rule that is quite different from the public rule that he supports and acknowledges and and this shows in democratic vanity the vanity of democratic representatives and Democratic representatives usually are nobodies as if as compared to nobles and an aristocratic assembly so they they have to establish their own importance and they do this at the same time that they establish the importance of the people they represent so you hear that all the time in Congress so they say my constituency the people in my constituency think the sand so yeah and so you try to make them important and yourself important in the in the same breath so that's democratic speechifying you see this but this is also an ambition so it's very honorable to that ambition is a seeking of honors and a very honorable to to acquire some and the to use your ambition to acquire some valuable office or situation and this leads him to discuss revolutions that the most honorable or thing would might be to lead a revolution but he thinks that great revolutions will no longer be likely and in democracy because democracy tends to give everybody a little bit of ambition and at the same time to pull down greatness of ambition so there's no greatness in Democratic ambition except that it seems that there was some greatness earlier on than the century of 17th century of official liberalism and that was he says 300 years before Napoleon so greatness of revolutions lead you to discuss war and war leads you to discuss armies and how armies have a kind of scale of ambitious office officers officers a noncommissioned officer is a thoughtful sets watch out for the noncommissioned officers there there's the ones who are the most ambitious the commissioned officers don't want to do anything they just want to sit there and democracies don't like to fight they prefer peace so a democratic army is have only these few noncommissioned officers that were unsettled and as ambition is is maybe dangerous but a revolution can also be a revolution in ideas and he brings this up at the end of that part 3 in volume 2 the revolution ideas and the example he gives is Luther Annie and then in the 26th chapter of what is the last chapter it was fine he mentions the name of Machiavelli quotes something from the prince actually misquote something from the prince just as Machiavelli likes to do a master of misquotation and he gives you to wonder whether Machiavelli wasn't a kind of founder or a great revolutionist of ideas he refers to Napoleon and Machiavelli in that in that same chapter Napoleon and then he and he uses a phrase the the greatest tapped captain of modern times believed that revolution is most likely to be done by the young and therefore the rule should be put in their hands in the hands of the now the greatest captain of modern times is obviously Napoleon and yet he said if you look 300 years before he would see that Napoleon could have been a great revolutionist only in a different way then he'd couldn't couldn't be as he was an actual commander of an army but he might have to command his army sort of as captain of philosophy and making people think differently and bringing about modernity and now he mentions the name of Luther and that's 300 years before Napoleon but he doesn't mention anybody and he also mentions the name Machiavelli who was a contemporary of eleuthera and also both of them you could say were great leaders of ambitious leaders of revolutions and ideas and one wonders whether talk Ville wasn't comparing himself or his situation to that of Luther and Machiavelli and the term captain is his reminds of Machiavelli it does yeah he refers a lot to two captains and it's also used in in Christian thinking too in in in Christianity you often get the the analogy between actual warfare and spiritual warfare like as in on word Christian soldiers marching as to war as to not not actually in what but as towards the Machiavelli to that so Machiavelli additi picked up that analogy and yeah yeah and then but what Machiavelli did was to attack aristocracy there's nothing that he despises more than the gentleman as you can see in his his work the the gentleman pretends to be gentle but no one who actually is gentle can can succeed gentle might be or must be a fraud and so Machiavelli thinks that the people who succeed are those able to use both force and fraud so so he just he he deconstructs the notion of gentleman and thereby the whole principle of aristocracy and what you're left with is the prince and then the people whom the prince treats as his subjects or slaves and then this is what Machiavelli I mean talk fill quotes from Machiavelli's fourth chapter of the prince and then in that sole mention of of Machiavelli that he has and so so he could say that Machiavelli didn't want democracy he didn't want to intend he wasn't intending to found the democratic principle or in our democratic rule but he led to that because he destroyed the alternative to it namely aristocracy or some kind of elevation of the human spirit and therefore of those who ruled in the name of some elevating principle and so what Tocqueville does is he doesn't try to attack democracy in the way that Machiavelli tried to attack aristocracy and if I produced democracy without meaning to so he doesn't try to attack democracy but he tries to read revive Rhian spirit democracy with with features of aristocracy and then I think that would be a kind of summary understanding of self-interest well understood that the well understood consists of bringing back aristocracy to democracy without saying so and still without really challenging the democratic principle love of the rule of the people and you can't challenge it I mean why not be more explicit in saying the will of the people or democracy is only partly true or partly correct well it saves 20th century sunset totalitarianism shows you why not they tried to challenge the principle of democracy but to do so you have to yourself become democratic and to appeal to the worst features of of democracy then it's on another kind of tyranny so right you guide us yeah well both the Nazis and communists for Democrats and Rice's Democratic movements in the bad sense so you know that yes some somehow democracy is just more powerful and it's a rule we have to submit to it's a it's a present state of civilization to be civilized you have to be democratic but to be democratic you have to be a little bit interested graddic and you have freedom i mean freedom as a democrat in principle that you could appeal to right that's right something well understood yeah so editions of aristocracy enable democracy to be both equal and free saying equality and freedom go together in democracy because it wants both if people are totally equal they can only be so by being equally free and if people are equally free then they can only be so by saying being equal say then no no authority no no natural principle of that justifies the rule of some over others as possible so though and those and Tocqueville says that there is a kind of theoretical point at which equality equality and freedom converge and this is what democracy wants we're all equal and we're all free but you can have that only if you understand that there are also ways in which the desire for equality hurts freedom or the ways in which that desire for freedom limits equality and he shows you all these aspects of aristocracy which other one and he says are no longer relevant to the sense or no longer achievable you know yes you know they can be rep they can be that replicate ever thinking their effects can be replicated or achieves in a democratic way I mean mmm I mean it's funny for a book that says we're at a Democratic age our stock recei is gone there's an awful lot of discussion of our stock there is you know there is nothing that teaches you something it does it does yeah say so he lived in a time when the to two principles were still alive or at least when aristocracy had recently been overthrown so he was very and he was an aristocrat himself so in his life he's he could see both those things at work gives it a lot for us he keeps it alive for us yeah so he brings back aristocracy in the way that we can appreciate it and use it and that is I think still valuable more than valuable essential right that's Kiedis yeah to a defensible liberal era it is I think and that's a renewed political liberalism which understands how the people rule and and therefore it takes care that they do so properly or rightly or well well that's very that's a wonderful tribute to talk about which she would appreciate you I mean I do think one thing about his method is he disguised as his own the radical listed fundamental character of his thought yes in order to you know yeah makes us discover it in a way yes you've laid out here yeah that's right and he and he takes and he seems to have a very modest position right I think is which i think is totally not the case he's another Machiavelli but the a.m. at the opposite yeah both of them sort of disliked philosophy in quotes official philosophy so Machiavelli is different from the Marcellus and the ever-ever myristic types yes you couldn't yes that's right so he makes it a direct and open attack on Christianity which he was the first to do that in the Renaissance Center and so and so that that that's really what most obvious sign of his making a fundamental revolution in ideas then Minh so he attacks philosophy and because it's philosophy at that time was Aristotelian and and talk Ville just dismisses omits ignores standard liberalism because he thinks that that that is the philosophy which the present philosophy and which must bear so to speak all the troubles and and difficulties that one can assign to a philosophy but left alone leads to a kind of materialism and yes philosophy leads to the triumph of non philosophic materialism and and and so at the same time that talk though enlivens liberalism he sort of wants to revive philosophy that and make philosophy understand and cooperate with the democratic principle so he accepts Machiavelli's revolution but you know corrects it or corrects it yeah from a point of view be out from beyond Makaveli one might say yeah from from the unintended consequence of Machiavelli but Machiavelli didn't see it so far therefore has to have some vision from via IV some understanding it's not simply you know derive from Machiavelli I mean you know it's fact before back you know it's been said I think correctly that that Tocqueville is Aristotle's modern representative I phrase a good note to end on and you know thank you so much for explaining Tocqueville so much I won't say so much more clearly that he explains himself but you see he's a wonderfully clear writer in so many ways and mmm that is great clarity of course disguises in some ways that you think the fantastic brilliance of the exposition and yeah sort of disguises the underlying depth of the thoughts around in Tocqueville which you've okay but you brought out so thank you every Mansfield's for my pleasure to me today thank you for joining us on conversations

Channel: Conversations with Bill Kristol

Views: 9,890

Rating: 4.8561153 out of 5

Keywords: Alexis de Tocquevile, Harvey Mansfield, Liberalism, Political Philosophy, Conservatism, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Bill Kristol, Political Science, American government, State of Nature

Id: g_rAW5KUn8E

Length: 85min 12sec (5112 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 15 2019