Tocqueville and His America: A Darker Horizon

Description

Arthur Kaledin's groundbreaking book on Alexis de Tocqueville offers an original combination of biography, character study, and wide-ranging analysis of Tocqueville's Democracy in America, bringing new light to that classic work. The author examines the relation between Tocqueville's complicated inner life, his self-imagination, and his moral thought, and the meaning of his enduring writings, leading to a new understanding of Tocqueville's view of democratic culture and democratic politics. With particular emphasis on Tocqueville's prescient anticipation of various threats to liberty, social unity, and truly democratic politics in America posed by aspects of democratic culture, Kaledin underscores the continuing pertinence of Tocqueville's thought in our own changing world of the twenty-first century. Contents Preface Acknowledgments Introduction: A Brief Life of Alexis de Tocqueville Part I. TRIPLE-ALIENATED MAN 1. Identity in a Time of Historical Transition 2. Class: Between Two Worlds 3. Intimacy 4. Ambition 5. Melancholy 6. Skeptical Romantic 7. Skeptical Philosophe 8. Skepticism and Religion: “Une Ombre Vaine” 9. Doubt and the Will to Believe 10. Exile: Voiceless in Cannes Part II. THE CALLING OF POLITICS 1. Vocation: Politics as Calling—Tocqueville’s “Beau Rêve” 2. Vocation: The Responsibilities of Political Leaders 3. The Dead Sea of Politics 4. Tocqueville’s Aristocratic Liberalism Part III. WRITING DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA 1. A Moral Landscape 2. A Moral History 3. Escape 4. The New World: Fable, Romance, History 5. Tocqueville in the Wilderness 6. Transformations 7. Beginning Democracy in America 8. Influences: Voices in the Tower 9. Writing as Moral Act 10. History as Moral Drama 11. The Birth of a Book Part IV. TOCQUEVILLE’S AMERICA 1. Tocqueville’s American Notebooks and Democracy in America 2. Traveling Through the New Republic with Tocqueville and Beaumont 3. Democratic Religion: Mad Messiahs and Chaste Women 4. Class in an Egalitarian Society 5. Born-Again America: The Creation of an American Identity 6. Politics: Order and Disorder in the New Republic 7. A Dark Vision of Democracy’s Prospects 8. The Democratic Psyche and the Hazards of Equality 9. A Culture of Extremes: The Prospects for Freedom in a Culture Without Limits Conclusion A Brief Chronological Narrative of the Life of Alexis de Tocqueville Notes Bibliography Index