Tocqueville on the Modern Moral Situation: Democracy and the Decline of Devotion

Abstract

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.

The Grammar of Indifference: Tocqueville and the Language of Democracy

“…For Tocqueville, the evolution of the internal logic of language is correlated with the erosion of the unspoken rules that both precede and beget the ineffable and meaningful bonds (liens) between people. 23 Thus, while the French Revolution marked the destruction of the political and social apparatus of the ancien régime, for Tocqueville it also illuminates a crucial moment in the history of language because it coincided with a breakdown of the internal, gathering-together force of language. In his view, the old regime had a grammar that bound different sorts of people into meaningful relationships, relationships both liberating and encumbering.…”

Tocqueville on Religion, the Enlightenment, and the Democratic Soul

“…Unlike under aristocracy, where the “official” moral doctrine held “that it is glorious to forget oneself and to do good without self interest like God himself” (500–1), democratic minds are universally preoccupied with the idea of well-being and so rarely contemplate such “sublime” visions of self-transcendence (500, 506; Stauffer 2014, 776). But Tocqueville also indicates that, although the virtues founded on the idea of sacrifice are rarely spoken of in democracy (501), Americans continue to pursue them.…”

“… 3 Most recently, Stauffer provides a compelling account of the “sociological and aesthetic” causes of the decline of devotion in democracy. Stauffer presents Tocqueville as publicly resigned (even as he was privately resistant to) a permanent reorientation of our moral concerns toward self-interest (Stauffer 2014, 772, 779–82). …”