Most scholarship on the moral dimensions of Tocqueville's analysis of democracy focuses on the doctrine of enlightened self-interest. Surprisingly little has been written about his account of the underlying moral shift that makes this doctrine necessary. Drawing principally on Volume II of DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA, but also on Tocqueville's letters and notes, I unearth his fascinating and compelling account of why modern democratic man loses his admiration for devotion and embraces self-interest. That account begins from individualism, but also includes democratic man's intellectual and aesthetic tastes, his low estimation of his moral capacities, and weakening religious belief. After examining what Tocqueville saw as the causes of the new moral outlook, I consider what he saw as its most profound implications. Departing from recent trends in Tocqueville scholarship, I argue that is in Tocqueville's account of the modern democratic condition as such that he has the most to offer us today.

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In volume 1 of Democracy in America, Tocqueville argues that the energy unleashed by democracy is one of democracy's greatest benefits. In volume 2, his portrait of democracy turns darker, and he recasts the dynamism of American society as an expression of an underlying restlessness. In this paper, I argue that restlessness (inquiétude) is a key element of Tocqueville's mature view of democratic man. Whereas previous scholarship on Tocqueville's view of restlessness either treats the theme instrumentally, by subordinating it to other themes, or seeks to illuminate Tocqueville's debt to other thinkers, this paper examines Tocqueville's treatment of restlessness as an important theme in its own right. Treating this theme in full requires examining his discussions of materialism, envy, democratic morality, and democratic peoples’ experiences of literature and art. Through this examination we see how, in Tocqueville's view, democracy, for all its merits, obstructs the path to human happiness.

This manuscript contributes to a growing body of scholarship aimed at understanding the intentions of Xenophon in portraying the founder of the Persian Empire, Cyrus the Great. While Xenophon initially suggests that Cyrus is wise, a close reading of the work as a whole reveals defects in Cyrus’ moral understanding. Xenophon’s Cyrus largely misses the Persian education in justice. This shapes his development by strengthening his initial instinct to equate justice with the beneficial, rather than with the legal. As he rises to power, he continually insists that justice is good, and he uses his power to try to ensure its goodness. But he never seriously considers the idea that justice might demand a sacrifice of one’s own good, and thus, he never full embraces the beauty of noble self-sacrifice, something that the work as a whole suggests Xenophon saw as an essential element in education.

One of the central themes of Democracy in America is the critical importance of religion to the health of American democracy. Beginning with Tocqueville's praise of the Puritans early in volume 1 and continuing through his account of the perils of materialism in volume 2, Tocqueville presents Christianity as the moral anchor of the American polity. But Tocqueville also indicates that American religion was weakening over time, and he foresaw even greater decline in the future. He never suggests that religion will wither away entirely; on the contrary, he maintains that religion has permanent roots in the human soul. But he argues that certain circumstances-political, social, and economic-promote religious belief more than others. And the modern democratic era, he makes clear, is inhospitable to belief, such that whatever longings or impulses might lead the human soul to religion in other eras may, in our era, lead to nothing more than restless dissatisfaction with materialism. And so, while Tocqueville's treatment of American religion initially seems to indicate that Christianity is America's saving grace, that treatment turns out, in the end, to be the expression of a problem. If Tocqueville is correct in his assessment-both of the role of religion in democratic America and of the inevitable decline of religion in modernityhow should we respond to that problem? Should we try to shore up religious belief, doing what we can to postpone the inevitable? Or should we simply accept a slide into moral decline? In Honor in America? Tocqueville on American Enlightenment, Laurie M. Johnson offers another alternative. Contemporary Americans could embrace an "honor code," an informal set of principles on the basis of which we praise and blame ourselves and each other. She makes her case by way of an analysis of Tocqueville's arguments on topics connected with honor. She does not look to Tocqueville for all the answers; she differs with him on some key points relating to women and the moral value of war (43, 58-59, 65-67). But she does attend carefully to his arguments, taking up his discussions of religion, family, women, the military, slavery, and the treatment of Native Americans. On some topics, Tocqueville's arguments highlight a principle or ideal that contemporary