Tocqueville, Jansenism, and the Necessity of the Political in a Democratic Age: Building a Republic for the Moderns 9789048522392

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Tocqueville, Jansenism, and the Necessity of the Political in a Democratic Age

Tocqueville, Jansenism, and the Necessity of the Political in a Democratic Age Building a Republic for the Moderns

David A. Selby

Amsterdam University Press

Cover illustration: Rafael, The School of Athens Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Typesetting: Crius Group, Hulshout Amsterdam University Press English-language titles are distributed in the US and Canada by the University of Chicago Press. isbn 978 90 8964 605 7 e-isbn 978 90 4852 239 2 (pdf) nur 685 © David A. Selby / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2015 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.



Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 9 Introduction 11 Qui êtes-vous Monsieur de Tocqueville? 12 The Big Payoffs 16 On Method: What Happens after the Revolution? 18 A Final Word 20 1 Jansenism and Republicanism in Old Regime France A Précis of the History of Jansenism An Ideal-Type of Jansenism The Jansenist Ethic and the Spirit of Resistance: Malesherbes’ Resistance to Maupeou’s Reforms Conclusion: Jansenism and Republicanism in Old Regime France

23 24 38 47 52

2 Tocqueville, Jansenism, and French Political Culture, 1789-1859 55 Two Jansenist Categories: The Notes to Democracy in America 56 A Brief History of the Tocqueville Family and the Cultural Influences Present in Family Life 59 The Family Library and the Education of an Aristocrat 63 The Study of Law and Two Friends from Versailles 65 Jansenist Themes in Tocqueville’s Life and Letters 70 Conclusion: Jansenism in the Life and Works of Alexis de Tocqueville 76 3 Providence Jansenism and Providence: Secular History, Religious Knowledge, and the Imperative to Struggle for the Good in the Space Provided by Providence The Dual Influence of Bossuet in the Nineteenth Century Tocqueville’s Apology for Democracy: Contra Maistre on the Nature of the French Revolution Tocqueville’s Use of the Theory of Orders: Contra Bossuet Conclusion: A New Political Science for a Democratic Age

79 82 85 88 97 100

4 Sovereignty Pascal’s ‘Conversation’ in the Nineteenth Century The First Series of Debates: The Villèle Ministry and the Events of 1822 Jansenist and Doctrinaire Responses: Grégoire and Villemain Louis-Phillipe d’Orléans: Liberal Monarch, or Prince of the French Republic? The Liberal Monarch and his Ministers: The Doctrinaires Tocqueville’s Trip to America and the Sovereignty of the People Conclusion: The Modern Republicanism of Alexis de Tocqueville 5 Power and Virtue The Liberal Challenge: Constant on the Liberties of the Ancients and the Moderns Tocqueville’s First Rejoinder: Individualism and Interest Properly Understood The Jansenist Toolbox: Pascal, Nicole, d’Aguesseau From Subject to Citizen: The Moral Relations of the Republic Conclusion: The Necessity of the Political in a Democratic Age

103 104 108 112 116 119 122 128 129 131 138 145 150 162

6 Religion (I) 167 Setting up the Problem: Stepan and Tocqueville as Third-Way Democrats 169 The Freedom of Education and the Failure of Democratic Bargaining, 1843-1844 175 Two Models of Education: Moral and Civic 181 Tocqueville’s Compromise 184 Conclusion: The Path not Taken, and Reconstructing the Right to the Freedom of Education 190 7 Religion (II) Tocqueville’s Antinomies and the Democratic Social State The Political Utility of Religion The Spill-Over Effect The Separation Effect The Restraint Effect The Mechanism of Practice: A Brief Comparison of Religion in the works of Alexis de Tocqueville and Robert Bellah

195 196 202 203 205 208 211

The Ideal-Type in History: From America to France Back to America: The Double Foundation and the American Democratic Revolution

216 224

Conclusion 231 Tocqueville’s Modern Republicanism 233 Power, Non-Domination, and Realist Republicanism 241 Practical Experience, Political Activity, and Civic Virtue 248 Institutionalizing the Republic and the Prospects for Freedom in a Democratic Age 255 Bibliography 263 Index 283

List of Tables Table 1 Table 2 Table 3

The Affinity of Religious Jansenism and the Ideology of Constitutional Monarchy 47 The Affinity of Traditional Jansenism and Democratic Republicanism 53 The Contours of Liberalism and Republicanism 233

Acknowledgements To the dozens of persons who helped make this possible: to my dissertation committee of Alan Houston, Harvey Goldman, Fonna Forman, Marcel Hénaff, and Cynthia Truant, as well as notable others, such as Augustin Simard and David W. Bates, who have helped along the way; to the kindhearted Tocqueville scholars, who showed a young graduate student around archives and libraries, especially Jean-Louis Benoît, Françoise Mélonio, Lucien Jaume, Laurence Guellec, and Cheryl Welch; to my wife Kelly Burns and my parents Richard and Barbara Selby, who have been of greatest support to me through the process of writing my first book. Finally, a most special thank you to Le Centre d’études et de recherches internationales (CÉRIUM) and Le Centre d’excellence sur l’Union européenne (CEUE) at the Université de Montréal, where I completed most of the revisions on this project, as well as to the Department of Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley, where I finished them.

Introduction Tocqueville in his Time There is no small historical irony in the fact that Alexis de Tocqueville, a French aristocrat, is the one of the most renowned observers of American democracy. The many twists and turns in his personal biography that led him to America inspire the imagination, while the length of his theoretical vision has pushed generations of scholars to study his works. To many, we need look no further than the words of the great text Democracy in America to understand what Tocqueville can say to the twenty-first century. In contrast to this approach, I have written this book with the conviction that to understand what Tocqueville can mean today, we need to step beyond the words of the text and come to understand them in the context and for the purpose of which they were written. In short, we need to understand Tocqueville in his time. Most importantly, we need to remember that Tocqueville did not write Democracy in America for the United States: he wrote it for France. We need to understand the France he wrote it for as much as the America he saw, and it is above all to the political culture of France that we must look to in order to make sense of his purposes and meanings. Put differently, Tocqueville came to America with a certain amount of cultural baggage. This baggage not only shaped what he wanted to study, but also informed how he conceived of America. The f irst goal of this book is to tell the story of just one part of this cultural heritage. I argue that the French Catholic movement known as ‘Jansenism,’ which Tocqueville found largely but not exclusively in the works of Blaise Pascal, was part of the baggage he brought with him to America. Although there is historical value in adding this Jansenist element to Tocqueville’s intellectual biography, I also argue that this Jansenist influence gives evidence of the fundamentally republican nature of his political thought. The second goal of this book is to make Alexis de Tocqueville’s political theory relevant to today. Indeed, even though Tocqueville was a great predictor, we have in many ways moved beyond the length of his vision. He predicted the United States would have about 100 million citizens in 40

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states, ending well short of the Pacific Ocean.1 While he saw that the United States and Russia would be the great powers of the future, he had a hard time imagining the end of slavery in the United States. In order to make Tocqueville useful to today, we need to perform an operation similar to his trip to America. From what he saw in America, Tocqueville created a way of thinking that he could use to diagnose French politics. To make sense of what lessons he holds for the twenty-first century, we need to perform the same act of translation. We need to move beyond ‘Tocqueville says America is X’ to an analysis of Tocqueville’s method and then, in turn, we need to use this method to diagnose twenty-first century political life. We cannot suppose that the American institutions of 1830 are the right ones for today, not any more than Tocqueville supposed these same institutions could be imported whole cloth to France. To bring democracy to the twenty-first century, we need to understand how Tocqueville sought to bring it to France. La France was always Tocqueville’s point of departure. It must be ours too.

Qui êtes-vous Monsieur de Tocqueville? 2 The argument that there is a Jansenist influence in Alexis de Tocqueville’s life and works is not new, but in this book I study it in new way. In recovering this Jansenist influence on Tocqueville’s political thought, however, I do not move beyond contemporary scholarship that looks at Tocqueville’s intellectual biography as a ‘mix’ of different elements.3 The most common way of parsing this mix comes from Tocqueville’s letter to his cousin and intellectual companion Louis de Kergolay. ‘I spend a little bit of time each day with three men: Pascal, Montesquieu, and Rousseau,’4 Tocqueville writes. Although scholars disagree about how to rank and substantively interpret these three influences, there is agreement that they take pride of place in Tocqueville’s intellectual bibliography. It 1 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Reeve, p. 460 (hereafter DA followed by volume number and page; DA refers to Reeve’s translation unless otherwise indicated). Although there are several very good modern translations, this is the only one done during Tocqueville’s lifetime. It is not perfect, however, and when necessary I refer to the original French. 2 This is taken from the title of the book by Manzini and Gosset, Qui êtes-vous Monsieur de Tocqueville? 3 Engers, ‘Democracy in the Balance.’ 4 Alexis de Tocqueville to his cousin Louis de Kergolay, 10 November 1836; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XIII. 1, 418.

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is impossible, in fact, to do a study of Tocqueville’s political thought that does not take into account the influence of these three. This book mostly looks at the influence of Pascal but does not ignore that of Rousseau and Montesquieu. The simple fact that Blaise Pascal lived at Port-Royal and helped to shape the theological program of Port-Royal, seems to indicate this is a subject worthy of study. And yet there is no systematic study of Jansenist influence in Tocqueville’s life and works, although the subject has not been ignored entirely. Cheryl Welch, Michel Drolet, Lucien Jaume, Françoise Mélonio, and George Armstrong Kelly have all looked at it as a leitmotif.5 The Jansenist tradition is not exclusive to Pascal: Montesquieu and Rousseau also engaged with Jansenist ideas and thinkers in profound ways, and historians have found some strong ‘resonances’ of Jansenist themes in their political thought.6 I am interested in more than just questions of Tocqueville’s intellectual biography, however. The recovery of Tocqueville in the twentieth century has led to remarkable advances in how we think about the American visitor, but it has left open the question of the content of his political thought. As with many great political theorists, arguments have been presented that the substance of Tocqueville’s political theory is fundamentally liberal on the one hand, or fundamentally republican on the other. Those who view Tocqueville as a liberal usually do so from one of two perspectives: Straussian or classical liberal. The excellent book by Rodger Boesche, The Strange Liberalism of Alexis de Tocqueville, set the terms for how Straussians use this theoretical mixture to defend a vision of Tocqueville as a ‘strange’ liberal who made recourse to a mix of non-liberal arguments.7 Boesche has used Tocqueville’s mistrust of the bourgeoisie and the ‘littleness’ of the modern individual in the face of democratic majorities to make sense of Tocqueville’s anxieties of the loss of greatness.8 Next to these are another group of liberals that note Tocqueville’s fear of majority rule and desire to establish barriers to the exercise of arbitrary power. They portray Tocqueville as a kind of classic liberal seeking to establish a

5 Welch, De Tocqueville; pp. 36-37; Drolet, Tocqueville, Democracy, and Social Reform, pp. 166173; Jaume, Tocqueville, pp. 216-262; Mélonio, Tocqueville et les français, pp. 70-110; Kelly, The Humane Comedy; McLendon, ‘Tocqueville, Jansenism and the Psychology of Freedom.’ 6 Riley, ‘The General Will,’ p. 243; Shackleton, Montesquieu: A Critical Biography. 7 Boesche, The Strange Liberalism of Alexis de Tocqueville. 8 Lawler, The Restless Mind.

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system of negative rights and rule of law in order to protect private life from incursions by democratic majorities.9 Tocqueville’s political thought does have some strong liberal tendencies, but there is something lacking in these interpretations. Tocqueville’s devoted love of liberty was very explicitly political liberty in the republican mode. What liberals miss, republicans hang their hat on. Sheldon Wolin, for example, cannot see in Tocqueville’s republicanism anything more than ancienneté combined with a resigned acceptance of the modern. He concludes pessimistically about the prospects for republican freedom in the modern world.10 The recent book by Arnaud Coutant, Une critique républicaine de la démocratie libérale, more persuasively traces Tocqueville’s republicanism to the early modern Atlantic republican tradition.11 Both liberals and republicans draw from important themes in Tocqueville’s writings. Both groups also fail to see important elements of Tocqueville’s political thought, elements that change how we conceive of his political theory. Liberals miss his unabashed defense of political liberty and can only with difficulty horseshoe him into the tradition of liberalism. But one reason why Tocqueville so often has been mistaken as a liberal is that we keep trying to fit him into early modern – or even ancient – republicanism. While early modern republicanism is a better fit for Tocqueville than liberalism, this backwards-looking republicanism is a box he only fits in uncomfortably. What liberals recognize are Tocqueville’s self-consciously modern elements, elements that they rightly demonstrate fit poorly within the paradigm of early modern republicanism.12 There is not an insignificant amount of work that has viewed Tocqueville’s political thought through the lens of early modern French political traditions.13 In the matrix of early modern political ideas, Jansenism and constitutional monarchy had a strong reciprocal relationship. Following this logic, a Jansenist interpretation could be used to support interpretive frameworks that see Tocqueville as a particular kind of constitutional monarchist. Recent 9 Pierson, Tocqueville and Beaumont in America; Guellec, Tocqueville et les langages de la démocratie; Rivale, Tocqueville ou l’intranquillité; Manent, Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy. 10 Wolin, Tocqueville. 11 Coutant, Une critique républicaine de la démocratie libérale. 12 The recent work by Annelien de Dijn, French Political Thought from Montesquieu to Tocqueville, is the work that most resembles my own, but we look at different elements of Tocqueville’s intellectual biography and arrive at different conclusions about the nature of his political thought. 13 Benoît, Tocqueville moraliste; La Fournière, Alexis de Tocqueville; Lacam, ‘Tocqueville, un monarchiste.’

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research has confirmed the insight that Jansenism was a form of religion particularly well suited to the psychic and political needs of the intermediate orders in France, especially the law.14 Tocqueville might have viewed the religious ideas of Jansenism as part of this more general political attitude: I do not doubt that Protestantism, which places all religious authority in the body of the faithful, is very favorable to republican government […]. And Catholicism submitted to the intellectual authority of the pope and of the Councils seems to me to have more of a natural affinity with a tempered monarchy than with any other government.15

Tocqueville himself was not so backward looking as an interpretation like this seems to suggest. His motivation to travel to America was based on this instinct: that there, in the world’s only functioning political democracy, could he really see how democracy works. Convinced of the need to find a new political science, he sought out the only laboratory where he could watch it in action, with the hopes of discovering how to make democracy from particularly French elements. We need to take seriously Tocqueville’s claim to be working on ‘a new political science for an entirely new world.’16 From America, Tocqueville expressed this sentiment to Kergolay: It seems clear to me that reformed religion is a kind of compromise, a sort of representative monarchy in matters of religion which can well fill an era, or serve as passage from one state to another, but which cannot constitute a definitive state itself and which is approaching its end.17

Tocqueville’s conviction that a new age has dawned can be seen in the ‘Author’s Introduction’ to Democracy in America, and even the Old Regime. His attempt to make a new political science was ultimately an attempt to make republicanism fit for the modern age. Like the broader mixture of Pascal, Montesquieu, and Rousseau, he blends Jansenist elements with other

14 This literature is discussed at length below. For an example, see Bell, Lawyers and Citizens. 15 Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Historical-Critical Edition of ‘De la démocratie en Amérique,’ ed. Nolla, trans. Schleifer, p. 470 (hereafter DA (Critical Edition), followed by volume number and page). 16 Tocqueville, De la démocratie en Amérique, p. 43 (hereafter DA (Gallimard), followed by volume number and page). 17 Tocqueville to Kergolay, 29 June 1831; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XIII.1, 225.

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political traditions in a new alloy, an innovative attempt to transpose early modern political ideas into a democratic register. In my effort to recover the religious origins of some of Tocqueville’s political ideas, I do not think that this story implies a larger personal religious agenda, or even a deeply held set of Catholic beliefs. Not at all. This Jansenist influence does not give evidence to rethink basic elements of Tocqueville’s personal life. These have been most accurately treated by Tocqueville’s three major biographers: Andre Jardin, Jean-Louis Benoît, and Hugh Brogan.18 As for Tocqueville’s own Jansenism, it should be thought of as, in the words of Lucien Jaume, ‘jansénisant,’ which is to say Jansenist-like.19 According to the definition of Jansenism I develop in Chapter 1, Tocqueville is only a Jansenist in a weak sense: he never embraced fully their view of the Catholic Church or underwent a second conversion, for example. If we turn to some of the Jansenist categories he did use, categories like Providence or self-interest properly understood, he never simply borrows.

The Big Payoffs While there is certainly value in getting Tocqueville right, in this book I am also interested in contemporary questions of political theory. There are two ways this book speaks to contemporary political theory. The first is in the substance of Tocqueville’s modern republicanism; the second, in his sociology of religion. The first element of Tocqueville’s thought that the influence of Jansenism brings to the fore is his modern republicanism. Tocqueville is ultimately a republican on two counts: first, in his defense of what he calls ‘the dogma sovereignty of the people’; second, in his claim that political experience is transformative, and that there are some virtues that are only cultivated in the realm of the political. The first claim might only make Tocqueville republican in a more formal sense, but the second places him squarely in the Aristotelian and Machiavellian tradition. While Tocqueville challenges us to take seriously the key republican claim of the necessity of politics, he does so in a way that we need not reject liberalism entirely. Tocqueville’s conception of virtue is active and manly, but it does not require Spartan self-denial in the pursuit of the common good. Rather, through recovering 18 Jardin, Tocqueville: A Biography; Brogan, Alexis de Tocqueville; Jean-Louis Benoît, Tocqueville moraliste. 19 Jaume, Tocqueville, p. 257.

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elements of early modern Jansenist republicanism, Tocqueville articulates a kind of enlightened patriotism that mingles personal interest with the common good. Once in politics, however, Tocqueville argues that participation gives citizens experience with what can be thought of as the manipulation of political objects. To Tocqueville, rights are tools and only through the use of tools like the press or political association do citizens learn a basic set of democratic virtues: public spirit, respect for the rule of law, and respect for the rights of others. Put differently, the type of knowledge cultivated in political space cannot be cultivated anywhere else. Tocqueville’s republicanism has some very liberal elements, but these liberal elements – even the seemingly liberal notion of self-interest properly understood – rest on a republican foundation. Tocqueville’s republicanism highlights the necessity of the practices of politics; to him, politics is a game that is learned by playing, and there is no substitute for experience. I devote several chapters to placing in historical context some of the elements of Tocqueville’s republicanism that this Jansenist perspective brings to the fore, including ways in which Tocqueville is not a Jansenist. Chapters 3 and 4 look at Tocqueville’s movement from the early modern Jansenist and constitutional monarchist notion of divided sovereignty to the modern and democratic defense of the sovereignty of the people within the context of French political culture. I then turn to look at how the substance of Tocqueville’s concept of self-interest rightly understood, while building on some earlier Jansenist uses, is actually a response to the liberalism of Benjamin Constant. The second theoretical problem I take up in this book is a redescription of Tocqueville’s sociology of religion. The final two chapters use this neo-Jansenist perspective on Tocqueville’s political theory to engage in contemporary debates in democratic transition and the role of religion in the modern civic life. In the first case, I look at Tocqueville’s participation in debates over the freedom of education in 1843-1844. I argue that here we see him trying to put this sociology of religion to work in a more directly political manner, and that his writing on education hold valuable lessons for young democracies today. In the second case, I reconstruct Tocqueville’s ideal-type of the democratic social state by looking at the relationship between enlightenment and enchantment in modernity, the social function of religion in democratic political orders, and the role of political factors in religion as a social form. The fundamentally republican nature of Tocqueville’s thought is again highlighted in his comparison of America and France: in America, political experience gave citizens an arena in which to

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test out and modify their religious ideas; while in France, the association of religion with the monarchy in the old regime was one of the primary causes of the antireligious nature of the French Revolution.

On Method: What Happens after the Revolution? It has been more than forty years since the publication of The Machiavellian Moment, and much longer since historians began recovering what J.G.A. Pocock calls the ‘Atlantic republican tradition.’20 At the risk of reinventing the wheel, I seek to tell the story of how the Machiavellian Moment was imported into France, and how Alexis de Tocqueville picked up and refashioned the particularly French moment to think about modern politics. To perform this task, I am forced to extend Pocock’s method of analysis. First, in showing the road that runs from Florence to Paris, I need to demonstrate the particular French topography. Early modern French republicans were not blank slates who read and were impressed by republican ideas. Their history constrained and shaped the reception of the Atlantic republican tradition in significant ways. ‘Court’ ideology – to borrow Pocock’s English term – was much more pronounced in France. One of the most important factors shaping the reception of republicanism in France was the religious tradition of Jansenism. Codified in the mid-seventeenth century by the group of lawyers, scientists, men of letters, and nuns that lived at the monastery of Port-Royal, Jansenism came to be an ideology intimately intertwined with that of constitutional monarchy and the milieu of aristocratic republicanism in France. It was associated not only with the parlementaires and but also with the corporations of lawyers that made the parlements run. In many ways, it is the tradition of religious Jansenism that gives early modern French republicanism its distinctive flavor. Again using Pocock’s English term, Jansenism was a Catholic kind of ‘Country’ republican ideology. The second feature of the story I tell in this book is not related to space but to time. Pocock tells the story of the early modern republican tradition. Accordingly, his story is bound by a when as much as a where. While there is an increasing amount of work that brings republicanism into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the terms of analysis set by Pocock have made this task more difficult than it might appear on the surface. 20 Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment. The literature is too immense to summarize here but see also Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism, and van Geldeen and Skinner, Republicanism.

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In Pocock’s terms, a paradigm is a language of politics, a relatively coherent system for thinking about political order.21 It helps political actors give explanations for events and to structure political decision-making. Pocock calls paradigms ‘languages of politics’ in order to highlight how the internal elements of the system create a kind of coherence that makes a domain of social life comprehensible, while also allowing for the adoption of systems of ideas to new contexts. The core of how Pocock describes the paradigm of republicanism is a cluster of three concepts: the distinction between corruption and virtue, the connection between the institutional and moral elements of the republic, and a defense of divided government.22 To combat corruption, the institutions of the republic invest all citizens in the exercise of power, although in different capacities. Indeed, distinct capacities of the citizenry are essential to making the republic work: the differences amongst the citizens give the republic the diversity of talents and ideas that make it thrive. These differences in social status are enshrined in the institutions of the republic, with separate decision-making bodies and functions for the people, the nobles, and, when circumstances dictated, the king. The tripartite structure of divided republican government is rooted in Aristotle’s notion of a republic as a mixed constitution, but it was a typology that was extremely malleable in application. In America, it was identified with the Federalist system of divided government; in the Italian republics, it was used to justify separate institutional spaces for patrons and the people; in France, it was used to conceive of a kind of limited monarchy based on consent of the people and the activity of the nobles. This mixed or balanced system was essentially a decision-making processes to ensure that self-interested desires of the various social classes could be channeled into the interest of the whole political community. But this institutional system of divided power not only produced a better policy, it had a moral dimension as well. Through participation in public power within the institutions of the republic, citizens develop political virtues unavailable to them in other spheres of life. Only those persons invested with the right to wield public power and speak in the name of the public develop the virtues of leading and following. As the adage says, ‘practice makes perfect.’ The version of republicanism identified by Machiavelli and Guicciardini in the sixteenth century had a powerful influence on Atlantic political thought for over two hundred years. By the end of the French Revolution, 21 Pocock, Politics, Language, and Time, pp. 35-41. 22 Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment, pp. 56-111.

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however, the paradigm established by the early modern thinkers was increasingly being questioned. Some of these challenges were practical, some theoretical. Designed for use in conditions of city-states, the growth of the nation-state was the greatest practical challenge to republican political theorists. Theoretically, the growth of liberalism in the eighteenth century and the notion that sovereignty was absolute and unified challenged the early modern organization of republic ideas. The end of hereditary status underneath the republican division of the few and the many, including the idea of separate institutional spaces, created another set of conceptual and institutional problems. Reimagining the republican tradition needed to address these challenges, but Tocqueville was not alone in his project of modernizing republicanism. In many ways, the Federalists were challenged with the same issues. The condition of political and social equality was a fact in the United States earlier than other places, and the American framers went to great lengths trying to identify a kind of natural aristocracy.23 Jean-Jacques Rousseau also grappled with a similar set of difficulties of how to conceive of a republic in modern conditions, especially in conditions of unitary and absolute sovereignty. All of these answers provided Alexis de Tocqueville with fertile material to use in this project of building a republic for the moderns.

A Final Word The first part of this book is historical. It begins with the historical sociology of Jansenism in old regime political culture. Drawing inspiration from Max Weber and Lucien Goldmann, I argue that religious Jansenism shared a strong reciprocal relationship with the political ideology of constitutional monarchy in France. In Chapter 2, I show how Jansenism was an important – but by no means hegemonic – cultural influence in Tocqueville’s family and professional life. Based on this analysis, I argue that Jansenism was a set of intellectual tools that Tocqueville felt free to borrow from but was in no way limited to. Chapter 3 turns to look at how this Jansenist influence takes shape in his œuvre, specifically the idea of Providence. Here I show that Tocqueville’s use of the political rhetoric of Providence in Democracy in America is best understood in the context of this Jansenist tradition, yet modified to suit the needs of a democratic age.

23 Wootton, ‘Introduction.’

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These historical chapters set the foundation for the second part of the book, which focuses on Tocqueville’s modern republicanism. Comprised of four chapters and a conclusion, the second part of the book looks at Tocqueville’s Jansenist-inflected republicanism in different contexts, from the nature of sovereignty and civic virtue to the Jansenist influence in his the sociology of religion. While Chapters 4 and 5 are still fundamentally contextual analysis of political thought, Chapters 6 and 7 bridge the historical nature of this book with contemporary political science: Chapter 6 looks at education policy in democratic transitions by linking Tocqueville with Alfred Stepan, and Chapter 7 shows how this Jansenist influence takes shape within Tocqueville’s sociology of religion. In the conclusion, I argue that Tocqueville’s political theory can still be a powerful interpretive tool to help make sense of political life. Indeed, his modern republicanism is both an attractive philosophical ideal and a plausible description of modern political life. Much like contemporary republican philosophers and political theorists, Tocqueville was self-consciously trying to articulate a vision of republican freedom accommodated to the needs of a democratic age. It is therefore puzzling that, except for a few scholars who look specifically at America, the republican revival rarely finds inspiration from the works of Alexis de Tocqueville.

1

Jansenism and Republicanism in Old Regime France By envisioning the early church as a community of austere communicants in an ecclesiastical republic, these histories ran parallel to the idealization of the Roman Republic or the early Frankish constitution in the civic humanist mode such as those of Montesquieu and the abbé Gabriel Bonnont de Mably. They belong with the literature of the Enlightenment, the ecclesiastical counterpart to its civic humanist strain.1

Dale Van Kley’s epigram is an excellent summation of what distinguishes the French ‘Machiavellian Moment’ from other European contexts. The reception of the Atlantic republican tradition in France was unmistakably shaped by a kind of civic humanism in clerical garb, especially the intertwined religious heritages of Jansenism and Gallicanism. While distinct, these two traditions evolved in similar spaces and through debates over the role of the Catholic Church in French society. J.G.A. Pocock emphasizes how republican ideology developed in distinction to varying kinds of ‘Court’ ideologies. This is the case with Jansenism as well, whose history needs to be understood in dialogue with the ideology of Absolutism in France. Indeed, the ideology of the court may have been strongest in France where the king cured scrofula and was descended from Christ. In France, however, the religious context of resistance to the pope created a second type of ‘Country’ ideology, one that stimulated the development of republican visions of the early church as the depository of ancient laws. As a result, early modern republicanism in France was strongly inflected by the extension of Catholic consular ideals into the political. This relationship was strongest with those monarchists who used the thèse nobilitaire (thesis of the nobility) to conceive of the monarchy in the terms of the one, the few, and the many. This chapter is too brief to provide the reader more than introduction to the space Jansenism occupied in French political culture. My goal here is to describe the long history of French Jansenism, give some sociological reasons for why Jansenism contributed so significantly to the development of the ideology of republicanism in France, and provide a theoretical 1

Van Kley, “Civic Humanism in Clerical Garb,” pp. 80-81.

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definition of Jansenism. Although the religious ideas of Jansenism do not play a primary role in my interpretation of Tocqueville’s political thought, it is necessary to give a substantive introduction to this religious mentality in order to understand why it was so conducive to the development of a particular French kind of republican political ideology. Before concluding with a brief look at Tocqueville’s general attitude towards early modern political traditions, I look at the political life of Chancellor Malesherbes just prior to the Revolution. I suggest that the life of Tocqueville’s maternal great-grandfather can be taken as one variation in the reciprocal relationship between religious Jansenism and old regime republicanism.

A Précis of the History of Jansenism Jansenism is not just a French phenomenon. Cornelius Jansen was the Bishop of Ypes, and had met Saint-Cyran – the future confessor at Port-Royal – at the University of Louvain. The internationalism of the movement was helpful in the production of banned books, the passing of letters between exiles abroad and allies in France, and the coordination of prohibited activities.2 In France, Jansenism was a significant intellectual and cultural influence for over two hundred years. This influence can still be seen in much diminished form in contemporary French culture.3 The long history of Jansenism is roughly coterminous with that of French Absolutism, beginning in the mid-seventeenth century and ending sometime between the French Revolution and the Restoration. 4 In the long view, Jansenism was transformed from the theology of Saint-Cyran and Cornelius Jansen into a systemized political program of resistance to Absolutism.5 This change took place in two stages. First, in the debates over the orthodoxy of Cornelius Jansen’s Augustinius and persecution of Jansenists in the seventeenth century, the generation of writers associated with the monastery at Port-Royal not only went public in a series of pamphlet wars but also developed an extensive network of aristocratic and bourgeois allies. In the second period of Jansenism, during the eighteenth century, the 2 Palmer, ‘The Republic of Grace’; Clarke, Strangers and Sojourners at Port-Royal; Willaert, Les origines du jansénisme; Miller, Portugal and Rome. 3 Prochasson, ‘Georges Sorel et Pascal.’ 4 Jansen, Le Cardinal Mazarin. 5 I present Jansenism as a unified set of ideas and practices and follow the traditional manner of periodization. There is some debate over the unity of Jansenism, for which see Hamon, Du jansénisme à la laïcité; Hurtubise, ‘Jansénisme ou jansénismes.’

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alliance between Jansenist ecclesiastics and the active Jansenist minority in the parlements and the orders of avocats (lawyers) became stronger while their religious and literary influence waned. It is in the first period that the word jansénisme is first used to describe the basic combination of a theological framework based on St. Augustine – but fused with modern philosophical systems and Thomism – with the practices of religious reform at Port-Royal. Although Cornelius Jansen and the abbé Saint-Cyran were the two founding fathers of Jansenism, the group of thinkers who followed them at Port-Royal are some of the most influential men of letters and science of seventeenth century France. The second period of Jansenism began with the end of the so-called ‘Peace of the Church’ and lasted until the French Revolution.6 After the condemnation of the popular Oratorian Pasquier Quesnel’s Réflexions morales, Louis XIV dispersed the nuns and razed the buildings of Port-Royal. Jansenism was driven underground but retained a political structure that included a clandestine journal (Les Nouvelles ecclésiastiques), a secret library, as well as protectors and allies in the parlements. Jansenists were split over the Revolution, although a notable Jansenist influence can be found in the politics and philosophy of the first half of the nineteenth century. The Jansenist vision of reform put them ideologically and politically at odds with the Jesuits. The two groups are representative of alternate Catholic responses to the Reformation; for nearly two centuries, Jansenists and Jesuits rivaled in court, the episcopate, and education. The Jansenist self-image of this rivalry conceives Jesuitism as a spirituality of fear and Jansenism as one of love.7 The moral purity implied in their defense of contrition in confession is also seen in their vision of the primitive church, especially the role of the church councils and bishops. Jansenists also moralized against the selling of offices and advocated the publication of the Bible in the vernacular.8 In the long view there are four ways in which Jansenism influenced French political culture: the enduring cultural influence of the literature and philosophy of Port-Royal generally, the Jansenist role in the Catholic

6 Van Kley, The Jansenists and the Expulsion of the Jesuits. 7 Saint-Cyran did not deny the role of attrition but instead argued that contrition was a higher form of regret for sin; Orcibal, Saint-Cyran et le jansénisme, pp. 105-109; and Orcibal, Les origines du jansénisme. 8 Jansenism also opened up space to for resistance by women, especially nuns: Kistroun, ‘A Formula for Disobedience’; Carr, Voix des abbesses du Grand Siècle.

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Church, the pedagogy of Jansenism, and the Jansenist influence in the law.9 The literary and philosophical influence of Port-Royal was more important than that of their eighteenth-century descendants, but important Jansenist literary works were released later as well. The voluminous literary productions at Port-Royal – from Pascal’s Pensées, Nicole’s Essais de morale, and Fontaine’s Fables to Racine’s tragedies and Sacy’s Bible – is even today the foundation of the popular reception of Jansenism. The influence of these Port-Royal authors waned somewhat in the mid-eighteenth century but resurged towards the end of the century. There were fewer great moralist works written by Jansenists in the eighteenth century, but they continued to engage in pamphlet wars and in many ways improved on the methods of mobilizing public opinion. There is today, as there was then, a way in which Blaise Pascal stands above other Jansenists because of his natural genius and enduring literary influence. Yet he was working within a shared paradigm of the nature of belief, the ends of politics, and the practices of faith. The religious ideas of Jansenism, in fact, leave space for several understandings and valid uses of reason. The epistemological differences between the Cartesian-leaning Arnauld and the nearly Pyrrhonist Pascal, for example, are mixed together in the lessons on geometric ‘method’ in the Port-Royal Logic.10 Within the structure of the Church, Jansenism was initially most successful amongst bishops and within the universities. Even as late as 1712, four bishops appealed the pope’s ruling in Unigenitus, and reformed dioceses could still be found on the eve of the Revolution.11 In the universities, the Augustinius was a relative success, and Cornelius Jansen’s ability to provide a bridge to Thomism helped broaden the appeal of Jansenism. Although Jansen attacks Scholasticism’s metaphysic, he also shows that in virtually all other ways the theories of Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine are in accord.12 The works of Pascal, Domat, and Nicole are particularly marked by this Thomist influence. Ground gained in the universities, the religious orders, and the amongst the bishops, however, was not long held. Louis XIV used expulsions in the 9 Taveneaux, Jansénisme et politique, pp. 6-15. 10 Arnauld wrote the ‘Cartesian Circle’ criticism of Descartes’ Meditations, and Pascal was very critical of Descartes as well. For their collaboration in the Port-Royal Logic, see Le Guern, ‘Sur une collaboration probable entre Pascal et Arnauld’; and for Pascal’s projective geometry, see Fanton d’Andon, L’horreur du vide, and Bold, Pascal Geometer. 11 Appolis, ‘L’histoire provinciale du jansénisme au XVIIIe siècle.’ 12 Richardt, Le jansénisme.

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universities and his right to appoint high clergy to remove or replace priests sympathetic to Jansenism.13 After the four ‘appellants’ to Unigenitus, there were very few Jansenist bishops in France, although Jansenism retained a stronger presence in the Low Countries. In France, Jansenist causes often mobilized the lower clergy in the eighteenth century through many overlapping connections with the more democratically oriented Richerist tradition. During this period, Jansenist theology took on a more eschatological focus using the Scholastic theory of figures to read history, while Les Nouvelles ecclésiastiques took advantage of the international market in print to continue to push Jansenist projects of religious reform.14 In education the influence of Jansenism was marked. The persecutions of Jansenists, like their influence in the Church more broadly, made continuing this influence more difficult. The pedagogy first articulated by Saint-Cyran but continued by Lancelot, Arnauld, and Nicole, and the daily life of the petites écoles give insight into the way Jansenist ideas are related to social practices. Pupils worked in small groups of four to six, and instructors sought to develop amicable, even affectionate, relationships with students. But life in the little schools was rigorous as well: the pupils rose and went to bed early (5:00 a.m. to 9 p.m.), daily life was highly structured, and education was in service of a virtuous Christian life of submission to and love of God. The use of emulation, dictation, and memorization of text were much less common in the little schools than in rival Jesuit institutions.15 The alliance of Jansenism with the groups of parlementaire ‘saints’ and the corporation of lawyers through the eighteenth century led to the development of more political Jansenism.16 This relationship seems to be partially based on the original legalistic tendencies in Jansenism, and on the fact that both groups were regularly threatened by increases in royal power. In this way, Absolutist power unintentionally brought Jansenists new allies by giving them common cause with magistrates and lawyers. This combination of interest and affinity led to a marked Jansenist influence in the development of French theories of constitutional monarchy. Catherine Maire’s formulation is ‘from the cause of God to the cause of the nation,’17 13 Durand, Le jansénisme au XVIII siècle; Hudson ‘The Regent, Fleury, Jansenism and the Sorbonne.’ 14 Coward, ‘The Fortunes of a Newspaper’; Bontoux, ‘Paris janséniste au XVIIIe siècle’; Hudson, ‘The Nouvelles ecclésiastiques.’ 15 Hammond, Fragmentary Voices; Rodamar, Montaigne et la Logique de Port-Royal; Caré, Les pédagogues de Port-Royal; Delforge, Les petites écoles de Port-Royal, pp. 157-165. 16 Van Kley, ‘The Jansenist Constitutional Legacy in the French Revolution.’ 17 Maire, De la cause de Dieu à la cause de la nation.

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because arguments that were first used to defend reform of the Church were reapplied to theories of constitutional monarchy and other projects of political reform.18 The political Jansenism of the eighteenth century took shape not only within the parlements themselves but, more importantly, amongst the corporations of lawyers which were essential to making the legal realm of the parlements function.19 In addition to this analysis of the social spaces and cultural influence of Jansenism, a distinction ought to be made between spiritual and moderate Jansenists. In Jansen’s Augustinius, he argues that the ‘trace’ or ‘mark’ of our first nature remained: moderate Jansenists assigned a larger and more positive role to this ‘mark’ in human affairs. Spiritual Jansenists condemned activities that did not take the love of God as their direct object, including the vanity of philosophy and politics, and lived in spiritual retreat from worldly corruption. Moderates used the ideas of Aquinas to give philosophy and politics important roles in the spiritual life through the discovery of the physical laws of the universe, and the moral laws of men.20 Moderate Jansenists moved towards Enlightenment defenses of reason, while spiritual Jansenists were more way of the increased rationalism of the second half of the eighteenth century.21 The evolution through time of Jansenism as a religious and political tradition is explained by several variables.22 The substance of Jansenist religious and philosophical ideas predisposed them to certain political positions, but, at the same time, these ideas were often modified as they spread into new social settings. The need for succeeding generations to deal with new political realities also played an important role in forcing Jansenists to modify their ideas to deal with new political problems. There is interplay between these processes and, on the one hand, as Jansenism spread into new social settings like the magistracy and the universities, certain elements like Gallicanism and Thomism were progressively highlighted; while, on the other hand, as they faced new historical positions and problems, old debates ended and new ones took their place. So, while there was a very strong ideological tendency even at Port-Royal towards the law that seems to have been strengthened by historical contingency, the role of Jansenism in education and the Church was likely diminished by the course of events. 18 Hildesheimer, Le jansénisme en France. 19 Bell, Lawyers and Citizens. 20 Even the most spiritual Jansenist cannot properly be said to have been against rational knowledge Taveneaux, Jansénisme et politique, p. 7. 21 Shackleton, ‘Jansenism and the Enlightenment,’ pp. 1340-1343. 22 Taveneaux, Jansénisme et politique, p. 9.

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Jansenists continued to play important roles in French public life, at least through the Restoration.23 They exerted influence in education, maintained the secret library at the Rue Saint-Jacques in Paris, and pushed many of their traditional religious positions. Many ideas that had been born as part of religious reform in the seventeenth century became important to certain strains of French arguments for social reform.24 Ambroise Rendu was both a member of the executive council of the Société des Amis de Port-Royal (which today continues to run the library at Rue St.-Jacques) and of the Royal Council of Education.25 And the abbé Grégoire, a revolutionary Jansenist, was elected to the Chambre des députés (Chamber of Deputies) and engaged Joseph de Maistre in the press. Ultimately, however, the Revolution fractured the ideological unity of Jansenism: Louis de Silvy (who played a prominent role in publicizing Port-Royal in the nineteenth century) tended towards a conservative Gallican politics; Royer-Collard and members of the de Sacy family were associated with the Doctrinaires; while yet others – like Tocqueville – drew from this tradition a set of resources to help defend democratic republicanism. Républicanisme en France: Jansénisme et politique, 1650-1789 In French, république, républicain, and républicanisme, have a different range of meanings than they do in English. Today, républicain carries the notion of a tradition that valorizes the French republic, and dates to no earlier than the late eighteenth century. This is what it means to say vive la république! Until the French Revolution, however, la république was frequently used in its Roman sense, which is to say the representation of the political body to itself or, in other words, the state.26 Republicanism as used by historians of political thought was not absent, but took on different colorings as a result of the French political landscape. There were some in France who advocated for a republican form of government.27 Their ideal government would have looked more like the Dutch or 23 There is a surprisingly small amount of work on Jansenism in the nineteenth century. Chantin, Les Amis de l’œuvre de la Vérité; Gazier, Histoire générale du mouvement janséniste. 24 Necheles, The Abbé Grégoire. 25 The Procès-verbal of the Société des écoles chrétiennes can be consulted at the Bibliothèque des Amis de Port-Royal in Paris, located at the site of the secret Jansenist library established during the persecutions of the seventeenth century. 26 Jean Bodin, for example, used it in this way in the Six livres de la république, and when translated into English, république was usually replaced with ‘commonwealth’ or ‘commonweal.’ 27 Baker, Inventing the French Revolution, pp. 128-153.

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Italian institutions of small states, and would be easily placed in the Atlantic republican tradition. More common, however, were groups and individuals who used Aristotle’s vocabulary to conceive of the monarchy as limited, based on consent, and constitutional. They are still republican in the sense used by historians of political thought, but they are not republicans in any of the other senses of the word. It was quite easy, in fact, to view the king as the one, the nobles as the few, and the people as the many. Machiavelli himself helped set the terms for this understanding of the one, the few, and the many on monarchical terms. In The Prince he singled out late medieval France for its ‘good institutions’: Of these the first is the parliament and its authority; for he who organized that kingdom, being aware of the ambitions and arrogance of the nobles and realizing the necessity of a bit in their mouths in order to restrain them, while, on the other hand, being aware of the hatred, based on fear, of the masses for the nobles, and wishing to reassure them, did not want this to be a particular obligation of the king […] [so] he established a third arbiter that might, without burdening the king, repress the nobles and favor the lower classes. There could not be a better or wiser system, nor could there be a better measure of security for the king and the kingdom.28

This passage contains much of the basic material necessary for constitutional monarchists to envision the French monarchy in the terms of early modern republicanism. Perhaps most notable in this analysis is how Machiavelli admires the extension of parlements in order to better harness the energies of the restless nobility. One of the earliest and most influential proponents of this vision of monarchy was not a Jansenist at all, but the Bishop Fénelon. When the Adventures of Telemachus was made public, Fénelon was banished from court for its republican themes of virtue and corruption, agrarian independence, and love of the public good.29 The historical development of the kind of republicanism that envisioned the monarchy as ‘limited,’ and even called the parlements the ‘Senate,’ was fueled by a particularly strong relationship between Jansenism and the

28 Machiavelli, The Prince, ed. and trans. Musa, p. 157. 29 Fénelon, The Adventures of Telemachus, ed. Riley.

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law.30 This relationship seems to be based on a mix of material position, ideological affinity, and political pressure.31 Lucien Goldmann was the first to look at why Jansenist religious ideas were particularly attractive to nobility of the robe.32 To Goldmann the link between the nobility of the robe and the ideas of Jansenism are based on material position: because the practices of Absolutism cut at the privileges and material livelihood of the nobility of the robe, they became more and more attached to the ideas of Jansenism, whose ‘tragic’ sensibility made sense of their own threatened role in the social hierarchy.33 Much of the work immediately following Goldmann picked up on this basic thesis: ‘The traditional centers of resistance to royal Absolutism […] tended to gravitate towards Jansenism even more so because it was this very movement that the system of the commis deprived the nobility of the robe of its raison d’être.’34 Similarly, Antoine Adam argues that ‘From the beginning the Augustinians represented fidelity to tradition and respect for established rights and written laws […] it was natural for men faithful to ancient French independence to share sentiments of solidarity.’35 Goldmann’s study of the Jansenist spirit can be thought of on similar terms as Michael Walzer’s more recent The Revolution of the Saints. Ideologies are ‘ways of seeing the world [they] organize and sharpen feelings and sensitivities which are already present.’36 Walzer argues that the anxiety felt by seventeenth-century saints was not itself a product of their Protestant doctrine, but rather that they turned to Calvinism as means of resolving and rationalizing this anxiety. The men who converted to Calvinism were, in short, already anxious, and future saints chose Calvinism because it made sense of a world that already existed. To Walzer, Puritanism made sense of ‘actual experience of exile, alienation, and social mobility,’ but this anxiety

30 Barral, Manuel des Souverains, p. 145. 31 Taveneaux, Jansénisme et politique, p. 2. 32 Goldmann, Le dieu caché. 33 The materialism of Goldmann’s thesis was responded to as early as 1955 by H.T. Barnwell in The Modern Language Review. 34 Cognet, Le jansénisme, p. 48. 35 Adam, Du mysticisme à la révolte, p. 191. In France there were two origins of the aristocracy. The nobility of the sword was older, dating to the tenth through twelfth centuries, and tended to enter the army. The nobility of the robe tended to serve as magistrates in the parlements, and traced their origins back to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. 36 Walzer, ‘Protestantism and Revolutionary Ideology,’ p. 71, as well as his book-length work, The Revolution of the Saints.

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was a product of a newly emerging material condition, ‘about which the saints so often and insistently wrote.’37 Goldmann’s account of the materialist position of the nobility of the robe brings to the fore a significant driving force in the reception of Jansenism. The Jansenist search for purity and independence certainly resonated with social classes whose status was threatened by expansions of central power. As Walzer suggests, it helped to sharpen feelings and sensitivities already present. While present, however, this account of materialist position certainly did not lead to a hegemonic ideological position in the parlements. When the interests of the Parlement de Paris were not affected, its members were often more than ready to support the persecution of Jansenists.38 Lucien Goldmann’s materialist explanation for the relationship between Jansenism and the legal orders can be complemented with a cultural explanation of the affinity of religious Jansenism for other social forms. René Taveneaux thinks of the relationship between Jansenism and the law as a kind of ‘terrain of encounter’ fueled by shared social space and ideological resemblance.39 Dale Van Kley – whose own analysis of Jansenists ‘saints’ in the Parlement de Paris puts them at less than 10 percent 40 – argues that a driving factor in the relationship between Jansenism and the legal milieu is the ‘proximity of these professional conceptions,’ and that Jansenists excluded from having a place in the ecclesiastic hierarchy simply ‘became lawyers.’41 This approach moves beyond material position – the raison d’être of the nobility of the robe – to look at larger sets of cultural resemblances found in similar styles of life. According to this logic, Jansenist religious ideas can be said to have an affinity with certain political positions and to combine more readily with certain social forms. Where Goldmann’s argument is based on a structural analysis that could be said to take physics as its model, this cultural analysis is similar to Max Weber’s use of elective affinity, and takes chemistry as its model. 42 In The Protestant Ethic and the ‘Spirit’ of Capitalism, Weber argues that ‘Calvinist piety is an example of the relationship that exists between certain religious ideas and the consequences for practical religious conduct arising 37 Walzer, ‘Protestantism and Revolutionary Ideology,’ p. 81. 38 Hamscher, ‘The Parlement of Paris and the Social Interpretation of Early French Jansenism.’ 39 Taveneaux, Jansénisme et politique, p. 12. 40 Van Kley, The Jansenists and the Expulsion of the Jesuits from France, p. 125. 41 Van Kley, ‘The Estates General as Ecumenical Council,’ p. 38. 42 Warner, ‘The Role of Religious Ideas’; How, ‘Max Weber’s Elective Affinities,’ p. 374.

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logically and psychologically from these ideas.’43 Weber argues that there is a ‘methodical’ (sometimes translated as ‘typical’) behavior created by ascetic Protestantism and that this ‘conduct of life […] this spirit stands only in a relationship of “adequacy” to the economic forms.’44 Calvinist dogmas of predestination and justification created a type of psychological anxiety that manifested in the search for external signs of salvation. In this way, Calvinism gave a religious meaning to a capitalistic form. At the same time, capitalistic form seems to provide the conditions that help spread the growth of this Protestant worldview. Weber speaks alternately of the ‘elective affinity which has long been established […] between Calvinism […] and capitalism’ and those of ‘the bourgeoisie with certain styles of life (affinities that reveal themselves repeatedly, in constantly varying but fundamentally similar manner), including […] affinities with certain individual components of religious stylizations of life offered most consistently by ascetic Protestantism.’45 In Economy and Society, Weber summarized this kind of method as looking for the ways in which different social forms ‘mutually favor one another’s continuance or, conversely, hinder or exclude one another – are “adequate” or “inadequate” to one another.’46 There are a number of sociological differences between Jansenism and Protestantism, but the logic of affinity can help make sense of the Jansenist relationship to constitutional monarchy and the legal corporations of old regime France.47 The religious ideas of Jansenism and the lifestyle of lawyers were highly favorable to one another, ‘in practice it is a bit like distinguishing between parasites and hosts in mutually beneficial cases.’48 Jansenists sometimes left written appeals to Christ on altars, and in burial they would sometimes lower – after the legally mandated forty days – a relief d’appel into the tombs of the departed. 49 Unlike Protestant justification by faith, the Jansenist idea of salvation retains a notion of works and connects it

43 Weber, The Protestant Ethic and The ‘Spirit’ of Capitalism, trans. Baehr and Wells, p. 144. See also MacKinnon, ‘Calvinism and the Infallible Assurance of Grace.’ 44 Weber, ‘Critical Remarks,’ p. 225. Davis translates ‘methodical’ as ‘typical’ in Weber, ‘Anticritical Last Word.’ 45 Weber, ‘A Final Rebuttal of Rachfahl’s Critique,’ pp. 301 and 315. 46 Weber, Economy and Society, p. 341. Some contemporary sociologists have mimicked the logic of affinity to explain the relationship between religious and social forms: Jones and Anservitz, ‘Saint-Simon and Saint-Simonism’; Winter, ‘Elective Affinities between Religious Beliefs and Ideology of Management.’ 47 Taveneaux, La vie quotidienne des Jansenists. 48 Van Kley, ‘The Estates General as Ecumenical Council,’ p. 23. 49 Knox, Enthusiasm, p. 201.

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to the demonstration of virtue.50 Merit was part of salvation, but without certain knowledge of one’s own merit, Jansenists were left ‘to hover – in this life at least – somewhere between the certainty of salvation and the terror of damnation.’51 The cultural consequence of this typical conduct was not revolutionary transformation, but traditional reformation. The strong influence of Jansenism on the ideology of constitutional monarchy did not develop out of material position or cultural affinity alone; rather, repeated cycles of political pressure frequently gave these groups immediately political reasons to coordinate together. Moments of crisis increased the saliency of links between Jansenists and lawyers, spurring ideological collaboration. As lawyers, Jansenists often proved to be as belligerent as the members of Port-Royal, as well as more effective. The Ordre d’avocats had several privileges and enjoyed an advantageous political position. Twice in the eighteenth century they engaged in large strikes, and they also enjoyed the right to publish factums (essentially legal briefings) without censure. This was a powerful weapon in eighteenth-century pamphlet wars, one frequently used in defense of religious Jansenists. There were quite a few Jansenists amongst the leadership of the order, and, when they were able to gain compliance by the majority of avocats, they could shut down a large and very important part of the French government. The practical effect of the particular rights enjoyed by the lawyers was organized resistance to Absolutist political power. David Bell’s study of the strike in 1730-1731 shows that lawyer won two victories: first, they made the government realize that it would be very difficult to impose acceptance of Unigenitus; second, they forced the crown to negotiated directly with the avocats, and in a way that was hard to make sense of in any other terms than those of constitutional monarchy.52 The influence of Jansenism on the development of the ideology of constitutional monarchy evolved throughout the eighteenth century, but takes roughly two forms. One of the reasons that Jansenist ideas were well disposed to be imported into political debates is that their vision of the early church was based on a notion of foundational laws. It was relatively easy, in fact, for constitutional monarchists to import these religious ideas into the political. The king, according to this logic, is restricted by the ancient usages 50 Van Kley, ‘The Rejuvenation and Rejection of Jansenism’; Michel, ‘Clergé et pastorale jansénistes à Paris’; Michel, Jansénisme et Paris. 51 Van Kley, The Jansenists and the Expulsion of the Jesuits, p. 10. 52 Bell, ‘Des stratégies d’opposition sous Louis XV,’ p. 582.

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of his prerogatives, and changes to this original contract must be based on consent. This vision drew more extensively from spiritualist Jansenists. Moderate Jansenists, drawing from St. Thomas Aquinas, developed a second kind of law limiting the actions of rulers, a natural law that could be used as a general rule to judge any government. This natural law argument could, in various ways, be combined with arguments of foundational laws, but it also opened up a way for Jansenists to conceive of commercial society and the rule of law in a more progressive manner. Jansenist republican literature in France largely, but by no means exclusively, took place on the familiar terrain of the mirror of princes literature.53 In France this literature had titles like Duguet’s Institution d’un prince (1743) or Barral’s Manuel des souverains (1754). These two pieces are excellent examples of moderate Jansenists using the full range of Jansenistconstitutional monarchist ideas. Barral argues: All nations are of a big republic, the head of which is God. He wills that we obey the common good over out particular interest […]. Love of the people, the public good, and the general interest is the immutable and universal law of sovereigns. This law is anterior to all contracts, it is a law founded in nature […] he who governs should be the first and most obedient to this primitive law.54

Duguet both defends the foundational laws of the monarchy by appealing to the ancient constitution, and argues that those laws should be judged against natural law. Ancient laws are the best because they are confirmed by experience, and the crown is not a creator of laws as much as their executor. ‘They are the rule, he the judgment and application,’ Duguet argues. ‘They show what needs to be done, he executes it.’55 Duguet’s work is also an example of how Jansenists drew from other constitutional monarchists: ‘The author has taken many things from Telemachus,’ the Comtesse Stéphanie Félicité de Genlis agued in 1783, ‘but often has many of his own’: Prudence, when perfect, knows artifice but is not owned by it. Its light rises above all fraud, mediates the darkness, and discovers from afar the

53 This literature also developed in legal treatises, histories of the French government and the Catholic Church, factums, remonstances, and even fictional travel journals. 54 Barral, Manuel des Souverains, pp. 1-2. 55 Duguet, Institution d’un Prince, p. 124.

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cloud where dissimulation hides itself, and through the fear of being seen it can hardly see anything.56

This notion of a self-love that hides from itself is linked to Jansenist conceptions of how commercial society and republican political institutions can mimic natural law. The dangers of corruption and flattery are central themes in these two works as well. Duguet warns the prince to only make new laws slowly, and to ‘build unanimity’ before moving forward, because ‘It is necessary for wise men to enlighten each other.’57 The prince who neglects ancient laws in favor of the ‘variation and inconstancy’ of ‘uncertain principles […] commits a great fault against his successors and the Republic which should be immortal through the long existence of its laws.’ The prince himself must be an example of divine law, and must take as the model of his action that of God and Christ. ‘Humility,’ ‘moderation,’ and ‘august simplicity,’ are the virtues Duguet seeks to instill in his pupil. Should he fail to make his subject virtuous by his example – notably by ignoring the ancient laws and innovating without restraint – he may be rightly resisted and called back to the traditions of the ancient constitution and foundational laws of the state.58 The kind of constitutional monarchy advocated by Barral and Duguet easily incorporated the people into the moral and institutional elements of the state: One of the principle supports and foundations of a monarchy, republic or popular state, are the magistrates […] Cicero called the Senate the soul, the reason, and the mind of a republic and concluded that the republic cannot maintain itself without magistrates any more than a body without a soul, or a man without reason.59 It is therefore the same thing to be for the republic, and to be for the king; to be for the people and to be for the sovereign […] this is the very character of their greatness, to be consecrated to the public good. It is in them [the people] in the same way that a light is placed up high in order

56 Genlis, Adélaïde et Théodore, p. 123. 57 Duguet, Institution d’un Prince, pp. 125-127. 58 Ibid., 168-76. 59 Barral, Manuel des Souverains, pp. 145-46.

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that its rays can spread. It would be an injury to enclose them within the narrow limits of personal interest.60

Thus, while the ancient laws and practices limit the power of the crown, they are also limited by the common good and the existence of God’s justice as found in natural law. Of course the common good, which must take into account the participation and interests of the people, is more likely to approximate this natural law by transforming the different interests of the various element of society into a larger whole. The evolution of this political Jansenism usually took place in debates over the role of the Gallican Church. Throughout the Middle Ages a series of concessions had been made by Rome to French monarchs and bishops in what were known as the ‘liberties’ of the Gallican Church.61 The division of powers in the Gallican Church were twice significantly codified, generally in favor of the royalty: first, in 1594 for Henry IV; and then for Louis XIV in the Declaration of the Clergy of 1682.62 This second codification is known as the Four Articles, and it helped to frame French debates over the Church for several hundred years. These liberties were vague enough that Bossuet could defend the a notion of royal power that partook directly in the divine, the Parlement de Paris could insist on their right to examine church decisions, and Jansenists could view the Gallican Church on the model of the early church.63 Put differently, Gallicanism was ultimately more of an ambiguous fact than a coherent ideological position. Thus, while Jansenists recognized the right for the state to judge the ‘exterior’ of church decisions in the appel comme d’abus, they generally disagreed with the power of the crown to nominate bishops. They regarded the French system established in the Four Articles as an inappropriate interference of temporal power in ecclesiastic authority: Duguet dedicates several chapters to describing the danger of this policy.64 The ambiguities in the meaning of the Four Articles meant that a Jansenist reading was often possible, and when political interest brought Jansenists and other Gallicans together, the ‘liberties of the Gallican Church’ were big enough to rally behind.65 60 Duguet, Institution d’un Prince, pp. 7-8. 61 Le Tourneau, L’église et l’état en France, pp. 5-15. 62 Martimort, Le gallicanisme. 63 Grés-Gayer, Le gallicanisme de Sorbonne, pp. 200-05. 64 Duguet, Institution d’un Prince, p. 54. 65 Chédozeau, ‘Port-Royal, les Gallicans et les politiques’; Grés-Gayer, ‘Le gallicanisme d’Antoine Arnauld.’

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An Ideal-Type of Jansenism There are a number of difficulties to constructing a definition of Jansenism. True Jansenists never self-identified as such, preferring titles such as Amis de la vérité or even ‘admirers of Port-Royal.’ A second problem is that persecution through the eighteenth century drove Jansenism underground. Unearthing the hidden connections between ecclesiastics, parlementaires, lawyers, and educators is extremely difficult. Nonetheless, eighteenthcentury Jansenists did not fundamentally move beyond the set of religious questions about the structure of the Church and the practices of belief.66 Nonetheless, the large historical literature on Jansenism can be used to develop a kind of table of thought, or ideal-type, of Jansenist ideology. My goal in creating this template is to make sense of what could be thought of as the theoretical backbone of Jansenism, within which there are many variations. This ideal-type can be used to judge the extent to which particular thinkers are drawing from Jansenist ideas. I build the definition of Jansenism here largely from two sources, but add several elements of my own. The works by Lucien Goldmann and Philippe Sellier have mostly set the terms for how contemporary historians think about Pascal and Jansenism.67 Goldmann’s book helps makes sense of the first two elements of Jansenism. What he calls the Jansenist ‘spirit’ is the consequence of the link between their ideas of Providence and the hidden God. Sellier adds to this definition the ideological elements of the clairobscur of the world and the theory of orders. To their definitions, I add three elements: the Jansenist idea of love, the notion of a second conversion, and the republican vision of divided sovereignty embodied in a vision of the early church. As I proceed, I mostly use the works of Blaise Pascal to describe the seven elements of Jansenist ideology. Lucien Goldmann defines Jansenism more as a ‘spirit’ or ‘attitude’ than a set of theoretical and political commitments. What Goldmann notices is the connection of the Jansenist idea of Providence to their concept of virtue. The Jansenist idea of salvation focuses on the need for the individual to demonstrate merit in the face of the changing circumstances and continual change of the material world. God’s Providence opens up the space for the Christian to demonstrate virtue, and it is the Christian’s duty to struggle for the good in the place given to him. In Jansenist theology, the idea of mal (evil) is linked to the flux and change of the world, and the idea of mensonge 66 Doyle, Jansenism, p. 14. 67 Goldmann, Le dieu caché; Sellier, Pascal et saint Augustin.

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(lies) to the way this flux continually recreates uncertainty. The uncertainty of salvation and the indeterminateness of human action, however, serve to reinforce the necessity of demonstrating individual worth in the face of uncertain circumstances.68 Jansenists frequently used the verb s’accommoder to describe how all events bear the mark of God’s will, and how it is the believer’s duty to accept the passing of human events.69 This act of reconciliation is linked to the necessity to struggle for the good in the place provided by Providence. Lucien Goldman sums up the tragic Jansenist worldview, what he calls the refus intramondain du monde (the inner-worldly refusal of the world) into four rules: 1 to reconcile oneself (s’accommoder) […] to the mal and mensonge of the world; 2 to struggle for truth and good in a world where one has been given a place – reduced no doubt – but real; 3 to speak the good and the truth to a radically corrupted world, which only knows how to persecute them; 4 to hold steady in a world that does not know how to understand the word of a Christian.70 Goldmann’s first two rules explain the connection between the Jansenist idea of Providence and their concept of virtue. The struggle to demonstrate merit in the face of opposition – even persecution – is at the heart of the Jansenist spirit. Pascal says it quite simply: ‘Submission and use of reason: this is what makes true Christianity.’71 This twofold strategy of submission and action lies underneath Jansenist strategies of resistance as well.72 The second pair of Goldmann’s criteria, however, is useful for understanding the substance of this notion of virtue, centered on the virtue of 68 Gouhier argues that this spirit ‘unif ies Jansenism across the centuries more than an established doctrine: the search for perfection and an ascetic ideal, purity and independence’; L’anti-humanisme au XVIIIème siècle, p. 87. 69 Goldmann uses the phrase s’accommoder, but Jansenists were also prone to use se concillier and se reconcilier as well; Le dieu cachée, p. 138; Nicole, ‘De la soumission a la volonté de Dieu,’ in Essais de morale, p. 92; Lennon, ‘Occasionalism, Jansenism, and Scepticism.’ 70 Goldmann, Le dieu cachée, p. 158. 71 Pascal, Pensées, trans. Krailsheimer, p. 53. The Pensées were incomplete upon Pascal’s death, and two somewhat discrepant orderings of his preparatory material (called ‘fragments’) remain. Until the nineteenth century, it was common for editors to rearrange and combine fragments nearly at whim. 72 Cottret uses the formula ‘Submission and Resistance’ in ‘Aux origines de républicanisme janséniste.’

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constancy. Goldmann’s third and fourth rule run parallel, and it might even be better to rewrite them so that the third would read ‘speak the truth’ to a ‘world that doesn’t understand the word of a Christian,’ and the fourth to ‘hold steady’ in the face of a world that ‘only knows how to persecute them.’ The combination of ‘speaking truth’ and ‘holding steady’ prioritize integrity and sincerity rather than neo-Stoic self-control. One could summarize this ethic as the search for a ‘moral constancy’ in a ‘constantly changing political environment.’73 It is this conception of virtue founded on constancy and focused on the difficulty of knowing what to do, but without reducing the importance of action, that is at the heart of Goldmann’s refus intramondain du monde. ‘It is necessary to make continually new efforts,’ Pascal argues, ‘because one cannot conserve grace.’74 The second element of Jansenism that Goldmann highlights is the idea of the hidden God. This is a central Jansenist idea; one connected to their reading of the Garden of Eden story.75 The Jansenists used the Garden of Eden story as a conjectural history to develop a philosophical anthropology of the Fall. This Jansenist conjectural history posits an original nature of humankind (represented by Adam) as whole, pure, and innocent; and a second nature (of humankind) defined by lack, corruption, and sin. The fundamental difference between these two states is the relationship of men to the divine: the consequence of Adam’s sin is that God removed himself from the presence of man and hid himself from man’s sight. The double nature of man allowed Jansenists to attack two targets at once: to the Greeks, who posited the fundamental goodness of man, they highlighted the corruption of the Fall. To others – Thomas Hobbes or certain Romans – the Jansenists argued that they failed to account for man’s first nature, no matter how small the trace or mark that remains.76 The theory of the two states of man’s nature emphasizes the difference between these two natures, but also the many ‘hidden conduits and secret channels’ that unite them.77 ‘Instinct and reason, signs of two natures,’78 says Pascal, and ‘Concupiscence has become natural for us and has become second nature. Thus there are two natures in us, one good, the other bad.’79

73 Drolet, ‘Democracy and Political Economy,’ p. 171. 74 Pascal, Pensées: fragments et lettres, ed. Faugère, p. 14. 75 Sellier, Pascal et saint Augustin, pp. 236-237. 76 Domat, Traité de lois, p. 3. 77 Nicole, ‘Of Charity and Self-Love,’ p. 375. 78 Pascal, Pensées, trans. Krailsheimer, p. 29. 79 Ibid., 206.

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After the Fall, God removed himself from man’s sight, but did not abscond or simply disappear. The hidden God is one that can only be known indirectly through his mark on nature and the Church as mediator.80 He is infinite and indivisible: Let us now speak according to our natural lights. If there is a God, he is infinitely beyond our comprehension, since, being indivisible and without limits, he bears no relation to us for it is one and the same everywhere and wholly present in every place.81

Thus, despite the fact that God has removed himself from man’s sight, traces of the divine can be found not only in the Bible but also in physical nature and the passage of human history: ‘I have tried to find out whether God has left any traces of himself.’82 This is where the Jansenist idea of Providence finds its theological root, as the passing of human history has to be assumed to bear the mark, or traces, of God’s will.83 While Goldmann’s work highlights several important elements of Jansenism, the works of Philippe Sellier are more useful for making sense of how Jansenists interpreted the traces of the divine that can be found in the Bible, nature, and relations amongst men. What Sellier calls the ‘Port-Royal literary style’ adds to Goldmann’s notion of Providence and the hidden God two new pieces: the clair-obscur of the world and the theory of orders.84 Pascal and other Jansenists used a kind of dialectic between clarity and obscurity to conceive of the epistemological basis of human understanding. This dialectic comes from the partially revealed and partially hidden nature of the divine: If there were no obscurity man would not feel his corruption: if there were no light man could not hope for a cure. Thus it is not only right but useful for us that God should be partly concealed and partly revealed.85 80 Pascal also uses the metaphor of a river: he is the ‘continual flow of graces that the Scripture compares to a river […] it is always new, so that if it ceased for an instant to emit them, all that we have received would disappear and we should remain in darkness’; Pensées: fragments et lettres, ed. Faugère, p. 37. See also Miel, Pascal and Theology, p. 83. 81 Pascal, Pensées, trans. Krailsheimer, p. 122. 82 Ibid., 59. 83 Sellier, Pascal et saint Augustin, p. 436. 84 Sellier, ‘Introduction,’ in Port-Royal et la littérature, pp. 2, 12. In place of his category of ‘demystification,’ I use the term ‘order of justification’ because it highlights the connections between Jansenist ideas of religious and political reform. 85 Pascal, Pensées, trans. Krailsheimer, p. 139.

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For many seventeenth-century skeptics, the flux and obscurity of the world served as the counterpoint to the clarity and timelessness of God.86 Ultimately, it is only thanks to the ever-presence of God that there is any light at all; the gift of his grace is moments of transparency. This language of the clair-obscur of the world is connected to the Jansenist figurism, a strategy of biblical interpretation also used by the Scholastics.87 The final element of Sellier’s definition of Jansenism is the theory of orders of the idea of an ‘order of justification.’ This idea is rooted in St. Augustine’s distinction between the City of God and the City of Man. The Jansenists used this distinction to argue that each of these realms – the one of God, the immaterial, and faith; the other of man, the material world, and reason – has an internal logic of its own. This idea serves as the common theoretical basis of both Jansenist ideas of religious and political reform: religiously, it allowed them to defend projects that sought to bring the internal experience of religion closer to the believer;88 politically, they used this idea to attack the religious ideology of the cult of kingship that underpinned Absolutism, especially the argument that the king held a privileged position or special elect status.89 The ideal and religious has a strong neo-Platonic bent focused on the eternal, ideal, and pure, while the material and political are conceived in terms similar to seventeenth century French skepticism, which focused on the inconstancy and flux of the world of appearances.90 This strategy of differentiation places politics squarely in the City of Man – the material world – and the ideological effect was the ‘demystification,’91 ‘dechristianization,’92 or ‘desacralization,’ of political authority.93 Van Kley argues that Jansenism unintentionally contributed to the French Revolution through its attempts to desacralize the monarchy; René Taveneaux argues that the rejection of reason-of-state 86 Even Mme. Sévigné argued Jansenists were ‘truly Paulinian and Augustinian’ in their doctrine. Cited in Chédozeau, ‘Quelque notes sur la religion de Madame de Sévigné’; Cartmill ‘La Providence chez Madame Sévigné.’ 87 Wetsel, L’Écriture et le reste. 88 Taveneaux, Jansénisme et reforme catholique, and Taveneaux, La vie quotidienne des Jansenists; Weaver, La Contre-réforme et les ‘Constitutions de Port-Royal.’ 89 Van Kley, The Religious Origins of the French Revolution. 90 Orcibal, ‘Néo-platonisme et jansénisme’; Orcibal, ‘Thèmes platoniciens dans l’Augustinus de Jansénius.’ 91 Sellier, ‘Introduction,’ in Port-Royal et la littérature, pp. 2, 12. 92 Van Kley, The Religious Origins of the French Revolution, p. 12; Parker, The Making of French Absolutism, pp. 148-149. 93 There was a belief that the Revolution itself might have been a Jansenist plot; Merrick, The Desacralization of the French Monarchy.

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politics ‘is at the heart of the moral theology, and also the dogmatic theology of the first Jansenists […] reason of state, in effect, necessarily engenders a society of slaves or idolaters.’94 Jansenists viewed reason and faith as independent faculties of knowing but argued that each faculty only creates a certain type of knowledge: the proper use of the human faculties is to use each mode of understanding in its sphere, that is, to keep each tool in its proper place. ‘Each is master in its house but nowhere else,’ Pascal writes, ‘tyranny consists in the desire to dominate everything regardless of order’;95 ‘Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them,’ and ‘If we submit everything to reason our religion will be left with nothing mysterious or supernatural. If we offend the principles of reason our religion will be absurd and ridiculous.’96 From Antoine Arnauld to Blaise Pascal, the original members of Port-Royal frequently cited Augustine: ‘What we know we owe to reason; what we believe, to authority.’97 The City of God is associated with the heart and the authority of religion, the City of Man with the mind and the free use of reason. Pascal argues that while the orders are self-limiting, in recognition of these limits they also acknowledge the authority of the other. His famous wager is meant as a demonstration of the self-limiting nature of reason, more clearly expressed in one of the shorter fragments: ‘St. Augustine. Reason would never submit unless it judged that there are occasions when it ought to submit. It is right, then, that reason should submit when it judges that it ought to submit.’98 In the Eighteenth Provincial Letter, Pascal uses ‘St. Augustine and St. Thomas’ to argue that when ‘the literal sense is contrary to the certain knowledge of the senses or of reason […] it is necessary that the two truths are reconciled […] one should take for the true interpretation of the scripture the one that remains faithful to the senses.’99 Thus ‘clarifying reason’ and ‘purifying faith,’ or the City of Man and the City of God, are two routes to the same goal: the latter is direct and religious, the former indirect and secular.100 Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole, from the Port-Royal Logic, simply argue that ‘reason and faith are 94 Taveneaux, Jansénisme et reforme catholique, p. 74. This trend continued through to the eighteenth century; Fauchois, ‘Jansénisme et politique au XVIIIe siècle.’ 95 Pascal, Pensées, trans. Krailsheimer, p. 15. 96 Ibid., 54. 97 St. Augustine, cited in Nader, Arnauld and the Cartesian Philosophy of Ideas, p. 26. 98 Pascal, Pensées, trans. Krailsheimer, p. 54. 99 Pascal, Les provinciales, ed. Cognet, pp. 375-377. 100 Sellier, Pascal et saint Augustin, pp. 109-112.

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in perfect agreement, like streams from the same source, and that we can scarcely distance ourselves from one without removing ourselves from the other.’101 Although the two worlds are something of parallel tracks, the faculty of reason and the world of man is defined as inconstancy and flux, in contrast to the eternal and timeless of religion. The very faculties of our understanding corrupt our knowledge: ‘our reason is always deceived by the inconstancy of appearances […] we stamp our own composite being on everything we contemplate.’102 In contrast to the eternal and timeless nature of the spiritual order, the natural order is defined by a constant flux and change: Everything here is partly true, partly false. Essential truth is not like that, but is wholly pure and wholly true. Such mixture destroys it and reduces it to nothing. Nothing is purely true, and so nothing is true in the sense of pure truth. […] We only possess the true and the good in part, mixed up with the bad and the false.103

Nonetheless, nature contains traces of God’s image. ‘As nature is an image of grace, he created in natural gifts what he was to do in gifts of grace.’104 Pascal continues, ‘Man’s greatness even in his concupiscence. He has managed to produce such a remarkable system from it and make it the image of true charity.’105 The definitions of Jansenism provided by Goldmann and Sellier are useful but still incomplete. Three additional elements must be added: the role of love, the notion of a second conversion, and the theory of the early church and divided sovereignty. The concept of love in Jansenist thought is also Augustinian, and is a transformation of Augustine’s use of delectatio (delectation). M. Le Maistre, who lived at Port-Royal as a solitaire (solitaire), argued for ‘no rule’ other than ‘that of charity, Catholic and universal,’ based on a model of friendship.106 Whereas charity originates in the first, original nature of men,

101 Nicole and Arnauld, Logic; or, The Art of Thinking, ed. and trans. Buroker, p. ii. 102 Pascal, Pensées, trans. Krailsheimer, p. 65. 103 Ibid., 280. 104 Ibid., 86. 105 Ibid., 30. 106 M. Le Maistre, cited in Taveneaux, La vie quotidienne des Jansenists, p. 45; Cagnât-Debœuf, ‘L’Amitié entre solitaires,’ pp. 362-381.

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concupiscence is a consequence of man’s fall from grace.107 The saint and the honnête homme (honest man) are archetypes representative of the two types of love. Moderate Jansenists tended to focus on the ways in which self-love could be transformed for the social good under the guise of the honnête homme.108 Pierre Nicole’s ‘Of Charity and Self-Love’ demonstrates how self-love hides itself in concern for others and creates an ‘enlightened self-love’ which ‘imitates humility,’ and even though ‘it does not speak the same language as charity,’ it will give ‘the same answer as charity does to most questions we can ask of it.’109 Pascal also engages in this game of turning the passions against themselves, but at other times he focuses on the distance between the two types of love. Although God’s glory can be seen even in the ways the fallen nature of man leads to socially beneficial outcomes, self-love should not be mistaken for true charity. The ‘concupiscence that serves the public good’ is fundamentally ‘nothing but hate.’110 The two types of love track perfectly with the idea of an order of justification based on the directionality of the will, while charity serves as something like a key to biblical interpretation through the theory of figures. ‘The sole object of scripture is charity,’ Pascal argues, ‘because there is only one goal, everything which does not lead to it explicitly is figurative.’111 The Jansenist vision of a ‘second conversion’ is also important for understanding their religious ideas. In one of the short pieces that usually accompanied the Pensées, the ‘Comparison of the Early Church with That of Today,’ Pascal draws a distinction between modern Christians born in the Church and baptized at birth, and early Christians who joined as adults. This essay emphasizes rejection of the world and complete embrace of the Catholic faith. To recapture the model of conversion of the early Christians, Pascal defends the need for Catholics to undergo a ‘second conversion’ and dedicate their lives to charity and the love of God.112 107 Bochet, Saint Augustin et le désire de Dieu; Patous, The Development of Augustine’s Theory of Operative Grace. 108 Taveneaux, Jansénisme et prêt a intérêt. 109 Nicole, ‘Of Charity and Self-Love,’ p. 377. There is a small but useful literature on Nicole, including an entire volume in the Chroniques de Port-Royal series: Pierre Nicole (1625-1695), Chroniques de Port-Royal: James, Pierre Nicole, Jansenist and Humanist; and Van Kley, ‘Pierre Nicole, Jansenism, and the Morality of Self Interest.’ 110 Pascal, Pensées, trans. Krailsheimer, p. 68. 111 Ibid., 83. 112 Pascal, ‘Réflexions sur le manière dont on était autrefois reçu dans l’Eglise,’ in Pensées, fragments et lettres, ed. Faugère, pp. 327-335.

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The last element of the ideal-type of Jansenism is its model of divided sovereignty. The Jansenists argued that Church councils played an essential role in consenting to doctrine, in which the final authority doctrine was the instruction and the creation of good moeurs (mores or habits) in the believer. The model for this idea of sovereignty was the structure of the early church, and Jansenists sought to return the Catholic Church to these ancient traditions. These traditions are ‘the depositories of the divine word […] we must not only judge what the pope is by a few words of the Church fathers […] but by the actions of the Church, the fathers, and the canons.’113 Nicole argued the Church’s goal is not simply to absolve sin but instead to ‘instruct’ believers and to create an ‘assembly of men in which the moeurs are pure.’114 Even in the seventeenth century Pascal was aware of the fact that this system had a political analog: He [God] has given this power [to popes] like kings and their parlements […] in parlement if the king has given benef its to a man they should be registered, but if the parlement enregisters without the king or refuses to register his order, it is no longer a parlement but a group in revolt.115

Finally, ‘this submission and this conformity to the ancient Church prevents and corrects everything.’116 In politics this type of analogical reasoning was heavily exploited by Jansenist political writers through a ‘God-king’ metaphor, but one that actually serves to limit the power of monarchs by describing God’s power itself as that of a ‘limited monarch’ who ‘heals with care’ and respects human laws.117 The ideal-type of Jansenism can be represented in the form of a table. This table represents in visual format the analogical relationships between this set of Jansenist ideas and the development of constitutional monarchy in France (see Table 1).

113 114 115 116 117

Pascal, ‘Pensées sur le pape et l’église,’ in Pensées, fragments et lettres, ed. Faugère, pp. 317-326. Ibid., 327. Ibid., 325. Ibid., 321. Cottret, ‘Aux origines de républicanisme janséniste,’ p. 107.

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Table 1 The Affinity of Religious Jansenism and the Ideology of Constitutional Monarchy Religious Jansenism The spirit of Jansenism, to struggle for the good in the space provided by Providence. The ideal: the solitaries of Port-Royal or parlementaire saints for whom, ‘Catholic charity’ is the rule that leads directly to God. A religion of love vs. a religion of fear. Jansenists vs. Jesuits. A system of grace founded on the love of God and true charity. Divided sovereignty: the Jansenist ideal of the early church vs. Papal infallibility. Mystical union of the body of the Church. Pope Bishops Believers General councils judge the rulings of the pope (the rule of law).

↔

Ideology of constitutional monarchy The ethic of the magistrate, and legitimate resistance in defense of the foundational laws of the state. The ideal: the honnête homme or the ‘enlightened self-love’ which hides itself and, through different means, arrives at the same goal. The politics of love vs. the politics of fear. Pascal’s Provincial Letters vs. the mystification of politics under Louis XIV. The ‘image of grace’ developed though self-love. Divided sovereignty: the ancien constitution vs. Absolutism. Rational union of citizens through the state. King Nobles The people Parlements judge the rulings of the king. (the rule of law).

I do not think Louis XIV wrong when he called the Jansenists a ‘republican sect.’118 This table helps makes sense of how Jansenist moral and consular ideals could be easily imported into political discourse over the nature of state authority. Ultimately, this relationship was based on a mix of material position, ideological affinity, and political pressure. The set of ideas on either side of this chart could easily be separated from the other, as was frequently the case in debates over the Gallican Church. Yet, the ideology of constitutional monarchy would not have developed as it did without the influence of Jansenism.

The Jansenist Ethic and the Spirit of Resistance: Malesherbes’ Resistance to Maupeou’s Reforms Catherine Maire has studied the resistance to the legal reforms of Maupeou in 1770-1774.119 She not only provides a wonderful look at how 118 Pinot-Duclos, Mémoires secrets, p. 111. 119 Maire, De la cause de Dieu à la cause de la nation.

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ideological affinity, material position, and political pressure fueled the development of French theories of constitutional monarchy, but also helps to locate Tocqueville’s maternal great-grandfather Malesherbes within the matrix of Jansenist-republicanism on the eve of the French Revolution. In these debates Malesherbes appears as a moderate whose own defense of a tempered monarchy does not explicitly side with the saintly avocats like Adrien le Paige, but is still strongly inflected by Jansenist categories of the covering of self-love, legitimate resistance, and the order of justification.120 Chancellor Malesherbes was President of the Cour des aides (the main legal body of the Parlement de Paris) during the period from 1770 to 1774. The resistance organized by a set of actors – including Malesherbes and the Jansenist Adrien le Paige – was perhaps the last great political success of the political Jansenism of the eighteenth century, and a clear example of how the religious ideas of Jansenism were still of utility to constitutional monarchists. Le Paige argues that the legal reforms of Maupeou are the political analog of the condemnation of Unigenitus: In the desire to change the spirit and nature of government, there is a perfect resemblance with what the Bulle wanted to establish in the order of religion and the nature of ecclesiastical government […]. In a word, the Molinism of the state wants to establish itself on the traces of the Molinism of religion.121

Adrien le Paige and other Jansenist avocats are at the heart of Catherine le Maire’s story, and this political argument by religious analogy is in many ways one of the most important contributions of the political Jansenism of the eighteenth century. It was this argument by analogy and translation that enabled parlementaires and lawyers to adopt Jansenist ideas about the structure of the Church to think about the role of the parlements. Malesherbes’ remonstrances written in defense of the Cour des aides do not explicitly draw on the type of religious analogy found in the most ideological of the Jansenist lawyers, but they do embrace a fully developed theory of constitutional monarchy based on an ancient constitution, divided sovereignty, and the ‘voluntary submission of your subjects.’122 120 Grés-Gayer, ‘The Unigenitus of Clement XI’; Préclin and Jarry, Les luttes politiques et doctrinales au XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. 121 Le Paige, cited in Maire, De la cause de Dieu à la cause de la nation, p. 534. 122 Malesherbes, Recueil des réclamations, remonstrances, p. 87.

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To justify his own resistance and that of the Cour des aides, Malesherbes writes that ‘it is no longer possible to be silent,’ and that he is only doing what is demanded by ‘liberty and truth […] [which] is authorized by the purity of my conduct and my sentiments.’123 He connects this theory of resistance to an idea of sincerity or honesty: ‘I view this letter as one which is justified in the eyes of the King, in the eyes of the Cour des aides, and in the eyes of all the honest men (honnête gens).’124 The rights he defends originate in the ancient constitution founded on a contract between the king and the people. ‘We are the depository of laws that cannot be doubted,’ he writes, ‘these two rights are the most precious in our primitive constitution, the right to assemble ourselves, and the right to speak to the King, our sovereign.’125 The role of the Cour des aides, Malesherbes argues, ‘is to clarify your justice,’ and while ‘the origin of all legitimate authority is divine, the greatest happiness of the people is always the object and the end.’126 Malesherbes juxtaposes the ‘disastrous maxims’ he sees being defended by the king’s ministers to the ‘love of the public good’ represented by the Cour des aides. The disastrous maxims are: That power is never more respected than when the terror walks beside her. That the administration ought to be a mystery hidden to the eyes of the people, because the people are always hesitant to obey, and that all representations […] are the beginnings of revolt. That authority is always interested in supporting those with power in hand, even if they have abused it.127

In contrast to these disastrous maxims, Malesherbes argues: The creation of the Cour des aides was accorded as a representation of the nation, in a moment that can never be forgotten where she offered a voluntary tribute which continues today. The integrity of our functions 123 Ibid., 121, 123. 124 Ibid., 124. 125 Ibid., 135. 126 Ibid., 82, 87. 127 Ibid., 131.

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should continue as long as the tax, and the destruction of your Cour des aides is a violation of the most sacred of contracts.128

Moreover, the role of legislation is analogous to the Jansenist view of the Catholic Church: ‘wise laws introduce purified moeurs, wise laws render the State powerful by the happiness of its parts, and only wise laws can create stable and lasting happiness.’129 Finally Malesherbes asks, should a ‘King that seeks enlightenment […] be allowed to walk in the shadows amidst a nation that is knowledgeable but reduced to silence?’130 Malesherbes’ life and works demonstrate other Jansenist influences as well.131 On the eve of the Revolution, he exchanged letters with the soon to be famous revolutionary Jansenist abbé Grégoire. Grégoire enquired about a work he wrote titled ‘Essai sur la régénération physique, morale et politique des Juifs,’ and which had been awarded a prize from the Academy at Metz. Malesherbes had been one of the judges, and after some time Grégoire sent him an edited copy, asking if he could include a quote as part of the notice for his book. Malesherbes’ response is telling: I do not remember exactly what I said to you but as all of this is exactly what I think, I am not at all surprised to be reminded of it in the way you have told me. But it is not possible for you to cite my opinion on this matter because as I am no longer at the Council, I do not know if my principles are the same as the actual administration. If the Council has other ideas, I should not publish in a contrary manner.132

Malesherbes had also – as director of the royal library – enabled publication of the first edition of Pascal’s Œuvres.133 Published in 1779, this edition was the first to include Pascal’s essay ‘On the Comparison of Early Christians with Those of Today’ and contains some of Pascal’s most contentious thoughts on the political structure of the Church. Tocqueville’s great-grandfather not only turns to the ideas of Jansenism in political projects of reform, but also uses many Jansenist moralist ideas in his Pensées et maximes, a copy of which can still be found in the family library. In this small work, Malesherbes reprises central Jansenist themes of 128 Ibid., 120. 129 Ibid., 144. 130 Ibid., 135. 131 Chédozeau, ‘La notion de “juif” chez P. Nicole et “l’enseignement du mépris”.’ 132 Paris, Archives nationales, Fonds Lamoignan, 154 APII, I 36; Grosclaude, Malesherbes. 133 Faugère, ‘Introduction,’ p. xxxii.

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honor, virtue, and service that demonstrate the breadth of the relationship between religious Jansenism and the ideology of constitutional monarchy. Malesherbes’ first maxim argues that despite the fact that these sayings ‘are on everyone’s lips,’ their very ‘commonality’ proves both their ‘truth and utility.’134 The second proposes that ‘a new maxim is nothing but a brilliant error.’ Other maxims dealing with honor defend republican virtue by condemning court life: A good man at court is like a foreign plant surrounded by a thousand insects trying to eat him. I saw a courtier in town who was beautiful, noble, and kind. I saw him again with the king and I did not even recognize him because he was so ugly.135

A second major theme in Malesherbes’ Pensées et maximes is that of pride covering itself, and the modesty of the true honnête homme: Pride also advises modestly; calculation is adroit but it does not make mistakes often. It is in order to not exclude the vices that one dons the name honnête. A vicious man may speak of virtue; but only an honest man (homme honnête) can make it be felt. Honor begins with refusing honors. If it is true, as some dare to say, that generosity needs no other principle than interest, it must be admitted that it is an interest well-understood (intérêt bien entendu) that purchases for a few pieces of metal the profound and incomprehensible joy that one tastes when consoling the unhappy.136

These maxims are just a small taste of the many Jansenist themes found throughout Malesherbes’ Pensées et maximes. As Van Kley notes in his 134 Malesherbes, Pensées et maximes, pp. 37-38. 135 Ibid., 41. 136 Ibid., 42, 44, 46, 48, 52-53.

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study of Rousseau’s moral thought, ‘what do these word clusters suggest if not a species of political conversion in the Jansenist mode – the Jansenist penitential theology of efficacious grace and the two dominant delectations – politicized and projected into the public sphere?’137 The way in which Tocqueville’s great-grandfather Malesherbes drew from Jansenist political and moral ideas to defend a republican vision of monarchy is only one of the widely varying but fundamentally similar ways this relationship took shape.

Conclusion: Jansenism and Republicanism in Old Regime France Jansenists authors were not alone in exploiting Catholic conciliar resources in early modern France, nor were they the only republicans in France.138 Jansenist versions of this discourse, however, had a strong influence on both the development of the ideology of constitutional monarchy and practices of resistance. This influence was reinforced by the diffuse impact of the moralist and religious works of Port-Royal and the continued Jansenist presence in education and the Church. While the Jansenist influence on French society did not end in 1789, 1792, or even 1830, the French Revolution broke the political coherence of Jansenism. One of the direct influences of Jansenism on early modern political culture is that it contributed to French republicanism, especially the ideology of constitutional monarchy. Chief amongst these contributors is Pascal, but Nicole, Duguet, Domat, d’Aguesseau, the abbé Grégoire, and dozens of others are part of this Jansenist-republican tradition of French political thought. The relationship between Jansenism and democratic republicanism is less strong than that of Jansenism and constitutional monarchy. The abbé Grégoire is the most famous Revolutionary Jansenist, but it was diff icult to conceive of changes to the foundational laws of a state in such an extreme manner as the Revolution. Jansenists who sided with the republic chose the ability for the reciprocal relations amongst men to establish bonds of fraternity over a commitment to tradition and the monarchy (Table 2).

137 Van Kley, ‘The Estates General as Ecumenical Council,’ p. 40. He also argues: ‘But in becoming the apologists of parliamentary constitutionalism, Jansenists did not leave their conciliarism behind. The intellectual journey from Port-Royal-des-Champs to the Palais de Justice went by way of the Sorbonne, just as the geographical one does’ (p. 24). 138 Wright, A Classical Republican in Eighteenth-Century France.

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Table 2 The Affinity of Traditional Jansenism and Democratic Republicanism Traditional Jansenism The rule of law and the Constitutional Church. Separation of church and state. The ethic of struggling for the good in the space provided by Providence. Church gives the internal rules of faith. The abbé Grégoire.

↔

Democratic Republicanism The rule of law and the Constitutional Republic. Separation of church and state. Visions of moderate republican virtue, not the radical republicanism of the Directory. State judges the exterior of actions. Jean-Denis Lanjuinais.

This table of thought demonstrates that the affinities between Jansenism and democratic republicanism are much smaller than Jansenism and constitutional monarchy. It is partially for this reason, I think, that Jansenists were so divided over the course of the Revolution itself. Tocqueville did not pick up this early modern Jansenist-republican tradition exclusively. He mixed it with other secular and Gallican republican traditions, the sociology of Guizot and Montesquieu, the democratic republicanism of Rousseau, and many other intellectual influences. Equally important as these influences is Tocqueville’s conviction that these early modern traditions no longer made sense in the face of modern realities.

2

Tocqueville, Jansenism, and French Political Culture, 1789-1859

The goals of this chapter are to introduce Tocqueville’s use of certain Jansenist ideas and to give an account of the Jansenist themes in his life and letters. I cannot prove beyond any doubt that Tocqueville was a Jansenist, but a look at his personal and professional relations will help to locate this Jansenist influence in tension and dialogue with other political traditions. Rather than provide a master narrative, I use a series of snapshots into Tocqueville’s life, from his early childhood education to his personal letters as a man of politics, in order to demonstrate how Jansenist influences were present in both his personal relations and the political culture of nineteenth-century France. I begin with an analysis of how the Jansenist ideas of the two states of man’s nature and the theory of orders can be found in the drafts and notes to Democracy in America. After introducing Tocqueville’s modification of these ideas in this major text, I turn to look at the Jansenist influence in several important social spaces of Tocqueville’s life. Although this method breaks the usually diachronic structure of most histories, my goal is to introduce the reader to what is at stake ideologically first, in order to give a sense of the importance of looking biographically at Tocqueville’s life. The first snapshot is the brief history of the Tocqueville family from the old regime to the July Monarchy, including a look at what we know of the family library. The range of influence in the political culture of the Tocqueville family is best summarized in a letter to Tocqueville from his tutor Christian Lesueur. Lesueur advises Tocqueville to study ‘Bossuet, Massillon, d’Aguesseau.’1 Bossuet is remembered as a nationalist Gallican but was also influential in the intellectual development of Catholic Ultras. On the other hand, d’Aguesseau is one of the great representatives of legal Jansenism and Massillon was banished from the court of Louis XIV for suspected Jansenist sympathies. The second look at Jansenism in Tocqueville’s life and works is a study of the political culture of the law in Restoration France. From 1823 until 1830, Tocqueville studied and practiced law. It was his first profession, one that in the Restoration still retained a strong link with the ideas and practices of Jansenism. The political culture at the Faculté de droit and Tocqueville’s 1

Lesueur to Tocqueville, 1820; Benoît, Tocqueville moraliste, Appendix 21, p. 587.

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personal friendships from the court of Versailles demonstrate the continued presence of a Jansenist influence. Third and finally, I look at his mature life and private letters, and I argue the same tensions are as present in his early family life as in his studies in the law. By cutting into Tocqueville’s life in different slices, I demonstrate that in each these moments – from his early childhood and education, to his studies in law, and his actions as a man of letters and politics – the ideas and practices of Jansenism can be located in dialogue with other political traditions. In the conclusion, I consider the extent and nature of Tocqueville’s Jansenism and argue that while it is an important influence on his political thought, he is only a Jansenist in a very limited and qualified way.

Two Jansenist Categories: The Notes to Democracy in America Democracy in America was published in two volumes, in 1835 and 1840. Many of the ideas found in the second volume, however, were present in the notes Tocqueville took for the first. In these notes, we see Tocqueville using two central Jansenist categories, but in modified way. The first is the mystery of the human heart tied to the philosophical anthropology of the ‘two states of man’s nature’; the second is the use of the Jansenist theory of orders. I introduce the role these ideas play in Tocqueville’s political thought now, in order help the reader become familiar with them as I carry them through the rest of the book. The text and notes to Democracy in America show Tocqueville using the Jansenist philosophical anthropology based on the idea of the ‘two states of man’s nature.’ In the notes he writes: ‘The heart is not filled with just one passion, it opens itself to others, it splits its love between heaven and earth.’2 This philosophical anthropology appears frequently: I am often obliged to repeat myself because I want to divide what is indivisible, the soul. The same soul constantly produces ideas and feelings. Place here the bit I have already written where I compare the soul to the center of a circle in which ideas and feelings are the radii.3

This metaphor has roots in Pascal, and although Tocqueville modifies it somewhat, what they share is the view of the two radii of reason and 2 3

Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts, C.V. h IV, 62. Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts, C.V. h I, 28.

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sentiment as emanating from the soul or the center of the circle. This theory of the self is also clearly seen in the division of books in Democracy in America II, the first two of which consider how equality affects ideas and feelings of individuals. The second idea I wish to introduce, linked to this vision of the two states of man’s nature, is the Jansenist theory of orders. Here Tocqueville is even more innovative than in his use of the mystery of the human soul. The new political reality he saw in the United States convinced him that eighteenth century solutions to the relationship between religious and political institutions no longer worked in modern conditions. Later I detail how his American experience causes him to modify this Jansenist trope, for the time being I will restrict myself to locating it within his major works. In the notes to Democracy in America, Tocqueville says simply: Philosophy and Religion are therefore two natural antagonists […] it is necessary to have Philosophy and it is necessary to have Religion […]. These two principles are arranged in every century and with each people in various proportions, here is found almost all of human history. 4

In the text Tocqueville reprises this language to say that these two orders ‘apparently so discrepant, are far from conflicting’ in order to emphasize how they can be reconciled.5 The notes relative to religion, the philosophical methods of the Americans, and the progress of opinion in democracy come back to this idea of two orders repeatedly as Tocqueville tries to work out what is new in the democratic age. Several times in the notes Tocqueville writes something similar to Religion – authority Philosophy – liberty6

The way that Tocqueville structures his note reinforces the way in which these two ‘absolute principles,’ as he put in it in a letter from America to his cousin Kergolay, have distinct anthropological foundations connected to differentiated spaces of social action.7

4 5 6 7

Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts, C.V. j I, 3-4. DA I, 32. Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts, C.V. j I, 1. Tocqueville to Kergolay, 29 June 1831; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XIII.1, 225.

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Tocqueville appeals, not only in Democracy in America but also in the Old Regime and in public letters and speeches, to the logic of orders to make sense of how religious and political institutions are each attached in a way to the different elements of man: The July Revolution did a great service to religion; she completely separated it from politics, and she has enclosed it within the sacred sphere outside of which religion can have no force or greatness. After the July Revolution, […] religious belief seems to have been reawakened and reborn. The government did not know to respect this source of social life that does things in its own manner.8

In the Old Regime Tocqueville argues quite simply that ‘for the writers to have been able to come to an understanding with the Church, both sides would have had to recognize that political society and religious society were by nature essentially different, and could not be ordered by a similar principles.’9 Echoing the Jansenist trope that the two orders are ‘like streams from the same source,’10 Tocqueville writes: I am firmly convinced that if one honestly applied the philosophical method of the eighteenth century to the study of the true religion, one would discover without difficulty the truth of the dogmas taught by Jesus-Christ and I think one would arrive at Christianity by reason as well as by faith.11

These two ideas are the most important Jansenist influence on Tocqueville’s political thought. They serve as support to his conception of political freedom. ‘If men only learned obedience from the art of obeying, and never the art of being free,’ Tocqueville writes, ‘I do not know what would separate them from animals; only the shepherd would be distinguished from amongst them.’12 This Jansenist philosophical anthropology is used to think of a citizen who participates in a democratic republic, and is mixed 8 Tocqueville, ‘Discussion de l’Adresse,’ 17 January 1844; oeuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, III.2, 492. The French here is notable. The phrase is ‘qui s’ouvrait inespérément à ses côtes,’ which can also be translated as ‘which only reveals itself in its own way’ or ‘which has its own means of operating.’ 9 Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution, ed. Furet and Mélonio, trans. Kahan p. 204. 10 Nicole and Arnauld, Logic, p. ii. 11 Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts, C.V. j I, 59. 12 Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts, C.V. k I, 11.

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with heavy doses of Rousseau’s state, the enlightened patriotism of the Americans, and Montesquieu’s intermediate orders. At the same time, a modified use of the Jansenist theory of orders gave him a language that he could use to think seriously about the role of religion in a democratic age, while maintaining the independence of politics properly speaking. To make sense of how and why Tocqueville was inclined towards the use of these particular Jansenist ideas rather than others, I now turn to a broader look at Jansenist influences in his personal and professional life.

A Brief History of the Tocqueville Family and the Cultural Influences Present in Family Life At the outbreak of revolution in 1789, Tocqueville’s great-grandfather Malesherbes was 68 years old and retired from politics. Tocqueville’s father, Hervé Clérel de Tocqueville, was at a much different stage in life. He was a young man, just out of school, and like many of his position torn between country and class. He was of old Norman nobility (perhaps as old as the invasion of England in 1066), and much of his family had immigrated to Brussels after the fall of the Bastille. Hervé went to Paris with his tutor Lesueur, where he enrolled in the King’s Guard and, after the assault on the Tuilleries in 1792, the two fled Paris together. Not long afterwards, Hervé meet Louise le Peletier de Rosanbo at a party, the granddaughter of Malesherbes, and they married on 12 March 1793. Another of Malesherbes’ granddaughters married Jean-Baptiste Chateaubriand, brother of François-René.13 Several members of the immediate family – including Malesherbes himself – were guillotined during the Reign of Terror. François-René Chateaubriand escaped to America, a trip encouraged by Malesherbes, while Hervé and Louise de Tocqueville spent ten months in jail. Yet, even after the radical revolution Tocqueville’s parents stayed in France, and Alexis, the last of three boys, was born in 1805.14 While the extended family had a variety of responses to the Empire – much as they had to the Revolution itself – in the family circle there was generally anti-Napoleonic and pro-Bourbon sentiment. François-René Chateaubriand become famous for the Génie du christianisme (which drew heavily on Pascal), and his De Bounaparte et des 13 The brief reconstruction here of Tocqueville’s family life does not vary from that of his major biographers: Jardin, Tocqueville: A Biography, trans. Davis, pp. 3-73; Benoît, Tocqueville moraliste, pp. 33-69; Brogan, Alexis de Tocqueville, pp. 1-99. 14 See Maurois, Chateaubriand, pp. 64-116.

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Bourbons was a royalist rallying cry released just as the question of regime was being settled.15 The return of the Bourbons was clearly a boon for the family. François-René Chateaubriand was perhaps the major literary figure of the Restoration, Tocqueville’s uncle Louis de Rosanbo sat in the Chambre des pairs (Chamber of Peers), and his father Hervé became a prefect. Hervé de Tocqueville’s career path is rather exceptional. Because he remained in France through the Revolution, he had been able to keep a good amount of the family’s land and interests intact. He distinguished himself for his moderation (a rarity during the Restoration).16 Very much in the mold of the enlightened improver of the eighteenth century, Hervé worked on projects of commercial improvement, the establishment of savings banks (a favorite pet project), and education.17 In 1828, when he was elevated to the Chamber of Peers by Charles X, his votes were cited approvingly by l’Ami de la religion et du roi.18 Alexis de Tocqueville truly admired his father: I saw in my father something I have never seen in anybody else: religion entirely present in even the smallest actions of daily life: it was mixed, without seeking to show itself, in all of his thoughts, in all of his feelings, and in all of his actions; its influence extended beyond just his faith but improved everything it touched without fail […] for me, the life and death of my father is one of the best proofs of religion.19

Tocqueville not only identified with his father’s ‘analogous point of view’ but was also proud of his connection to Chancellor Malesherbes. 20 He considered writing a memoir on the ancient chancellor’s life, and in the archives there is a short piece entitled ‘Obligation of Tocqueville towards the Bourbon Family, being the Grandson of Malesherbes.’21 Hippolyte, the oldest brother, entered the King’s Guard in 1814 but resigned after the July Monarchy. Hippolyte’s outspoken legitimism during the July Monarchy caused numerous problems for Tocqueville. The 15 Chateaubriand, De Bounaparte et des Bourbons. 16 Jardin, Tocqueville: A Biography, trans. Davis , pp. 20-40; Jaume, Tocqueville, p. 248. 17 Jardin, Tocqueville: A Biography, trans. Davis , pp. 28-29. 18 L’Ami de la religion et du roi, 60 (1829), 141-156. Hervé also gathered signatures for a ‘strong protestation’ of the government’s treatment of the duchess de Berry after her attempted coup d’état; see l’Ami de la religion et du roi, 74 (1832), 473-78. 19 Tocqueville to M. Corcelle, 18 June 1856; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XV.2, 162. 20 Tocqueville to Kergolay, 17 September 1838; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XIII.2, 44. 21 Paris, Archives nationales, AT 2715, hereafter cited as AT. The family library has copies of both Malesherbes’ Pensées et Maximes and the Mémoire sur la librairie.

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Revolution of 1848 started a political career for Hippolyte, who supported the regime and ran for off ice as a republican. This waffling back and forth between legitimism and republicanism is demonstrative of larger trends that pushed constitutional monarchists with Bourbon ties towards democratic republicanism.22 The middle brother, Edouard, was the most conservative of the three. Edouard first joined the army and then married the daughter of a banker and entered business. While Edouard and Alexis were close as youths, in the maturity of their lives they disagreed regularly on politics. Like Tocqueville’s mother, Edouard was a more oriented towards counterrevolutionary politics. Some of Tocqueville’s most moving political apologetics are written in response to Edouard’s support for the Catholic politics during the July Monarchy and Second Republic. Where Hippolyte is testimony to the tendency for constitutional monarchists to become republicans, Edouard is an example of how contrary trends can coexist within the same social space.23 The last member of Tocqueville’s family who shines light into the intimate culture of the family is his cousin, Louis de Kergolay. Kergolay was a genuine intellectual companion to Tocqueville, combining the Carlist constitutionalism of Hervé and Hippolyte with a more Pascalian turn of thought.24 The letters back and forth with Kergolay are peppered with Jansenist themes. It was to Kergolay that Tocqueville wrote that he read ‘Pascal, Montesquieu, and Rousseau’ every day. In the next sentence of the letter, Tocqueville wrote ‘There is only one person missing: you.’25 In regards to Kergolay’s interpretation of Plato – one in which he says Plato is a combination of ‘abstract’ and ‘general morality’ – Tocqueville responds, ‘it is exactly how I think’: There is a continual spiritual aspiration and something great in this man, which moves and elevates me. I think, if you take everything into account, it is because of this that he has so wonderfully traversed the 22 After the fall of the Restoration, many legitimists were wary of both Catholic Ultras politics for their pro-Rome orientation and the liberal, even libertine, reputation of the house of Orléans. Additionally, the electoral politics of the house of Orléans created incentives for legitimists and republicans to cooperate in defense of changes to election laws meant to favor the government; Changy, Le mouvement légitimiste. 23 Benoît, Tocqueville: un destin paradoxal, pp. 57-65. 24 Beaumont wrote: ‘There was between these two natures, otherwise so different, secret causes of sympathy and a certain mysterious affinity. What is so amazing is that these two men, who acted so differently, could have as many contacts of the mind as of the heart, of feeling as of ideas’; œuvres complètes, ed. Beaumont, V, 98. 25 Tocqueville to Kergolay, 10 November 1836; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XIII.1, 418.

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centuries, because through all time, men love it when you speak to them of their soul, even if they don’t occupy themselves with anything more than their body.26

Plato himself has an important relationship to Jansenism indirectly through St. Augustine, as well as the directly through the reading of the Jansenists at Port-Royal. Plato’s idealism, in fact, is highly consonant with the Jansenist view of the eternal and timeless truths of the spiritual realm. Kergolay’s critique of Plato also echoes the Jansenist critique of the Greek assumption that men are naturally good: ‘The moderns have finally understood that questions of morality, politics and metaphysics are infinitely beyond our weak faculties.’27 Kergolay helped Tocqueville work out many of the ideas for Democracy in America, and although he remained a legitimist, the two shared a very similar cultural and personal point of view.28 Kergolay’s memoir, written after Tocqueville’s death, argues his style was ‘from the seventeenth century’ but that what made him unique was his ability to ‘put to a new use the weapons provided him by his masters […] to consider the troubles of our century in order to console the soul of the reader.’29 This brief history of the family serves as a reminder of both continuity and change in French political culture. The Revolution not only took many lives but also brought about a major shift in French political culture. It was most certainly not, however, a radical break with the past.30 The career paths and political opinions of his brothers and cousins demonstrate that the language of Jansenism was present in tension and dialogue with other political traditions in Tocqueville’s early life. These tensions between

26 Tocqueville to Kergolay, 8 August 1828, and Kergolay to Tocqueville, 3 August 1838; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XIII.2, 39-41. 27 Kergolay to Tocqueville, 3 August 1838; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XIII.2, 39. 28 During the July Monarchy, the Carlist trend in his family caused numerous problems for Tocqueville, while at the same time his connections to Molé meant that he was also suspected of being a ministerial candidate. When he ran for office, Tocqueville politely declined the support of the government: Tocqueville to Molé, 19 May 1835; Lettres choisies, souvenirs, ed. Mélonio and Guellec, p. 330. 29 Kergolay, ‘Étude littéraire sur Alexis de Tocqueville’; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XIII.2, 351-367, esp. 360. Kergolay argues that Tocqueville and Pascal, ‘joined the study of science with an organization that was eminently literary, in which the style forms the link between a purely scientific language, and the language of men of letters.’ 30 The political culture approach has drawn inspiration from Tocqueville, Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution, trans. Forster; and Baker, The Political Culture of the Old Regime.

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different traditions of political thought are integral to the understanding of the political culture of Tocqueville’s family.

The Family Library and the Education of an Aristocrat Tocqueville’s early education was, as it was with his brothers and father, entrusted to Christian Lesueur.31 We have little direct insight into his education in general, but there are two catalogues of the books in the family library: one dated to 1818 and found in the Yale Tocqueville Archives; the other of modern origin that lists those books still can be found in the chateau.32 It not necessary to do full accounting of these two lists. They are highly complementary and demonstrate both the presence of Jansenism as a tradition, and the diversity of the family culture. The religious books in the library indicate strong Jansenist leanings but contain works all across the ideological spectrum. They range from the moderate Gallicanism of Bossuet to a copy of the fourth Gospel of Jansenius with Lesueur’s signature on it.33 The majority of the Bibles are in French (Jansenists were early defenders of translating the Bible into the vernacular), and St. Augustine is the only church father. Bossuet, Bourdaloue, and Fénelon are the three most common authors. Bossuet and Bourdaloue are remembered as nationalistic Gallicans, and were in general rather sympathetic to the king. There is even a little bit of Maistre and Lammenais, two of the most prominent Catholic Ultras. But there are also works by Cardinal de Retz, Cardinal de Noailles, Colbert, and Le Sage.34 Retz, Colbert, and Noailles were some of the most active Jansenist ecclesiastics. Even the choices of books of theology and piety demonstrate a Jansenist leaning: François de Sales, M. Chardon, and Mme. Chantal were reform-oriented Catholics with ties to Jansenism.35 The Abrégé de l’histoire ecclésiastique contenant les événements considérables de chaque siècle is a very pro-Jansenist telling of French church history. It covers the rise and fall of Port-Royal, their protectors and allies 31 Jardin, Tocqueville: A Biography, trans. Davis, p. 21. 32 The list compiled in 1818 is at the Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts, A.I. e; the modern list was compiled by Françoise Mélonio and Laurence Guellec in Lettres choisies, souvenirs: 1814-1859. 33 Originally reported by Jardin in Tocqueville: A Biography, trans. Davis, p. 42. 34 Le Sage wrote Le diable boiteux and L’histoire du Gil Bilas. The frontispiece to the first work was done by Louise-Magdeleine Horthemels, a Protestant convert of Cornelius Jansen who resided at Port-Royal; Poulson, ‘Louise-Magdeleine Horthemels: Reproductive Engraver.’ 35 Mellinghoff-Bourgerie, François de Sales, p. 119.

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like the duchess de Longueville, and even the Bulle Unigenitus. One of the marginal notes used to summarize the story says simply ‘Various reasons that brought the Jesuits to denounce Port-Royal with vile slander’ and an analysis of the Jesuit attack on Antoine Arnauld’s distinction of ‘fact’ and ‘right.’36 Lhomond writes that ‘God is truth itself’ and that grace ‘clarifies our spirit [… it is] a good movement that comes before, excites, and aids our will to do the good.’37 Colbert recounts the Jansenist story of the fall of Adam, as well as the ‘greatness and misery’ of an ‘incomprehensible being.’38 A strong legal tendency is also prevalent in these religious texts. Colbert argues that ‘J.-C. is like a lawyer, because he can always intervene on your behalf.’39 For Hersan, charity – the ‘great precept of loving God’ – is the highest of the Christian virtues, paralleled only by justice. 40 Hersan develops a typology of legal, distributive, and communal justice. The first is the simple observation of human laws, the second the performance of public duties, and the third is the ‘mutual obligation of a perfect equality of giving and receiving.’41 His description of the four cardinal virtues (prudence, temperance, perseverance, and justice) is pervaded with language of struggling for the good in the space provided by Providence. Hersan argues that ‘Prudence is a love of God which allows you to use reason to discover what conducts you to God, and what estranges you from him.’42 Temperance is moderation [se moderer]; Perseverance is ‘suffering all the evils of this world for the love of God.’43 It cannot be said whether Lesueur used the many educational texts found in the family library to educate the young Alexis, but some of them are influenced by Jansenist pedagogical methods. 44 The method advised in Règles pour travailler utilement à l’éducation chrétiennes des enfants is focused on simplicity, moderation, and harnessing the intellectual curiosity 36 Abrégé de l’histoire ecclésiastique, p. 505. 37 Lhomond, Doctrine chrétienne, pp. 198, 323. 38 Colbert, Instructions générales en forme de catéchisme, I, 37. 39 Ibid., 135. Colbert also defends both the place of the bishops and the community of believers in the place of the Universal Church (pp. 252-254). 40 Hersan, Idée de la religion chrétienne, pp. 146, 170, 179. 41 Ibid., 230. 42 Ibid., 191. 43 Ibid., 148, 220. 44 Jardin argues that ‘If the young Alexis meditated on this treatise or listened to these lessons and was inspired by them, this could have been the source of a certain pessimistic view of human nature, in which our instincts lead us toward evil when the enlightened but difficult exercise of freedom fails to combat them with the support of a conscious recognition of the dignity of man’; Tocqueville: A Biography, trans. Davis, p. 42.

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of children;45 and the book on education by Le Chevalier – in reality, Lasne d’Aiguebelle – is only one of two found in the library from this eighteenthcentury Jansenist. 46 The list of books in the family library does not provide evidence that the members of the Tocqueville family were the type of Jansenist saints that pushed the expulsion of the Jesuits. It does, however, demonstrate the same range of Jansenist, Gallican, and republican thought that characterized much of the eighteenth-century French ‘Machiavellian Moment.’ Finally, these two lists of books reveal a particularly strong republican leaning in the family, perhaps stronger than even Lesueur’s recommendation to read Bossuet, Massillon, and d’Aguesseau.

The Study of Law and Two Friends from Versailles The first two snapshots are helpful to locate Jansenism within the intimate culture of the Tocqueville family, especially during the formative years of Tocqueville’s early education. The evidence from the political culture of Tocqueville’s family life can be complemented with a reading of the Jansenist influence still present within the legal milieu of the law. 47 While locating the specific influences of Jansenism in Tocqueville’s legal studies narrowly understood is difficult, both the Faculté de droit in Paris and the bar at Versailles were hotbeds of liberalism and political innovation on the parts of the students. 48 From 1820 to 1823 Tocqueville was enrolled in the collège royal at Metz, near his father, and excelled in his courses. After school he studied law in Paris, and then in 1827 was appointed juge auditeur at Versailles. For a young gentleman of Tocqueville’s position during the Restoration, career options were twofold: entering the army or public service, most notably the law. Considering Tocqueville’s own talent in letters, and the fact that his two older brothers entered the army, the family hoped from an early age that he would enter public service. 49 It would make sense for Tocqueville to be 45 Paccori, Règles pour travailler utilement à l’éducation chrétienne. 46 Aiguebelle, Essai sur l’éducation de la noblesse, and La religion du cœur; Petitfrère, La scandale du ‘Mariage du Figaro,’ p. 127. 47 As with his education at Metz, what remains of Tocqueville’s early legal studies are of little help in specifying what he read; AT 327-30 and AT 333. 48 Jardin, Tocqueville: A Biography, trans. Davis, pp. 74-83. 49 Lesueur to Edouard, 14 September 1822; cited in Benoît, Tocqueville: un destin paradoxal, p. 40.

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groomed for a profession in law, because as a ‘great-grandson of Malesherbes he would have been sure of attaining one of the highest places in the magistrature without an effort, merely awaiting the passing of time.’50 The culture of law in the Faculté de droit before its repression demonstrates the ongoing presence of a strong relationship between Jansenism and the law. Perhaps most notably, the similarity of the ethic of the magistrate and the ethic of Jansenism can still be seen. In 1819, Royer-Collard had reformed the curriculum of the Faculté de droit, but in 1822, just before Tocqueville was to enter, it was again reformed by the conservative Villèle Ministry.51 Royer-Collard was an important political figure with Jansenist ties during the Restoration.52 The works of Chancellor d’Aguesseau help to demonstrate why the legal profession continued to be a fertile ‘terrain of encounter’ between Jansenism and republicanism in France, even well into the nineteenth century. In his Course de littéraire française, Villemain (a prominent Doctrinaire) covers five eighteenth-century Jansenists: d’Aguesseau, Rollin, Mesanguy, Louis Racine, and ‘the duke Saint-Simon, Jansenist at the court.’53 D’Aguesseau, Villemain argues, was from the school of ‘Arnauld and Nicole’ and was ‘as Jansenist as a minister can be.’54 The edition of d’Aguesseau’s complete works published in 1822 has an introductory essay by M. Pardessus, professor at the Faculté de droit in Paris. Pardessus argues that d’Aguesseau ‘was a Christian with the submission of Pascal, the conviction of Bossuet, and the piety of Fénélon.’55 His description 50 Tocqueville, Memoirs, letters, and remains, vol. 1, p. 15. 51 Royer-Collard’s reform was overturned by the edict of 6 September-1 December 1822 and was motivated by the desire to purge liberals; Ventre-Denis, ‘La faculté de droit de Paris’; Liard, L’enseignement supérìeur en France, II, 125-170. 52 All of the nineteenth-century monographs emphasize the Jansenist nature of RoyerCollard’s upbringing: Barante, La vie politique de M. Royer-Collard, I, 5; Rémusat, Critiques et études littéraires, pp. 363-407; Rémusat, Mémoires de ma vie, II, 27; Spuller, Royer-Collard; Vintain, La vie publique de Royer-Collard. Royer-Collard even asks Tocqueville to continue this legacy of constitutional opposition: Royer-Collard to Tocqueville, 21 July 1838; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XI, 65. 53 Villemain, Cours de littérature française, p. 3. 54 Ibid., 82. See also Villemain’s Mélanges and Nouveau mélanges. 55 Pardessus, ‘Discours sur les ouvrages du Chancelier d’Aguesseau,’ in d’Aguesseau, œuvres complètes, ed. Pardessus, I, p. liv. Pardessus describes d’Aguesseau’s method this way. The first laws, a kind of ‘original justice,’ are given from the hands of God to ‘all nations.’ They are ‘anterior’ to the positive laws of peoples, as well as ‘invariable’ and ‘eternal.’ The second kinds of laws – like Pascal’s second nature – are of two kinds: necessary and arbitrary. D’Aguesseau seek to show how these two kinds of law are ‘born together, the one and the other’ so that they ‘mutually support one another’ (p. liij).

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of d’Aguesseau’s virtues reads exactly like Lucien Goldmann’s definition of the Jansenist ‘spirit,’ themes which are repeated in the essays themselves. Pardessus argues that d’Aguesseau ‘did not separate the rights of princes from the rights of citizens’;56 that he had a ‘love of truth,’ an ‘august simplicity,’ and that having come from ‘the society of Racine and Boileau […] the less he searched for honors, the more he found them.’57 D’Aguesseau’s essay ‘On the Love of State’ uses this same language to describe the virtues of the wise magistrate: an ‘august character,’ a ‘noble simplicity,’ and a ‘profound tranquility.’58 In the essay on the love of state, d’Aguesseau uses Pascal’s theory of the passions and describes the virtues of the magistrate by appealing to the Jansenist concepts of virtue and Providence. The essay is a simple contrast between the ‘ambitious’ and the ‘wise’ magistrate, and structured by contrasts like inquietude/tranquility, self-love/love of the state, and agitation/ rest.59 While the ambitious magistrate shamefully displays his status and seeks more honors, the wise magistrate ‘hides himself [se cache] for a long time in order to build the solid foundations of a durable building.’ Much of d’Aguesseau’s essay could appear in Pascal’s Pensées or Malesherbes’ Pensées et maximes. Even d’Aguesseau’s legal method draws on Jean Domat’s way of ordering the laws according to their source, divine or human. The ‘Notice historique’ to the 1828 edition of the Traité des lois cites a letter from d’Aguesseau to his son. D’Aguesseau writes: Nobody has better understood the true source of legislation. He takes his principles to their ultimate consequences; he develops them in a method that is almost geometrical; all the different species of laws are detailed with the characteristics that distinguish them. It is the best portrait of civil society that has ever appeared.60

Jean Domat was, as Tocqueville said later in life, ‘a friend of Pascal’ and ‘one of the greatest jurisconsultes of the seventeenth century.’61 It does not seem that Tocqueville read Domat’s Traité des lois until later in life, but as early as 1829 he made a marginal note to himself to ‘see Domat.’62 Jean Domat 56 57 58 59 60 61 62

Ibid., li. Ibid., xx-xxi. Aguesseau, ‘L’Amour de son État,’ in œuvres complètes, ed. Pardessus, I, 51-52. Ibid., 47-59. Remy, ‘Notice historique,’ p. xv. Tocqueville to M. Corcelle, 1 January 1853; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XV.2, 72. Tocqueville, ‘Le Sr Vervin Contra Rivales de la Salle’; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XVI, 74.

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was a moderate Jansenist with strong Thomistic tendencies.63 Domat spent time at Port-Royal as a solitaire, and Pascal posthumously bequeathed to Domat many of his papers. Through the short work Traité de lois Domat uses all the Jansenist tools available to reconcile Roman law with Christian and human law. He describes Roman law as a ‘wilderness’ of ‘barbaric law’ that ‘wounds humanity greatly.’64 Domat cites equally the code of Justinian and the Bible in order to reconcile the ‘two types of law: the one immutable, the other arbitrary.’65 Domat’s criticism of the Roman jurists is that they did not have access to the fundamental truth given by the Christian religion: the theory of the two states of man’s nature. The Romans failed to understand that men are in their first nature good, and that it is sin that caused their fall.66 Domat’s method builds from Pascal’s theory of the two natures of man to develop a hierarchy of laws: the one divine, natural, and based on men’s primary nature of goodness; the other human, artificial, and based on men’s second nature of civil society and politics. He too seeks to turn self-love against itself and to make pride a kind of antidote to the ‘poison that should be so contrary to the love of others […] God has created a remedy from amour-propre itself, which acts as a substitute.’ It is this method that is so influential for eighteenth-century lawyers like Montesquieu, whose focus on reconciling laws of different ‘orders’ is frequently underappreciated.67 The ideas and practices of Jansenism were by no means absent from, but rather remained a central part of, the profession of the law during the Restoration period. In d’Aguesseau’s description of the wise magistrate, and in Pardessus’s description of d’Aguesseau, the similarity of the ethic of the lawyer with the spirit of Jansenism can still be seen. When the Faculté de droit was first repressed in 1820, Pardessus published a speech saying that, ‘among the noble and brilliant qualities that distinguish the French from other peoples […] is the love they have for their king, above all for

63 Domat argues that to understand the law ‘you must understand the end of man’ and that this is simply ‘why he was made’; Traité des lois, p. 3. 64 Ibid., 1. 65 Ibid., 36. 66 Domat is stunned at ‘strange contrariety of enlightenment and ignorance [lumières et ténèbres] in the most enlightened pagan philosophers […] the first elements of the Christian religion explain this enigma: the religion that has taught us the real state of man also helps us understand this blindness, and even shows us the first principle that God established as the foundation of the order of human society, and which are the source of all the rules of justice and equity’; Ibid., 2. 67 Goyard-Fabre, Montesquieu, pp. 70-80; Waddicor, Montesquieu and the Philosophy of Natural Law, pp. 6, 53; Merry, Montesquieu’s System of Natural Government, p. 295.

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the unfortunate ones.’68 Royer-Collard retired from politics in 1830, but after Democracy in America I was published he helped Tocqueville win the Montyon Prize.69 There is no evidence that speaks to what Tocqueville thought about the Faculté de droit before it was reformed, but his fear of being turned into a ‘machine at law’ certainly lends credence to the notion that he disapproved of the new curriculum.70 This study of the political culture of the Faculté du droit can be complemented by a look at Tocqueville’s times as juge auditeur at Versailles, especially the friendships he made there with Beaumont and Bouchitté. In the Versailles society Tocqueville frequented before the fall of the Restoration, his choices as a young man are perhaps more telling than even the books in the family library. The most studied of Tocqueville’s friends is Gustave de Beaumont. The two worked together as juge auditeurs, shared similar aristocratic and professional backgrounds, and traveled together to America, England, and Algeria. They were allies in the Chambre des députés during the July Monarchy, and remained lifelong friends. Beaumont married the granddaughter of La Fayette, and the two worked very closely together in the center-left of the lower chamber during the July Monarchy. Tocqueville’s intellectual collaboration with Beaumont and their trip to the United States to study American penal institutions demonstrate that the language of Jansenism was spoken between those two at times as well. In the Du système pénitentiaire, for example, Tocqueville and Beaumont consider the improvement of society as the enactment of public charity and projects of social reform.71 Between Tocqueville and Beaumont, they won the Montyon Prize four times, including for both of their books on America.72 Democracy in America and Marie, ou, L’esclavage aux États-Unis, were meant to be complimentary works. In Marie, the language of head and heart is used frequently to express the psychic tensions of characters that cannot reconcile the demands of society with their own wants, themes connected to Tocqueville’s chapter ‘The Future of the Three Races of the United States.’ While Tocqueville’s book on America deals almost exclusively with those who are on the inside of the political community, Beaumont’s 68 Pardessus, ‘Discours prononcé par M. Pardessus, à l’Ecole dé Droit de Paris , le 17 février 1820’ in Le Conservateur (1820), p. 390. 69 Tocqueville, Memoirs, Letters, and Remains, I, 41. 70 Tocqueville to Kergolay, 23 July 1827; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XIII.1, 108. 71 Drolet, Tocqueville, Democracy and Social Reform; Drescher, Tocqueville and Beaumont on Social Reform. 72 Goyau, ‘L’Académie et la charité’; Morin, Montyon, II, 72.

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Marie treats the limits of political community in the United States through the dramatization of an interracial romance. Beaumont even included an appendix filled with statistics about the plight of non-whites in America, a method seemingly geared at uniting the knowledge of the heart to that of the head. Although Beaumont’s life and works shows a small Jansenist influence, more important is his republicanism. In the international sphere, Beaumont pushed for republican self-determination for Catholic countries like Ireland and Poland, and domestically tended to be a bit stronger and more strident in pushing for republican reforms in France. At Versailles Tocqueville also became friends with Louis de Bouchitté. Bouchitté was a Catholic philosopher, professor, and legitimist who, later in life, spent time researching and recovering relics associated with PortRoyal.73 In 1821 he wrote the Réfutation de la doctrine exposée par M. l’abbé de la Mennais. Bouchitté also read Democracy in America I four times before it was published.74 Bouchitté is not only a testament to the cultural and intellectual endurance of Jansenism, but also to the innovative quality of Restoration political culture. Tocqueville helped get Bouchitté nominated to the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, and gave his inauguration speech.75 Alexis de Tocqueville’s professional life as a lawyer and the friends he made in Versailles, give further evidence of the presence of Jansenist ideas in the political culture of the law in Restoration France. For Tocqueville, Bouchitté, and Beaumont, the ideas and practices of Jansenism were a cultural heritage from which they could freely draw religious and political lessons. Bouchitté is certainly the most Jansenist of Tocqueville’s friends, but Beaumont’s life and works show him drawing from this Jansenist tradition in certain ways as well.

Jansenist Themes in Tocqueville’s Life and Letters Tocqueville’s mature life as a man of letters and politics can be used as another snapshot into the presence and of Jansenism in his life and works. 73 Bouchitté, ‘Notice sur la vie et les ouvrages de Philippe de Champagne’; Notice sur quelques objets; Histoire des preuves de l’existence de Dieu. 74 Tocqueville to Bouchitté, 15 January 1835; cited in Jaume, Tocqueville, p. 285. 75 Tocqueville, œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XVI, 310. In 1849 Bouchitté wrote a letter to Salvandy, the legitimist and former Minister of Public Education, asking for a job and explaining that the February Revolution had been difficult for him; Bibliothèque Richelieu, N.a.f. 15676, fol. 214-215.

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A brief look at the letters of Tocqueville as a man of letters and politics show that the same tendencies and tensions existed as in his early childhood and legal career. One of Tocqueville’s least studied friends is Victor-Ambroise de Lanjuinais. Lanjuinais was a steady parliamentary ally in the July Monarchy who worked on the paper Le Commerce and in the Barrot Ministry. Lanjuinais was a genuine friend to Tocqueville, but much of their correspondence has been lost.76 Nonetheless, his father, Jean-Denis Lanjuinais, had been a lawyer before the Revolution and through the Revolution had developed a close friendship with the abbé Grégoire, working with him in a variety of projects, from the Société de philosophie chrétien to the Constitutional Church. In 1832 Victor-Ambroise published a brief memoir of his father’s life, in which he felt the need to respond directly to the question of whether or not his father was a ‘Jansenist.’77 Victor-Ambroise sums up his father’s life as an ‘immobility of principle’ and ‘unbreakable courage’ in the face of ‘revolutionary storms.’78 He blames the ‘Ultramontanes’ and the ‘temporal interests of the high clergy’ for the failure of the constitutional revolution, and approvingly cites his father’s speech at the Convention in defense of the Louis XVI.79 Victor-Ambrose’s final answer to the question is that if one takes Jansenism as a theory of grace then his father was not a Jansenist; but, if one means an ‘adversary of Jesuits, an admirer of Port-Royal,’ then the answer is yes. ‘The extent of his Jansenism’ is found, Victor-Ambroise writes, ‘in all of their science and their virtues.’80 Adolphe de Circourt was perhaps one of the most vocal Gallicans amongst Tocqueville’s correspondents. Circourt was often highly vocal in 76 AT 3501. In the third letter, Lanjuinais consoles Mary Mottley: ‘Everything that is good in life is fleeting and disappoints, everything that is bad remains in perpetuity.’ 77 He voted against the execution of the king at the Convention, fled during the terror, and was appointed to the Chamber of Peers by Louis XVIII. Through the Académie française he worked with Antoine-Issac Silvestre de Sacy, of more Jansenist heritage by family and father of Samuel Ustazade Silvestre de Sacy, who was a prominent journalist in the July Monarchy. During the Restoration, Jean-Denis Lanjuinais worked consistently in the opposition and even wrote for the Chronique religieuse; see Clément, Aux sources du libéralisme française. 78 Lanjuinais, ‘Notice sur la vie et les ouvrages du comte Lanjuinais,’ was written as an introduction to his father’s Œuvres; ed. Dacier, I, 87-104. He argues that his father viewed religion from ‘the point of view of religious liberalism,’ because ‘he understood the political utility of religion as an instrument of moral education, but not at all as a lever of material power.’ 79 Ibid., 67. 80 Eugène Mourier also pronounced a eulogy (‘Discours prononcé’) after the death of Jean-Denis Lanjuinais. He treats Jean-Denis Lanjuinais’s ‘Jansenism’ the same way as does Victor-Ambrose and argues that Jean-Denis agreed with ‘Saint Paul’ because ‘Every pope is nothing but a man and is subject to error.’

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criticism of the pope, wrote a work on the history of the temporal power of the pope, and is full of loathing for Ultra Catholicism. 81 Circourt was absolutely opposed to the l’Univers (the Ultra paper), and went as far as to say that ‘everything for them is that the pope governs the priest, and the priest directs the faithful; the successors of the apostles pass little by little into a state of stupefaction.’82 To defend the Gallican Church, Circourt argues: ‘We have in France […] the Gallican Church which gives a fulcrum against clerical superstition, a middle point between intellectual liberty, which we only know how to abuse, and servitude which we cannot support for long.’83 Alexis de Tocqueville’s letters and notes also contain several tantalizing – but difficult to classify – comments relating to Jansenism itself or Jansenist authors. In the œuvres complètes, there are notes Tocqueville took on Pascal and Royer-Collard.84 In a letter to Corcelle, he comments on a series of articles by Louis de Carné on Jansenism: I only find that he was not truly fair to the Jansenists; I mean to speak of the fathers of the doctrine, and not of their lineage. I think these latter, without realizing it, came terribly close to the type of fatalism found in antiquity or in the predestination of Islam. One cannot deny that most of the great men of their time were on their side; or that many of them were not truly great men; or that the highest virtues of the time, the most manly, the most constant, and the most proud were not found amongst them.85

The only other mention of Jansenism in Tocqueville’s letters was in a letter to Arthur de Gobineau, in which Tocqueville describes Gobineau’s racial theory in terms of the ‘predestination of St. Augustine, the Jansenists and the Calvinists (it is these last you resemble most by the absoluteness of the doctrine).’86 It is important to note the implication here that Calvinist predestination is more absolute and therefore different from that of the Jansenists or St. Augustine himself. Evidence from later in life shows that these Jansenist themes continued to resonate with Tocqueville: 81 There are two essays on religious subjects; see Bibliothèque Richelieu, N.a.f. 20501. 82 Circourt to Tocqueville, 10 April 1859; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XVIII, 548. 83 Circourt to Tocqueville, 8 June 1854; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XVIII, 177. 84 For notes on Pascal, see œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XVI, 551-554; on Royer-Collard, œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XI, 97-104. 85 Tocqueville to M. Corcelle, 20 December 1856; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XV.2, 192. 86 Tocqueville to Gobineau, 17 November 1853; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XI, 202.

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I will have to take care to make sure I do not sit on the side of Father Pasquier at the Academy. It is not only that I look at what is happening in Rome with apprehension, I tell you. I know that the opinion that has been rendered obligatory is very ancient and respectable. But to impose this belief in a holy mystery today, at the end of 2,000 years, seems to me a bit bold. I insist for a true council, a General Council even, outside of which I would think it impossible to introduce such a novelty in the Church. I call novelty the obligation to believe in a mystery, which, up to the present, you did not have to hold in order to remain Catholic. I know very well that at this moment religious authorities – like political authorities – that there will be little serious opposition on anything, no matter what they do. It is not of the present that one should think, but of the future because there will be a reaction sooner or later.87 I had a great joy of the spirit and a kind of delectation of the soul [ jouissance de l’esprit et délitation de l’âme] when I read for the first time […] a book by Domat called the Traité des lois. Domat was a friend of Pascal and the most eminent jurist that has ever existed in France. In the first chapter of this book, Domat envisions civil law in all of their relations, their source and their end. He demonstrates that they are all founded in divine laws indicated by reason and revelation, and that they all work towards the ends that God gave to man. Nothing is greater or simpler than this, despite the immense variety of the subject, than this general view that only Christianity can provide.88

This first letter comes after Tocqueville’s own personal disappointments with Pius IX during the Rome Affair, but it is a clear defense of the right for Church councils to consent to doctrine. It could be found in some Gallican circles, but it would be a requirement for any Jansenist. The second of these quotes, however, indicates Tocqueville understood very well the Jansenist structure of legal ideas. The language he uses of ‘joyfulness of spirit’ and ‘delectation of the soul’ points towards his own use of Pascal’s theory of the passions and this ‘general view that only Christianity can provide.’ While I take these religious preferences as further evidence of Tocqueville’s use of Jansenist ideas, they in no way give evidence that Tocqueville himself was a fervent Catholic. The one thing we can be certain of is that he had many doubts about the vast majority of Catholic dogma but 87 Tocqueville to M. Corcelle, 28 December 1854; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XV.2, 128. 88 Tocqueville to Mme. Corcelle, 1 January 1853; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XV.2, 72.

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did seem to maintain a minimal amount of a kind of deistic optimism.89 In a letter from late in life to the Ultra Mme. Swetchine, Tocqueville described his loss of faith and crisis of doubt when he read through his father’s library of eighteenth-century philosophes for the f irst time.90 I do not wish to trivialize this episode, but Tocqueville tends to recount it to persons with strong religious interests.91 To Charles Stöffels, for example, he dismisses ‘metaphysics’ as a ‘voluntary torment man commits on himself,’ yet after revisiting these themes in a letter to Bouchitté, he argues that religion is based on: simple ideas, which indeed all men have more or less grasped. These ideas lead easily to belief in a first cause […] in fixed laws revealed by the physical world and which must be supposed also in the moral world; in the Providence of God, and consequently in his justice; and in man’s responsibility for his actions, since he is permitted to know good and evil; and thus a future life.92

Two quotes from Tocqueville later in life are helpful to illustrate the utility of Jansenist ideas, even in the mid-nineteenth century. In the debates over the freedom of education in 1844, Tocqueville pronounced this in the Chamber of Deputies: And amongst all the forms that one could consider Catholicism you choose the one where authority is the most absolute, the most arbitrary, and this is the belief you want to impose? When you have the good luck to find, already introduced into France, a type of representative doctrine in the matter of religion, one that respects certain constitutional limits, if 89 This is the opinion of all three of his major biographers. 90 Tocqueville to Mme. Swetchine, 10 September 1856; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XV.2, 292. To Mme. Swetchine he tended to turn religious questions into political ones: he argued that priests should not support particular governments, but should just preach to believers that they should ‘take a part in one of the greatest associations that God has established to make visible and sensible the relations which should attaches individuals to one another, association we call the people and which the county calls “la Patrie.”’ 91 Tocqueville to Mme. Swetchine, 26 February 1857; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XV.2, 315. 92 Tocqueville to Charles Stöffels, 22 October 1831; Lettres choisis, souvenirs, p. 240. Tocqueville to Bouchitté, 8 January 1858; œuvres complètes, ed. Beaumont. VII, 477: ‘Life is not an excellent or terrible thing but, pardon the expression, a mediocre thing that contains elements of both. There must not hope or fear for too much, but must try to see it as it is, without enthusiasm or distaste. We must see it like an inevitable fact that we have not made, but one which we will never cease from trying to make bearable.’

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one can say it, on papal authority. And you renounce this form of French Catholicism so conforming to the actual spirit and institutions of France in order to throw yourself violently into doctrines and principals so foreign to our history and our mores that even the old regime itself did not want them.93

The ‘most absolute, the most arbitrary’ form of Catholicism that Tocqueville rejects here are the Ultra theories of someone like Maistre or Montalembert. But when Tocqueville defends Gallicanism, he is defending a particular vision of the Gallican Church. This vision shares much more in common with the Jansenism of someone like d’Aguesseau or Grégoire, than the kind of national Gallicanism of Louis XIV. Consider Tocqueville’s summary ‘The Gallican Church, and the Freedoms of this Church’: It is the claim of the Church of France to hold onto the practices that she has always followed, and to prevent introducing innovations of the pontifical power. We understand that there is nothing more obscure and at the same time less limited than such a subject. What are the ancient usages (a)? How do you contest them? By who? It was simply a formula by which they did not have to blindly obey the pope and a base of resistance which, according to the time and disposition, the clergy sometimes defended themselves, often the parlements. If we look to create a body out of that which one names the liberties of the Gallican Church, we arrive at three points: 1) Popes have no power over the temporal; 2) Equally, the spiritual power of the popes is limited by the ancient canons and usages of the Church of France; 3) In order to ensure the execution of its principles, the examination of Papal Bulls by political power, the appel comme d’abus was the means. Therefore the Church of France was independent in part of the Vatican, and partially placed itself under the secular power. This was a Church semi-nationalized. No principle was taken to its conclusion. It was an illogical compromise, like all compromises, but necessary between the claims of the two powers.

93 Tocqueville, ‘Séance de la Chambre des Pairs,’ 7 March 1844; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, III.2, 603-606.

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The antigallicans claim, not without truth, that the Concordat of 1801 was a violation of everything that one would call the liberties of the Gallican Church and that these liberties no longer exist. a) In general they are founded, say Henrion, on the most ancient church laws, which have been her rule since the first centuries of her existence. We see the utility of holding her to these rules written at a time when the pope was weak and the independence of the Church very big. Henrion, Manuel de droit ecclésiastique, Paris, 183594

It is in the matrix of debates over the Gallican Church that the ideas of Jansenism held the most utility for Alexis de Tocqueville. Consider the two passages together: in the first, Tocqueville emphasizes the ‘type of representative doctrine in the matter of religion […] so conforming to the mores and institutions of France,’ while in the second he demonstrates that this doctrine is founded on the most ‘ancient church laws […] we see the utility of holding her to these rules written at a time when the pope was weak and the independence of the Church very big.’

Conclusion: Jansenism in the Life and Works of Alexis de Tocqueville The avenue of study I have pursued so far has been focused on the continuities of Jansenist ideas and practices, and their presence in the various social settings Tocqueville moved through. Although this approach has been somewhat scattershot, I did so purposefully as my goal was to draw the contours of the general political culture of Tocqueville’s family and the Restoration. Jansenism was present in both. Hervé wrote in his notes on the rough draft of Democracy in America that Tocqueville could not deny that ‘the ecclesiastical hierarchy of Catholics is much more an image of monarchical government than of republic institutions. Not a word of the prayer must be omitted.’95 The family library shows the truly expansive influence of a classical education. This includes the ancients and the great philosophes, but also has an incredibly strong Catholic orientation that I summed up as a combination of Bossuet, Massillon, and d’Aguesseau. While the Faculté de droit was repressed the year before Tocqueville entered, 94 Tocqueville, ‘Église gallicane. Libertés de cette église’; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, III.2, 601-602. 95 DA I (Critical Edition), 470.

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when he was appointed juge auditeur in Versailles the two friends he made there had important connections to this Jansenist-republican tradition. Jansenism was not hegemonic in these contexts but was present in dialogue and tension with other political traditions. It is certain that Tocqueville admired certain Jansenists. It is equally certain that he was no card-carrying Jansenist. The fact that Jansenist themes come out most clearly when he argues with Ultras like his brother Edouard and Mme. Swetchine also suggests that he may have felt something of a personal affinity with their view of religion, even though he had many doubts about dogma in general.96 Jansenist-tinged statements on the obscurity and mystery of the human heart are frequently reprised in his personal letters.97 Tocqueville wrote to his friend Eugene Stöffels: ‘There are two men in everyone [… a] confused mix of good and bad.’98 The way he describes the afterlife, his preference for Church councils, and his repetition of Jansenist themes of the hiding of self-love and the two natures of man also give reason to think that many Jansenist themes resonated with his own worldview. The extent to which Tocqueville partakes in the Jansenist spirit cannot be exactly determined, although the rough contours are evident. Despite some very strong Jansenist themes in his personal letters – Lucien Jaume comments simply ‘judgment en clair-obscur!’ – the evidence clearly shows that Tocqueville cannot be thought of as a Jansenist saint.99 To the extent Tocqueville has a kind of Jansenist affinity, it is towards the political Jansenism of the lawyers, or of Pascal’s material world. In comparison to the seven elements of my definition of Jansenism, Tocqueville can be said to embrace several, modify others, and reject some. In the next chapter I demonstrate that he uses a modified version of the Jansenist concept of Providence in the ‘Author’s Introduction’ to Democracy in America I. This is just a start. There are also elements of Jansenism that he rejects: perhaps most significantly, 96 Tocqueville to Eugene Stöffels, 13 September 1832; œuvres complètes, ed. Beaumont, V, 421. Writing about himself, Tocqueville says: ‘This is why, in truth, I doubt. My reason tells me that it should suffer from the human heart and my passions deny it […] I feel as tormented as before by an inexplicable restlessness of heart.’ 97 Tocqueville to Rosambo, 13 March 1839; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XIV, 207-208. ‘You know, my dear uncle, how evil passions frequently mix in our hearts with the good, and take them as a mask in order to make us follow them. It is possible that God – who sees into the very bottom of our hearts – knows that ambition is the hidden secret which prompts me to action. I say all of this with sincerity […] in my soul and conscience […]. The first obligation of a man, humanly and religiously speaking, has always seemed to me to be turned towards his country.’ 98 Tocqueville to Eugene Stöffels, 3 January 1843; œuvres complètes, ed. Beaumont, V, 447. 99 Jaume, Tocqueville, p. 257.

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he rejects the traditional defense of the divided sovereignty, but equally important is the fact he never underwent a second conversion. Tocqueville’s notion of virtue as constancy, moderation, and enlightened self-love also shows the marks of this Jansenist influence, but many other elements of Jansenist ideology – such as the theory of figures – do not play an important role in his political thought. The influence of Pascal is paramount, but the manner of study that I have pursued here emphasizes the connections of Jansenism to other traditions of political thought. There is every reason to believe, therefore, that Tocqueville drew freely from this Jansenist tradition without feeling the need to identify with a religious agenda.

3 Providence Jansenist Rhetoric in the Author’s Introduction to Democracy in America Men connect the greatness of their idea of unity with means, God with ends: hence this idea of greatness, as men conceive it, leads us into infinite littleness. To compel all men to follow the same course towards the same object is a human notion – to introduce infinite variety of action, but so combined that all these acts lead by a multitude of different courses to the accomplishment of one great design, is a conception of the Deity. The human idea of unity is almost always barren; that of the divine idea is fecund. Men think they manifest their greatness by simplifying the means, but it is the purpose of God which is simple – his means are infinitely varied.1

The reading of the political culture of Tocqueville’s family, the legal profession, and his personal letters in the last chapter show clearly that he was exposed to the Jansenist tradition. As I have suggested, this tradition was not a hegemonic cultural influence, but was just one part of a spectrum of influences that also includes the Ultra theories of Maistre and the Gallicanism of Bossuet.2 Having demonstrated the existence of multiple traditions in the key social spaces Tocqueville moved through, we can look at his use of concepts contextually within the political culture of the July Monarchy. This analysis will bring to the fore when and why Tocqueville uses the Jansenist tradition to buttress his modern republicanism. An analysis that puts Tocqueville in relation to Gallican and Ultramontane visions of Providence makes clear that Tocqueville’s use of Providence in the ‘Author’s Introduction’ to Democracy in America is best traced to the Jansenist tradition. There is a small literature on the concept of Providence in Tocqueville’s works. Scholars agree that Tocqueville’s targets were Ultramontane political theorists such as Joseph de Maistre, and that Bossuet’s Discours sur l’histoire universelle (1679) was his main intellectual source. 1 DA II, 921. 2 This chapter was initially published in The Tocqueville Review/La revue Tocqueville as ‘Tocqueville’s Politics of Providence: Pascal, Jansenism and the Author’s Introduction to Democracy in America.’

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Given Bossuet’s Gallicanism, his continued popularity in the nineteenth century, and the fact that he is today remembered as ‘the theologian of Providence,’ it is not surprising that scholars look to him as a model.3 Lucien Jaume highlights a particularly strong paraphrase of Bossuet’s Histoire universelle in Tocqueville’s The Old Regime and the Revolution.4 In an article that looks at questions of Tocqueville’s personal faith and the role of Providence in Democracy in America, Jean-Louis Benoît also argues for the influence of Bossuet but is careful to distance Tocqueville from Bossuet’s particular historical vision. ‘The admiration that [Tocqueville] had for Bossuet does not indicate complete agreement with his vision of history, any more than Tocqueville’s admiration for Pascal permitted him to find faith,’ Benoît writes, ‘even as Tocqueville performed the practices of faith.’5 Benoît’s allusion is to Pascal’s Wager and Tocqueville’s lack of faith: behave ‘just as if you believed, taking holy water, having masses said, etc.,’ Pascal argues, so that the practices of religion may ‘incline your heart.’6 Neither Jaume nor Benoît consider the possibility that Tocqueville could have also used Providence in a Jansenist manner. This is puzzling, as both authors have insisted on Jansenist influences in other parts of his life and works.7 The notes from Democracy in America show that Tocqueville used Bossuet and Jean-Baptiste Massillon, an Oratorian banished from the court of Louis XIV for suspected Jansenist sympathies.8 Since the seventeenth century, the central question in French debates on Providence was whether God acted through a providence particulière or a providence générale; questions of God’s role in history were also connected to political orientations, often rather explicitly.9 Some, such as Bossuet or Joseph de Maistre, defended providence particulière and argued for the direct intervention of God through determining the winners of battles, giving courage and strength, and moving the passions of men. They connected this vision of Providence to the divine nature of kingship and the political obedience of subjects. Others, such as Nicolas Malebranche and 3 New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. Jacques-Benigne Bossuet [accessed 5 December 2014]. 4 Jaume, Tocqueville, pp. 387-388. 5 Benoît, ‘Foi, providence et religion chez Tocqueville,’ p. 217. 6 Pascal, Pensées, trans. Krailsheimer, pp. 125, 248. 7 Jaume, Tocqueville, pp. 212-262; Benoît, Tocqueville moraliste. 8 The extent of Massillon’s Jansenism is uncertain, but Oratorians were often Jansenists. See Tocqueville’s notes on Massillon: DA II (Critical Edition), 723. 9 Riley, ‘Introduction.’

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René Descartes, argued for versions of providence générale, in which God was understood to act in history only through general causes, such as the laws of physics. Jansenists argued for both: they used St. Thomas to help make sense of providence générale in the form of the laws of nature and the moral laws of men, while also leaving space for God to intervene directly in history. By arguing that God usually acted through a providence générale, Jansenists were able to open up space for political resistance and the demonstration of virtue by political actors. In contrast to Bossuet and Maistre’s connection of God’s particular providence to the divine status of kings, there are two arguments Tocqueville makes in the ‘Author’s Introduction’ that can be traced to the Jansenist tradition. The f irst is how Tocqueville’s rhetoric moves from secular to religious history in order to identify divine will. Using Pascal to reconcile the knowledge of reason and sense with that of religion, Tocqueville begins with secular history to show that the progress of equality is universal and inevitable before he argues it is ‘a providential fact.’10 The second is Tocqueville’s Jansenist moral strategy of at once reconciling the French to the progress of equality and prompting them to act within the structure of political opportunity made available by Providence. This moral strategy is the central feature of the Jansenist notion of Providence, and Tocqueville even uses the verb s’accommoder (to reconcile oneself), a Jansenist favorite.11 This chapter moves in four steps. First, I revisit and extend the basic theoretical structure of the Jansenist idea of Providence. Second, I demonstrate that Bossuet’s political theory was an important intellectual resource for nineteenth-century Gallicans and Ultramontanes. Both sections have a special focus on how religious knowledge is connected to political action. Third, I use this intellectual history to inform a new reading of the role of Providence in Tocqueville’s œuvre. The interpretation offered here does not suggest we should simply replace Bossuet with Pascal but, rather, that we need to add this Jansenist perspective in order to make sense of the full range of meanings with which Tocqueville’s uses the category of Providence. I conclude with some considerations on the limits of Tocqueville’s Jansenism and a look at what Tocqueville’s search for a modern republicanism causes him to put these Jansenist arguments to new use.

10 DA I (Gallimard), 41. 11 DA I (Gallimard), 42.

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Jansenism and Providence: Secular History, Religious Knowledge, and the Imperative to Struggle for the Good in the Space Provided by Providence I have already demonstrated that Providence is a central Jansenist category, linked to both the conception of virtue and of the hidden God. The idea of the hidden God means that when reading history as Providence, Jansenists posit God as the ultimate cause of all events (partially revealed), yet his ultimate purposes usually – but not always – remain hidden to the believer and political actor (partially hidden). Given the state of the believer’s knowledge of God’s will, the Jansenists used Providence first to reconcile the believer to the passing of events, and then to prompt the believer to act in the space of political opportunity provided by Providence. Jansenists frequently used the verb s’accommoder to describe how all events bear the mark of God’s will, and how it is the believer’s duty to accept the passing of human events, but then to act for the good in the space of political opportunity provided.12 The need for the believer to demonstrate virtue in the face of uncertain circumstances is found in a particularly clear form in an essay titled ‘On the Authority of the Magistrate, and his Submission to the Authority of the Law,’ by Chancellor d’Aguesseau. D’Aguesseau’s essay begins with the problem of uncertainty: Providence sometimes permits through obscure causes for there to be born a kind of war between the ministers of justice, in which all the issues seems equally split. When this happens we see virtue contest against virtue, doctrine against doctrine, experience against experience, and in these cases human pride is obliged to recognize the humiliating incertitude of human judgments.13

In the face of this uncertainty, d’Aguesseau advises the magistrate not to be afraid of doubt, but instead to compare the ‘two routes that open up to our eyes,’ and to realize that ‘there is always one that pleases us more than another, 12 Goldmann, Le dieu caché, p. 138. Pascal argues that: ‘To have a will opposed to what we have learned from God is a sin. He is visible, it seems to me, when he makes known his will in the passing of events, and it would be a sin to not accommodate ourselves to it. I have learned that in everything that happens there is something admirable because it all bears the marks of his will’; Pensées, fragments et lettres, ed. Faugère, p. 41. 13 Aguesseau, ‘L’autorité du magistrat, et la soumission à l’autorité de la loi,’ in œuvres complètes, ed. Pardessus., I, 137.

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and which attracts us by invisible chains.’ The magistrate ‘of good faith,’ he argues, will achieve the ‘dignified fruit of a lively and perspicacious attention’: A ray of clarity […] will pierce the clouds that trouble the serenity of his soul, a profound calmness succeeds the flood, and the tempest itself pushes him to port […] by a secret charm it allows us to hide from ourselves, without the operation of which our spirit, pulled to one side by a natural sin and held in the other by an equal counterpoise, would stay immobile, and mixed up rather than enlightened by these two opposed points of views […] his light would only be darkness.14

D’Aguesseau’s essay demonstrates the Jansenist strategy of the partially hidden and partially revealed nature of divine will. This ‘ray of clarity’ creates a kind of transparency, and introduces ‘a profound calm’ without which the soul would ‘stay immobile, and mixed up rather than enlightened.’ This light is the movement of grace that guides the political actor through the darkness of uncertainty. What Goldmann describes as both reconciliation to the passing of events and motivation to act in the face of uncertainty – illustrated in d’Aguesseau’s essay – is the first element of the Jansenist notion of Providence. The various works by Phillipe Sellier on Pascal, Port-Royal, and Jansenism give a more complete definition. Sellier demonstrates that to make sense of how the passing of events partially reveal and partially obscure God’s purposes, Jansenists had only to reapply the same theological elements they used to interpret the Bible. Pascal used four rules to interpret the Bible: 1 The dialectic of the clair-obscur means that we are neither completely ignorant nor completely knowledgeable of God’s purposes. 2 The truths of the Church cannot be contradicted. 3 The sciences, which in their domain are certain, cannot be contradicted either. 4 Everything in the scripture that does not point to charity is figure.15 Each of these tools can be easily applied to the study of human history. Pascal’s first rule has already been seen in Goldmann’s description of the partially revealed/partially hidden nature of God’s will (what Sellier here calls the clair-obscur), and in the way this notion of Providence is connected to the Jansenist conception of virtue. I also want to note the third 14 Ibid., 138. 15 Sellier, Pascal et saint Augustin, p. 413.

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rule, because it plays a key role in Tocqueville’s rhetoric in the ‘Author’s Introduction’ to Democracy in America.16 Pascal’s third rule – that religious knowledge or interpretation cannot contradict the ‘certain knowledge of the senses or reason’ – is linked to the theory of orders.17 To the extent that human faculties like reason and sense can discover the physical laws of the universe or the moral laws of men, these faculties uncover important elements of divine will itself. In the Eighteenth Provincial Letter, Pascal uses ‘St. Augustine and St. Thomas’ to argue that when ‘the literal sense is contrary to the certain knowledge of the senses or of reason […] it is necessary that the two truths are reconciled […] one should take for the true interpretation of scripture the one that remains faithful to the senses.’18 Accordingly, the use of these faculties is given a kind of religious justification – a partial uncovering of divine will – and the knowledge gained by these faculties a kind of indirect religious authority. In the Pensées, Pascal argues that ‘each is master in its house but nowhere else,’ and that ‘tyranny consists in the desire to dominate everything regardless of order.’19 Human reason can discover laws of nature, thereby revealing elements of the divine plan. The religious order in Jansenist thought has a strong neo-Platonic focus on the eternal, ideal, and pure, while the material and political are conceived as perpetual flux and inconstancy. Politics – like science – becomes insulated from religious authority while maintaining an indirect religious justification for the use of the human faculties. This is why the Jansenist idea of Providence includes both reconciliation and action, submission and the use of reason. Providence might determine the structure of political opportunity, and to the passing of events the believer must submit. Action within this space, however, is not a matter of Church dogma or doctrine. In this space of free but uncertain action, the believer is called upon to demonstrate merit. It is in this combination of uncertainty and action that Jansenist projects of resistance become conceivable. This strategy of differentiation places politics squarely in the material world, resulting in a ‘demystification’ of political authority.20 16 Pascal’s second and fourth rules are less relevant to Tocqueville because he was not attached to this particular vision of the Church, or to a Jansenist eschatology. Resonances of this vision of the Church can be found in some of his letters, particularly with Mme. Swetchine. See Tocqueville to Mme. Swetchine, 10 September 1856; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XV.2, 292. 17 Sellier, Pascal et saint Augustin, pp. 236-237. 18 Pascal, Les provinciales, ed. Cognet, pp. 375-377. 19 Pascal, Pensées, trans. Krailsheimer, p. 15. 20 Sellier, Port-Royal et la littérature, II, 12.

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The Dual Influence of Bossuet in the Nineteenth Century In many ways the political culture of the Restoration harkened back to the political debates of the old regime, and the reception of Bishop Bossuet in the nineteenth century is no exception. Bossuet was one of the most eminent theologians and men of politics of the late seventeenth century. He served for a short time as confessor to Angelique Arnauld, but his political views inclined him towards a nationalistic Gallicanism favorable to the expansion of Absolutist power. Bossuet was important in the composition and passage of the ‘Four Articles’ in 1682, which both increased the crown’s influence in religious affairs and shielded the Gallican Church from the influence of Rome. During the Restoration Bossuet continued to be remembered as one of the great defenders of the Gallican Church, but his works were also exploited by the active Ultramontane minority in counterrevolutionary political projects. The more one focuses on Bossuet’s Gallicanism and humanism, the more moderate he becomes. His political theory also set the terms for many Ultramontanes because of his defense of royal power connected to the political obedience of subjects.21 The intersection of the Politique tirée de l’Ecriture sainte and the Discours sur l’histoire universelle give the fullest account of the link between Bossuet’s politics and his view of providence particulière. In the Discours sur l’histoire universelle, Bossuet uses Augustinian theological tools to make sense of the ways in which human history is part of God’s plan. Although Bossuet shares some basic Augustinian vocabulary with Jansenists, he does not use their four rules to interpret history or the Bible. To Bossuet, God acts only through ‘long chains of particular causes […which] depend on the secret order of Providence.’22 Some parts of God’s plan are revealed, but they are restricted to biblical prophecy and the rise and fall of governments. ‘He knows how to make them [kingdoms] subservient, in His own good time and order, to the designs He has for His people.’23 Bossuet does not leave space for the incorporation of scientific or historical knowledge into his vision of Providence, nor does he use the notion of the partially revealed and partially hidden God to make sense of how his will unfolds in history. Bossuet does not permit the believer to see any farther into God’s plan than to know the result of those long chains of particular 21 Bossuet is frequently criticized for his justifications of Louis XIV’s persecutions, see Schmittlein, L’aspect politique du différend Bossuet-Fénelon. 22 Bossuet, Discours sur l’histoire universelle, p. 531. 23 Ibid., 434.

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causes. Human faculties like sense and reason cannot find general rules governing how God acts in time. Rather, Bossuet argues that reason unaided by the Holy Scripture leads astray. ‘It is not at all in reasoning that one understands this mystery,’ he argues, but rather through ‘destroying human reasonings.’24 In place of these human reasonings, Bossuet argues that ‘it is necessary to relate everything to Providence.’25 Bossuet’s Politique tirée de l’Ecriture sainte helps to link Bossuet’s ideas on Providence with his politics. It contains an account of the rights and the duties of the prince and defends Absolutist positions on the nature of sovereignty and government. Bossuet defines royal power as sacred, paternal, absolute, and regulated by reason: ‘Kingship has its origin in the divine itself […] by the order of divine Providence the constitution of this kingdom has been, since its foundation, the most conformed to the will of God.’26 Kings have a special status on earth as representatives of the divinity: ‘God establishes Kings as His ministers, and reigns through them over peoples.’27 They partake in the very nature of the divine: ‘Majesty is the image of the greatness of God in a prince.’28 Restoration Ultramontane thinkers were able to draw many lessons on the divine nature of kingship and the absolute nature of sovereignty from Bossuet.29 The most important of these nineteenth-century Ultra thinkers is Joseph de Maistre.30 Like Bossuet, Maistre uses Providence in two ways: to speak of how God acts in history through particular causes, and of how the rise and fall of governments take place under his will. Maistre is innovative, however, in the way he puts these two elements to theoretical use. In the first case he uses history as a foundation for an organic view of society in which tradition becomes a part of God’s revealed will. Second, Maistre connects Providence to divine retribution through his concept of reversibility. Reversibility is the idea that the death of innocents during conflict is the political analog of Christ’s sacrifice: just as the death of Christ was redemptive for humanity, so too is the death of innocents in war and revolution a part of the regenerative process of reestablishing the authority of the state.31 24 Ibid., 357. 25 Ibid., 531. 26 Bossuet, Politique tirée, p. 46. 27 Ibid., 47. 28 Ibid., 135. 29 The list includes de Voisin, Bonald, and Maistre. See Olsen, Royalist Political Thought, pp. 20-30, 99-111; and de Querbeuf, Les principes de Bossuet et Fénelon. 30 Arnold, La providence et le bonheur. 31 Maistre’s description of the ‘executioner’ – as much as it does share something in common with Schmitt’s state of exception – is also meant to be a demonstration of the violence that civilization must use to found itself. Maistre, Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg, pp. 29-36.

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The first element of Maistre’s idea of Providence is his view that the workings of history reveal God’s will through long chains of particular causes, including the organic development of social practices and institutions. In this way, Maistre’s view of Providence underpins his historicism, and the evolution of political institutions partakes in an organic and hierarchical vision of divine order.32 Maistre turns history and tradition into divine ordinance, and the rejection of this history is the rejection of divine will. Like that of Bossuet, Maistre’s idea of Providence is connected to a politics of submission: because men cannot see past the surface of these long chains of events, they are in a sense shut in by history.33 They can neither get outside of their own tradition nor change their government without risking retribution for acting against God’s revealed will. As Maistre wrote: ‘what is, is good.’34 The second element of Maistre’s concept of Providence is divine retribution. He argues that the revolutionary terror was punishment for the sins of the French nation. The immediately political nature of this claim was not lost on nineteenth-century Frenchmen, and as late as 1859 conservatives were still looking to Maistre to argue that ‘Every drop of blood from Louis XVI caused a torrent to flow from the French nation: perhaps as many as four million French paid with their heads for the national crime of an anti-religious and anti-social insurrection, crowned by the regicide.’35 To Maistre the French Revolution was something satanic: the regicide was a consequence of the doomed attempt by prideful philosophes to rise above history and to break free of their past. It was for this reason that the seemingly rational plans of the revolutionaries rarely had the effects they intended, as the events of the Revolution obeyed a higher logic than that of human reason.36 Tocqueville admired the writing styles of Bossuet and Maistre, but not their politics. He spent much of his adult life arguing with Ultras, even as he admitted Maistre was a profound thinker and eloquent writer. Tocqueville would rarely hesitate to criticize Charles X, but he was no less critical of Napoleon or Louis XIV. Indeed, Tocqueville was never as sympathetic to the Gallican Church as one would expect. He had ambiguous feelings about Bossuet for, as he reminded Henry Reeve:

32 Armenteros, ‘Parabolas and the Fate of Nations’; Lebrun, ‘Joseph de Maistre and Rousseau.’ 33 Lafage, Le comte Joseph de Maistre, pp. 70-75, 91-106. 34 Maistre, De la souveraineté du peuple, ed. Darcel, p. 182. 35 Barthelemy, L’esprit du comte Joseph de Maistre, p. 216. 36 Maistre, Considerations on France, trans. Lebrun.

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Do not forget that this same Bossuet, who was so instrumental in the passing of the Four Articles of the Gallican Church, also wrote a book seeking to prove that absolute government was the most conformed to the ways of Providence and that there is no legal resistance to oppose the arbitrariness of kings.37

In contrast to the Jansenist concept of Providence, Bossuet and Maistre connect God’s action through particular causes to political obedience and the special elect status of kings. Although Bossuet is an important intellectual precursor to Ultra political theory, he differed from Maistre on the role of the Catholic Church. Primarily a defender of royal power, Bossuet was a political realist whose support for Absolutism included more space for the crown to make use of the Church politically. Rather than give the crown special rights in Church affairs, Maistre viewed the king as having special obligations to uphold the interests and doctrines of the Church. Indeed, the rightful successor to Bossuet’s politics is Napoleon, while Maistre’s lead directly to the policies of Charles X.

Tocqueville’s Apology for Democracy: Contra Maistre on the Nature of the French Revolution The preceding contrast between a typically Jansenist view of divine Providence with the views of Bossuet and Maistre helps clarify Tocqueville’s rhetorical use of the concept in the ‘Author’s Introduction.’ Tocqueville does not adopt the Jansenist category of Providence unreflectively, but he does invoke a distinctively Jansenist understanding of the complex interaction of divine and human agency in history. This neo-Jansenist view of Providence not only positions him rhetorically against Maistre’s satanic view of the Revolution, but also allows him to try to foster in the reader a genuine appreciation in the reader for democracy’s unique gifts. First, in a masterful use of Pascal’s third rule, Tocqueville appeals to a general law derived from reason and observation and only then, based on the facts of universality and inevitability, does he argue that the progress of equality is divinely ordained. Second, Tocqueville’s rhetorical strategy mirrors the Jansenist formula of reconciling the believer to the structure of political action and prompting him to act for the good in the space provided. Tocqueville attempts to convince the political elites of the July Monarchy 37 Tocqueville to Reeve, 7 November 1836; œuvres complètes, ed. Beaumont, VI, 353.

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that the democratic social state is inevitable and that they have the power, within limits, to shape it for the better: ‘The most powerful, the most intelligent, and the most moral classes of the nation have never attempted to connect themselves with it [democracy] in order to guide it. The people has consequently been abandoned.’38 Tocqueville begins his story in the twelfth century, with a reprise of Guizot’s and Barante’s studies on feudalism.39 What is distinctive in his account is the eminently Pascalian movement from historical to religious argument. When the knowledge gained from Tocqueville’s reading of history is demonstrated to be universal and inevitable, it becomes religiously justified, that is, providentially ordained. In the introduction to Democracy in America, Tocqueville admires the political virtues of the aristocracy but also focuses on the inherent injustice of the feudal order. From inside this feudal order, the first ‘penetration of the principle of equality’ is the entrance of the Church into politics. The Church was the first career open to talents and ‘put the routier above the head of Kings.’40 Once planted, the seed of equality was also nurtured by the social processes of commercial society and the reciprocal provision of needs among men. The progress of equality is not only a direct result of class competition but also the indirect result of what appear on the surface to be unrelated events. It is not the result of a single human choice or a series of choices but is, rather, the cumulative consequence of all of them added together: Some assisted democracy by their talents, others by their vices […]. As soon as land was held on any other than a feudal tenure, and personal property began in its turn to confer influence and power, every improvement which was introduced in commerce or manufacture was a fresh element of the equality of conditions. Henceforward every new discovery, every new want which it engendered, and every new desire which craved satisfaction, was a step towards the universal level. 41

All men therefore share responsibility for the progress of equality. Kings were ‘the most constant of levelers,’ but equality was also introduced into the ‘government by the aristocracy itself.’42 38 DA I, 8. 39 Guizot, Histoire de la civilisation en Europe, ed. Rosanvallon; Barante, Histoire des ducs de Bourgogone. 40 DA I, 5. 41 DA I, 5. 42 DA I, 5.

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It is only after this retelling of French history that Tocqueville introduces the notion of Providence. To do so, he first demonstrates that the situation of France is not unique, but is instead part of a general tendency and universal law: Nor is this a phenomenon peculiar to France. Whithersoever we turn our eyes we shall witness the same continual revolution throughout the whole of Christendom. The various occurrences of national existence have everywhere turned to the advantage of democracy; all men have aided it by their exertions […] all have been driven along in the same track, have all labored to one end, some ignorantly and some unwillingly; all have been blind instruments in the hands of God. 43

Tocqueville’s argument here is immediately followed by his appeal to Providence, ‘the progress of equality is therefore a providential fact, because it shares the principle characteristics of Providence: it is universal, it is durable, it constantly eludes all human interference, and all events as well as all men contribute to its progress.’44 The emphasis in this sentence should be on ‘shares the principle characteristics of Providence.’ The progress of equality is an historical analog that shares all the same characteristics as Providence, and once understood in this way it can be given the force of divine will. This argument strongly echoes the Jansenist theory of orders and Pascal’s third rule. Tocqueville’s strategy of identifying this knowledge as secular history is a necessary precondition for him to then reconcile scientific knowledge with religious truth. This reconciliation of religious and rational understandings, however, is put to an innovative political purpose: to reorient the political elites of the July Monarchy to the necessity of a democratic republic. Tocqueville describes the analogical reasoning that helps him reconcile historical and religious argument this way: It is not necessary that God himself should speak in order to disclose to us the unquestionable signs of His will; we can discern them in the habitual course of nature, and in the invariable tendency of events: I know, without a special revelation, that the planets move in the orbits traced by the Creator’s finger. If the men of our time were led by attentive observation and by sincere reflection to acknowledge that the gradual and progressive 43 DA I, 6. 44 DA I, 7.

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development of social equality is at once the past and future of their history, this solitary truth would confer the sacred character of a Divine decree upon the change. 45

In fact, Tocqueville’s attempt to provoke a Pascalian submission to the inevitability of democracy is based on this very appeal to reason, even though he places it in the hypothetical. Tocqueville argues that if men were led by ‘attentive observation’ and ‘sincere reflection’ – the kind that Tocqueville himself had in his journey to America – to acknowledge that the progress of equality is the ‘past and future’ of history, then this ‘solitary truth’ derived solely from reason would have the ‘sacred character of a Divine decree.’ The analogy with physics, here the orbits of the planets, is also a common Jansenist trope. 46 The second way Tocqueville’s argument draws from the Jansenist tradition is in how he structures the ethical choice of the reader in order to reorient him to the new democratic political world. Before even introducing his reading of secular history, Tocqueville presents the reader with a choice. ‘It is evident,’ he argues, ‘that a great democratic revolution is going on amongst us; but there are two opinions as to its nature and consequences’: To some it appears to be a novel accident, which as such may still be checked; to others it seems irresistible, because it is the most uniform, the most ancient, and the most permanent tendency which is to be found in history. 47

The answer to this question, of course, is Tocqueville’s argument that equality is a fait providential (providential fact). Asking this question is the first step towards Tocqueville’s unique use of strategy of submission to the passing of events. The ‘two opinions’ on the ‘nature and consequences’ of the democratic revolution present the reader two possibilities: equality is either a ‘novel accident’ or one of the most ‘irresistible’ and ‘ancient’ impulses in history. As Tocqueville develops this argument, he slowly reveals the moral force of this choice. If the nature of the democratic revolution is accident, then 45 DA I, 7. 46 Tocqueville, Old Regime, 160. ‘It seems as if the French people were like those supposedly elementary particles inside which, the more closely it looks, modern physics keeps finding new particles.’ 47 DA I, 4.

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it is an aberration or deviation from the natural order and as such it might rightly be resisted; but, if the democratic revolution is not at all accidental or novel, and if, in fact, it is not a deviation from but rather an integral part of that order, then it is the desire to reject its progress itself that must be corrected. In the text of the introduction, Tocqueville immediately returns to this question after his defense of the providential nature of equality. To answer the question over the nature of the democratic revolution, he speaks directly to the reader. Can something ‘which dates from so far back […] be checked by the efforts of a generation?’ Will it stop now that it has grown so strong and its adversaries so weak? [...]. The whole book which is here offered to the public has been written under the impression of a kind of religious dread produced in the author’s mind by the contemplation of so irresistible a revolution […]. To attempt to check democracy would be in that case to resist the will of God; and the only choice for nations would be to accommodate themselves to the social state awarded to them by Providence. 48

Tocqueville’s final phrase, which I have translated as ‘the only choice for nations would be to accommodate themselves to the social state awarded to them by Providence,’ uses the French verb s’accommoder.49 In the original manuscript, this paragraph was a single sentence. On the suggestion of Kergolay, Tocqueville expanded it to throw into relief the rhetorical force of his reading of history; namely, that his view that the inevitability of equality obliged men to work with history in order to bring out the beneficial effects of the democratic social state. The thought enclosed in this line is very beautiful and fundamental, but sadly little in style, little used in public, which keeps its feet on the ground […] it should be developed a little bit more. This is the pillar of the argument of your introduction.50

Tocqueville’s use of the verb s’accommoder also carries the idea of being reoriented towards the world; rather than seeking to remove responsibility from the reader, Tocqueville seeks to provoke action. As with Pascal or 48 DA I, 7. 49 DA I (Gallimard), 42. 50 DA I (Critical Edition), 15. Much of the added language itself was suggested by Kergoly.

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d’Aguesseau, the idea of Providence serves to orient individuals to their world and to structure moral choice. ‘The impulse’ pushing nations is ‘so strong that it cannot be stopped, but it is not yet so rapid that it cannot be guided.’51 He turns quickly to a consideration of what actions the political elites of France should take to work for the good within the structure of political opportunity provided by Providence. The fate of men is in their hands, and this liberty imposes a positive duty: The first duty which is at this time imposed upon those who direct our affairs is to educate the democracy; to warm its faith, if that be possible; to purify its morals; to direct its energies […] to adapt its government to time and place, and to modify it in compliance with the occurrences and the actors of the new age.52

Here, the second element of the Jansenist notion of Providence is clearest: Tocqueville’s contemporaries must struggle for the good within the structure of political opportunity provided by Providence. They must work towards the establishment of a democratic republic in France. By reducing the field of possibility, Tocqueville’s providential argument helps the French see their choices more clearly. He does not remove the role of human action from the movement of history, but instead reorients the reader to what can be accomplished within the structure of political opportunity. Tocqueville’s notes to Democracy in America show that, more than the political theory of Maistre, the real target of his argument is the French aristocracy. Tocqueville sees amongst his peers a dangerous tendency to reject democracy and retreat into the ‘isolation’ of private affairs.53 He fears that in the useless struggle against democracy – an ‘accomplished fact that will break all who struggle against it’54 – the aristocracy will be broken and defeated: I know of nothing sadder than the sight of an aristocracy, broken by fortune, that finally lets go […] the nobles, uninterested in everything, reject careers which could restore their fortunes, estrange themselves from pursuits that produce honor and glory, and refuse to enter professions.55 51 52 53 54 55

DA I, 7. DA I, 8. Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts, C.V. c, 57. Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts, C.V. c, 54. Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts, C.V. c, 54, 61.

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Rather than struggle ‘against the current of the century,’ Tocqueville seeks to show how his peers in the aristocracy can ‘without wait or delay, without pride or meanness, find a rapprochement with the people, let go of their memories of the past, and take a place in the present.’56 To bring along the reluctant French aristocracy, Tocqueville complements his argument about the ‘fatal march of democracy’ with a normative defense of what he called the ‘humanity’ of the ‘brilliant side of equality.’57 This consequentialist argument is an essential part of how Tocqueville uses Providence to revalue the French Revolution, turning it from something satanic to something sacred. In the Old Regime, he cites Maistre’s opinion that the Revolution was ‘satanic’ and revisits the central points of his argument from Democracy in America.58 In 1835 he writes as an apologist: The existence of democracy was seemingly unknown, when on a sudden it took possession of the supreme power. Everything was then submitted to its caprices; it was worshipped as the idol of strength; until, when it was enfeebled by its own excesses, the legislator conceived of the rash project of annihilating its power, instead of instructing it and correcting its vices; no attempt was made to fit it to govern, but all were bent on excluding it from the government […]. We have, then, abandoned whatever advantages the old state of things afforded, without receiving any compensation from our present condition.59

France is stuck in the midst of the democratic revolution. The past is no longer an option, but the future is yet a reality. The first political appearance of democracy was something new and powerful, ‘it was worshipped as the idol of strength.’ When it failed as a result of its own excess, the French made the mistake of seeking to ‘annihilate its power’ rather than ‘instructing it and correcting its vices.’ To make this argument in the ‘Author’s Introduction,’ he draws on another element of this Jansenist heritage, this time in style more than substance. Much like the method described by d’Aguesseau (also used by Pascal) in his essay ‘On the Authority of the Magistrate,’ Tocqueville uses a juxtaposition of virtue against virtue as a kind of clash of perspectives meant to foster a love of democracy in the reader. The elements of this juxtaposition are the 56 Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts, C.V. c, 58, 55. 57 Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts, C.V. h III, 27; Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts C.V. k I, 4. 58 Tocqueville, Old Regime, 94; 100-102. 59 DA I, 9.

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royal virtues of the old aristocracy, and the humanitarian consequences of the new democratic order. Tocqueville’s argument is consequentialist: if there be less splendor than in the halls of an aristocracy, the contrast of misery will be less frequent also; the pleasures of enjoyment may be less excessive, but those of comfort will be more general; the sciences may be less perfectly cultivated, but ignorance will be less common; the impetuosity of feeling will be repressed, and the habits of the nation softened: there will be less vices and fewer crimes.60

From this repeated clash of perspectives, Tocqueville seeks to demonstrate not just the inevitability of democracy but its actual superiority. When he came to consider the essential goodness of democracy, he qualifies his judgment. In the notes to the introduction he admits that the democratic social state ‘could be the best state in the eyes of God,’ but ‘As for the question of knowing if such a social state is or is not the best that humanity can have, only God himself can say. Only God can say.’61 In the last iteration of this contrast, Tocqueville personifies these qualities in rival factions of French political elites. By personifying this clash of perspectives he heightens the political saliency of his argument. On the one hand, he castigates aristocrats of a ‘high and generous character’ who ‘praise the servility which they have never known’; and, on the other hand, democrats who ‘loudly claim for humanity those rights they have always disowned.’62 Aristocrats are ‘fit to be leaders’ but ‘confound the abuses of civilization with its benefits,’ while democrats seek to do what is ‘expedient without heeding what is just, to acquire knowledge without faith, and prosperity apart from virtue.’ The result is a state of confusion in France: Has man always inhabited a world like the present, where nothing is linked together, where virtue is without genius, and genius without honor […] where the light thrown on human actions by conscience is dim, and where nothing seems to be any longer forbidden or allowed, honorable or shameful, false or true?63

60 61 62 63

DA I, 10. Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts, C.V. k II, 56. DA I, 14. DA I, 14.

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This state of confusion is a result of the clash of perspectives, and having raised the pitch of his writing, Tocqueville immediately moves to guide the reader out of doubt, ‘I am unacquainted with His designs but I shall not cease to believe in them because I cannot fathom them, and I had rather mistrust my own capacity than His justice.’64 In order to guide the reader out of this state of doubt, Tocqueville introduces America. To judge democracy it is necessary to use American evidence, ‘There is a country in the world where the great revolution […] seems to have nearly reached its natural limits.’ It is, of course, in America that he ‘saw the image of democracy itself, with its inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions, in order to learn what we have to fear or to hope from its progress.’65 Indeed, while Tocqueville’s discoveries and observations in America are those of distinctly human character, Providence is still seen in the confluence of events that placed Tocqueville in a position of historical transparency. ‘Providence has given us a torch which our forefathers did not possess, and has allowed us to discern fundamental causes in the history of the world which the obscurity of the past concealed from them.’66 In his notes to Democracy in America Tocqueville argued that it is impossible to find, ‘all the beams of general truth, which are united only in God alone’ not even, ‘all the beams of a particular truth. Men grasp for fragments of truth, but never truth itself […] they intercept some beams from time to time, but never hold the light in their hand.67 What Tocqueville saw in America was one of these beams of light. Like in d’Aguesseau’s essay, the truth Tocqueville intercepted in America pierced his own uncertainty, and it guided his way forward. In the ‘Author’s Introduction,’ he seeks to prompt the same movement amongst his aristocratic peers, not only to guide them through the floodwaters of revolution but also to enlist them in making it to harbor safely.68 Beyond submission to inevitability of democracy, Tocqueville seeks to also bring the reader to come to appreciate its unique gifts.

64 DA I, 15. 65 DA I, 16. 66 DA I, 30. 67 DA II (Critical Edition), 715. 68 Tocqueville uses several biblical analogies in his notes, including one comparing the march of democracy to the story of Noah’s Ark; Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts, C.V. h III, 27.

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Tocqueville’s Use of the Theory of Orders: Contra Bossuet Tocqueville’s use of Providence is also marked by the Jansenist language of material and immaterial connected to the theory of orders. Tocqueville uses this language not only to explain the unfolding of God’s will in time but also to differentiate between spheres of religious and political authority. He argues simply: ‘For the writers to have been able to come to an understanding with the Church, both sides would have had to recognize that political society and religious society were by nature essentially different, and could not be ordered by a similar principles.’69 The ‘Author’s Introduction’ uses the same distinction: ‘the democratic revolution has been effected only in the material parts of society, without that concomitant change in laws, ideas, customs, and manners which was necessary to render such a revolution beneficial.’70 In Democracy in America II, Tocqueville uses this same language of material and immaterial to argue that Providence bought humanity together under the political rule of the Romans to prepare them for the coming of Christianity and spiritual unity: At the epoch at which the Christian religion appeared on earth, Providence, by whom the world was doubtless prepared for its coming, had gathered a large portion of the human race, like an immense flock, under the scepter of the Caesars. The men of whom this multitude was composed were distinguished by numerous differences; but they had this much in common, that they all obeyed the same laws, and that every subject was so weak and insignificant in relation to the imperial potentate, that all appeared equal when their condition was contrasted with his. This novel and peculiar state of mankind necessarily predisposed men to listen to the general truth which Christianity teaches, and may serve to explain the facility and rapidity with which they then penetrated into the human soul.71

As a general argument, this particular turn was not unique. Bossuet makes a similar argument.72 So does Albert de Broglie in L’Église et l’Empire romain

69 Tocqueville, Old Regime, 204. 70 DA I, 8. 71 DA II, 534. 72 Bossuet, Discours sur l’histoire universelle, p. 182.

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au IVe siècle, the first volume of which appeared in 1856.73 But Broglie, like Tocqueville, made this argument in tandem with a very strong material/ immaterial distinction. Tocqueville admired Broglie’s work, while the Ultra paper l’Univers engaged in a sustained polemic against it.74 For Tocqueville, the political and material relation of equality was a preparation for equality to be understood as an immaterial principle: this is the final key difference that, in general, makes Tocqueville’s use of Providence more in the fashion of Pascal than Bossuet. Bossuet’s Gallicanism does not draw such a strong distinction between material and immaterial authority. Quite the opposite. While recognizing the difference between church and state, Bossuet’s Gallicanism is based on the premise that monarchs partake directly in the majesty of the divine.75 This type of argument was poorly suited for Tocqueville’s purposes of defending the eventual need for a democratic republic. The difference can be seen in their respective judgments of the Roman Empire. Where Bossuet would point to the late Empire as a model to be emulated, Tocqueville looked at this kind of intertwining of religious and political authority as highly dangerous.76 In the penultimate chapter to the first volume of Democracy in America, Tocqueville uses the Roman Empire a model for how modern despotism might operate: The annals of France furnish nothing analogous […] it may more aptly be assimilated to the times of old, and to those hideous eras of Roman oppression […] when nothing protected the citizens and the citizens no longer protected themselves; when human nature was the sport of man and princes wearied out the clemency of Heaven before the patience of their subjects.77

He concludes that those who would wish to bring back ‘Henry IV or Louis XIV’ are ‘afflicted by a kind of mental blindness,’ and that the French have ‘no other alternative than democratic liberty, or the tyranny of Caesars.’78

73 Tocqueville to Freslon, 20 September 1856: ‘It is not at all lacking in quality’; Lettres choisies, p. 1215. 74 Broglie tends towards a language of external and internal but also uses material to refer to political authority; L’Église et l’Empire romain, pp. 1-10. 75 Martimort, Le gallicanisme de Bossuet. 76 Bossuet, Politique tirée, pp. 223-251. 77 DA I, 389. 78 DA I, 390.

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An important consequence of this final contrast between Tocqueville and Bossuet is how they view the role of human choice in history. Bossuet’s method of relating everything to divine will serves him well in demonstrating how actions have unintended effects, but his focus on particular causes tends to devalue the importance of human will. Peoples do not choose their governments; these are given by God, who invests rulers with divine authority. It might have been possible for Tocqueville to fashion from these tools a republican defense against Joseph de Maistre’s satanic interpretation of the French Revolution. If God establishes kingdoms, he might just as easily establish republics.79 But as I have demonstrated, Tocqueville neither claims that the ‘era of republics has arrived,’ nor does he use an argument based on Providence as particular causes to do so. His argument has an entirely different character to it. He identifies equality as a general and universal principle, and his use of Providence is one that begins with the unaided use of human reason and ends with a call to choose. The difference in how Bossuet and Tocqueville use Providence can also be seen in the final paragraph of the entire work: I perceive mighty dangers which it is possible to ward off – mighty evils which may be avoided or alleviated, and I cling with a firmer hold to the belief that for democratic nations to be virtuous and prosperous they require but to will it. I am aware that many of my contemporaries maintain that nations are never their own masters here below, and that they necessarily obey some insurmountable and unintelligent power, arising from anterior events, from their race, or from the soil and climate of their country. These are false and cowardly doctrines; such principles can never produce anything more than feeble men and pusillanimous nations. Providence has not created mankind entirely dependent or entirely free. It is true that around every man a fatal circle is traced, beyond which he cannot pass; but within the wide verge of that circle he is powerful and free: as it is with man, so with communities. The nations of our time cannot prevent the conditions of men from becoming equal: but it depends on them whether the principle of equality will lead them to servitude or freedom, to knowledge or barbarism, to prosperity or wretchedness (emphasis added).80

79 Riley, ‘Introduction,’ p. xlii. 80 DA II, 887-888.

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Whereas Bossuet’s notion of Providence tends to diminish the importance of human will, Tocqueville and the Jansenists use Providence to orient persons to the structure of political choice. Bossuet relates everything to Providence, while Tocqueville insists that Providence only circumscribes human action by determining the realm of the possible. Providence determines the social state, not governments. Tocqueville seeks to show the French that they must choose. In the midst of the impenetrable obscurity of the future, however, the eye sees some shafts of light. You can glimpse even now that the centuries of limited monarchy are rapidly passing and that modern societies are carried by a force superior to that of man either toward the republic or toward despotism, perhaps alternately one or the other.81

Even as a matter of how Providence determined the social state, Tocqueville resists the notion that movement represents an end of history. When Tocqueville does write about ‘Providential or accidental causes’ in a manner more like that of Bossuet, he frequently downplays their effect on human society, or qualifies his argument by using verbs like paraître (to seem).82

Conclusion: A New Political Science for a Democratic Age Most scholars have looked to Bossuet as Tocqueville’s main intellectual source for his use of Providence. Tocqueville uses providential rhetoric in two distinct senses, however. The history and function of Tocqueville’s use of Providence in the ‘Author’s Introduction’ to Democracy in America is much closer to the Jansenist conception. Given the textual evidence, it seems that the Jansenist conception was not only more suited to Tocqueville’s needs but also more frequently employed. There are times, however, in which the influence of Bossuet is marked, and the two conceptions are not so opposed that Tocqueville could not have drawn from both. There is little doubt, in fact, that he did. 81 Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts, C.V. h III, 29. 82 In the case of Native Americans, he argues, they ‘seem to have been placed by Providence amidst the riches of the New World for a season, and then to surrender them’; DA I, 28. When considering the relative importance of different kinds of causes, however, he argues that providential causes are less important than laws, and laws less important than moeurs; DA I, 333.

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This Jansenist influence, mostly but not exclusively from Pascal, is most clearly seen in two arguments from the ‘Author’s Introduction’ to Democracy in America. The first is Tocqueville’s use of Pascal’s third rule of biblical interpretation, which allows him to discover equality in secular history before attributing it to divine Providence. That is, the progress of equality is fact first, providential second. The second argument Tocqueville pulls from Pascal and the Jansenist tradition is the rhetoric of reconciliation and action. Tocqueville uses Providence to reconcile the reader to the inevitability of equality but also to prompt action in ‘the wide verge of that circle’ within which men are ‘powerful and free.’83 Finally, the way in which Tocqueville uses Pascal and d’Aguesseau’s method of rhetorical juxtaposition to try to move the heart of the reader shows the particular influence of these two Jansenist authors. It should be noted that the few short pages were the subject of much comment by Tocqueville’s family and friends, and the Jansenist elements may have been brought out more by his cousin Louis de Kergolay and friend Louis Bouchitté. More important than these circumstantial influences, however, is the rhetorical space the first chapter occupies in the context of the first volume of Democracy in America; it is a call to his compatriots to choose boldly, a plea that could be made resonant by recalling the Jansenist view of action in history. As I have emphasized throughout this book, Tocqueville’s conviction that the ideas of constitutional monarchy and the forms of religion associated with it were a thing of the past suggest that prerevolutionary Jansenism was more a source of inspiration to Tocqueville than a model of imitation. The very substance of Tocqueville’s politics of Providence is that the age of constitutional monarchy is over, and the age of democratic equality has begun. The category of Providence is an excellent example of how he blends Jansenist elements with other political traditions in a new alloy, an innovative attempt to transpose a decaying religious sensibility into a new democratic register.

83 DA II, 888.

4 Sovereignty Tocqueville’s Modern Republicanism Tocqueville’s defense of the necessity of a democratic republic found in the ‘Author’s Introduction’ to Democracy in America left open the question of what theoretical resources could be used to make sense of its institutional arrangements. In this chapter I suggest that Tocqueville’s observations in America not only gave him evidence for how to make democracy work, but also tapped into these Jansenist tendencies from his upbringing and professional training, and helped him see how they could be applied in modern world. From this fusion of French republican theory and American republican practices, Tocqueville developed a kind of neo-Jansenist interpretive framework to think about how democratic political life could be established in France. I  begin this chapter by looking at the reception of Pascal in the nineteenth century. By reading Pascal’s ‘Conversation with Sacy on Epictetus and Montaigne’ in the political culture the Restoration and July Monarchy, I demonstrate how interpretations of the content of Pascal’s philosophy are connected to visions of political rule. To do so, I look at two iterations of Restoration debates over the status of the Charter of 1814, the heritage of Pascal, and the role of the Catholic Church in political life. The first iteration of this debate combines the rise of the conservative Villèle Ministry with the publication of Joseph Maistre’s Du Pape and De l’Église gallicane. The second iteration of this debate is around the period of the July Revolution in 1830, which prompted Tocqueville’s trip to America. It is not only useful for locating Tocqueville’s own personal feelings about the fall of Charles X, but also helps to make sense of his defense of the sovereignty of the people in Democracy in America. In America, his French heritage confronted his democratic future. He saw not only the ‘image of democracy itself’ with all of its faults, but a republican system of democratic self-rule that gave him hope a similar set of institutions could be made to work in ‘other countries besides America.’1

1

DA I, 16, 374.

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Pascal’s ‘Conversation’ in the Nineteenth Century Of the essays that were commonly included in editions of the Pensées, the ‘Conversation with Sacy on Epictetus and Montaigne’ stands out as an important example of Pascal’s method, and is helpful for making sense of what is at stake in debates over Pascal in the nineteenth century. This essay is an excellent example of Pascal’s use of the Jansenist idea of an order of justification as well as the relationship between Pascal and Montaigne. A contextual reading of this essay highlights some key elements of Jansenism that Tocqueville is trying to recapture and demonstrates how, even in the nineteenth century, debates over the ‘Jansenism’ of Pascal frequently overlapped with other political commitments. The history of Jansenism was still hotly contested in the July Monarchy; the legacy of Blaise Pascal was no exception. Pascal was recognized as one of the most important writers in the seventeenth century, but it was a matter of debate how much his life and works could be considered Jansenist. Those who wished to separate Pascal from Port-Royal usually did so by emphasizing the influence of Montaigne. Even in the seventeenth century, the members of Port-Royal understood the political danger of Montaigne: the fragments least likely to be included in the posthumous publication of the first edition of the Pensées were those in which Pascal drew most heavily on Montaigne’s skepticism.2 Pascal himself clearly thought the skepticism of Montaigne could be used in service of religion. He not only wrote a general defense of ‘skepticism in service of religion’ in the Pensées, but many of the fragments from the Pensées that use the skepticism of Montaigne only surfaced in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.3 Pascal is not uncritical of Montaigne: ‘What is good in Montaigne can only be acquired with difficulty.’4 In the ‘Conversation,’ Pascal seeks to justify the utility of secular philosophy – which in his scheme has a moral structure parallel to that of the Christian religion – to Le Maistre de Sacy, one of the most spiritual and religious Jansenists at Port-Royal.5 It is a clear example of Pascal’s use of the ideas of an order of justification, the theory of the ‘two states of man’s nature,’ and his particular moralist style. The prologue presents Le 2 Mesnard, ‘Les éditions de Port-Royal.’ 3 Dreano, La religion de Montaigne, pp. 281-305. Pascal wrote: ‘He inspires indifference regarding salvation without fear or repentance’; Pascal, Pensées, trans. Krailsheimer, p. 215. 4 Pascal, Pensées, trans. Krailsheimer, p. 215. 5 Le Maistre de Sacy served as Pascal’s spiritual advisor for a time; Chédozeau, Port-Royal et la bible.

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Maistre de Sacy as a pure man of piety, ‘charity,’ and for whom ‘everything served to take him to God’; Descartes is a symbol of secular philosophy that seeks to subject all matters to human reason and thereby ‘destroys’ God’s plan.6 But the central theme of the piece, in very Jansenist fashion, is the idea of an order of justification and the harmony of the two streams of reason and faith. What was introduced in the prologue as the near perfect opposition of reason and faith is summarized in the epilogue as ‘different methods’ that reach the same ‘goal’: This was how the two people of such marvelous intellect agreed at last upon the subject of philosophy, and, although they had arrived there through different methods, they found themselves in agreement on the goal; M. de Sacy had reached it quickly through the clear principles of Christianity but M. de Pascal only after following the many detours of philosophical principles.7

It is how Pascal arrives at agreement with Sacy that demonstrates what is unique about his philosophical method. In the ‘Conversation,’ Epictetus and Montaigne are personifications of two ‘contrarieties’ that represent the two basic ‘sects’ of philosophers; Pascal uses his unique style of opposition not only to discover the same truths in philosophy as in the Christian religion but also to argue that the errors of the two sects of philosophy cancel each other out in a system of ‘contrary errors.’ Pascal demonstrates both the virtues and the vices in the philosophical systems of Epictetus and Montaigne: It is therefore from this imperfect enlightenment that it happens that the one [Epictetus], knowing the duties of man and being ignorant of his impotence, is lost in presumption, and that the other [Montaigne], knowing the impotence and being ignorant of the duty, falls into laxity.8

6 ‘Entretien de Pascal avec Sacy sur Epictète et Montaigne,’ in Pensées, fragments et lettres, ed. Faugère, pp. 348-367. The ‘Entretien’ recounts the story of Le Maistre de Sacy’s first visit to Pascal as confessor. It appeared in la Fontaine’s Memoirs de Port-Royal and is set at the house of the Duc de Luynes. Pascal argues that God’s plan is identified as ‘two things’: first, ‘to give the idea of his greatness’; and second, ‘to paint invisible things in the visible world’ (pp. 349-350). 7 Ibid., 366. 8 Ibid., 365

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Each of them has something that the other lacks: Epictetus’s view of the greatness of man serves as a foil to Montaigne’s Pyrrhonism, but also leads him to overvalue the ability of men to achieve the good; whereas Montaigne, who understands the limits of human knowledge in a way missed by Epictetus, ‘doesn’t give to men the ability to act without first recognizing his weakness with a humble sincerity, in lieu of trying to raise him up through foolish vanity.’ To ‘the utility of these readings,’ Pascal argues: I find in Epictetus an incomparable art for troubling the repose of those who seek it in external things, and for forcing them to acknowledge that they are veritable slaves and miserable blind men […] Montaigne is incomparable for confounding the pride of those who, outside of the faith, flatter themselves on having found true justice; to disabuse those who cling to their opinions and find in science impregnable truth […]. But if Epictetus combats indolence, he leads to pride; so that he may be very injurious to those who do not already see the corruption of even the most perfect justice that is not also of the faith. And Montaigne is absolutely pernicious to those who have any leaning to impiety or vice […]. It seems to me that only by joining them together they would not succeed ill, since the one is opposed to the evil of the other. This is not to say that by themselves they are capable of bestowing virtue but, instead, only that they disturb vice: the soul, beset by one contrary that expels pride and another that expels indolence, is unable to find rest in either and flees from both.9

Pascal approves of Epictetus’s attempt to remove himself from attachment to the material world, but the dignity Epictetus achieves comes at the cost of excessive pride in the human faculties of reason and will. The destruction and mistrust of the human faculties born of Montaigne’s skepticism is the necessary, but dangerous, antidote to the pride of Epictetus. Pascal’s rhetorical structure is built on a double irony: it is the pagan Epictetus who teaches the Christian duty to always ‘regard God as his principle object’ and is juxtaposed to the Catholic Montaigne, who in seeking ‘to discover what morals reason would dictate without the light of faith’ utterly destroys the prospect of establishing any knowledge based on reason alone.10 9 Ibid., 359. 10 Ibid., 353. ‘He puts all things in a universal doubt […]. Of this he makes his device, placing it under the scales which, weighing contradictories, are found in perfect equilibrium: that is, pure Pyrrhonism.’

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Pascal’s philosophical argument in the ‘Conversation’ mirrors his moralistic strategy: he seeks to at once give men a sense of purpose in this world and to humble them in their pursuit of it. Pascal argues the problem is in the definition of man’s nature, ‘one attributes greatness to man’s nature, the other the weakness of that same nature’: It seems to me that the source of error in these two sects is in not knowing that the state of man at the present time differs from that of his creation; so that one, remarking on the traces of man’s first greatness and being ignorant of his corruption, has treated nature as clean and without need of a healer, which leads him to the height of pride; whilst the other, feeling only present wretchedness and ignorant of original dignity, treats nature as necessarily infirm and irreparable […] while faith teaches us to place them [greatness and weakness] in different subjects: all that is infirm belongs to nature, all that is powerful belongs to grace.11

In the Pensées Pascal embeds this moralistic strategy in the very structure of the work: the first part, preceding the Wager, treats the weakness and misery of men without God. The second part, after the Wager, demonstrates the greatness of men with God. Sacy even remarks that Pascal is ‘like a skilled doctor,’ who, through the ‘careful preparation of the most deadly poisons knows how to extract from them the most efficacious remedies.’ In the end, however, the two systems – the one philosophical, the other religious – not only mirror each other but also reach the same conclusions. The careful way in which Pascal extracts the remedy in the poison from twin vices represented by Montaigne and Epictetus shows what is lost by viewing Pascal as a Pyrrhonian skeptic. Indeed, what makes Pascal so interesting is how he juxtaposes the contrary errors of Epictetus and Montaigne in order to constantly present ‘a double sense and an equivocal regard,’ in the words of Tocqueville’s contemporary, Samuel Ustazade Silvestre de Sacy.12 Sacy argues that ‘With stoicism, he makes us ashamed of placing our heart in the pleasures of the flesh that we share with beasts […]. With skepticism he insults the powerlessness and vanity of our reason.’13 The idea of an order of justification is what enables Pascal to maintain this equivocal regard and to mobilize the philosophical resources of both stoicism and skepticism in his essays. The consequence of the double-face and equivocal nature is that 11 Ibid., 354. 12 Sacy, Variétés littéraires, morales et historiques, p. 240. 13 Ibid., 240.

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Pascal and Montaigne ‘don’t at all look alike.’14 Montaigne’s skepticism and suspension of judgment on religious matters leads to a blind faith in custom and a ‘severe faith’ that is ‘conducive to absolute faith and the most rigorous practice of all the Christian austerities,’ whereas Pascal ‘lets religion develop naturally in its own sphere and was not afraid of doubt […]. If the grace of God did not open the path of enquiry, everything would remain shrouded in mystery and there would be as much reason to doubt as to believe.’15 In the nineteenth century, thinkers used Pascal across the political spectrum. But when they sought to use Pascal for their own purposes, the most common method was simply to use Montaigne’s skepticism in order to introduce Pyrrhonist uncertainty into human affairs. Joseph de Maistre did not emphasize Pascal’s philosophical skepticism any more than Abel Villemain, Victor Cousin, or the rest of the Doctrinaires, but he did so for very different purposes. Maistre used Pascal’s skepticism to foil philosophy itself and, in turn, to argue for submission to the teachings of the Catholic Church. The Doctrinaires used it equally effectively to question the existence of religious knowledge, and to reassert the authority of the state in matters of religion. I now turn to two Restoration Monarchy debates in which Pascal’s use of the Jansenist idea of an order of justification is at the center of questions over the role of the Catholic Church in French political life. The first series of debates, in 1822, are structured around Maistre’s attack on this Jansenist understanding of an order of justification. Maistre first redefines sovereignty as absolute and unitary – but located in the body of the government itself, namely, the king – and then uses this new definition to turn Pascal’s two orders into parallel absolutisms ruled by authority. I demonstrate that in the second iteration of debates leading up to the fall of the Restoration, Tocqueville was convinced that the traditional structures of ideas of constitutional monarchy – and the religious ideas of Jansenism that complemented it – no longer held persuasive power in the face of changing democratic social conditions based on equality.

The First Series of Debates: The Villèle Ministry and the Events of 1822 The year 1822 overlaps a remarkable range of events: the rise of the conservative Villèle Ministry, the publication of Maistre’s De l’Église gallicane, the 14 Ibid., 236. 15 Ibid., 236.

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expulsion of Guizot from the Sorbonne, the repression of the Faculté de droit, and the creation of the liberal advocacy group Aide-toi, le ciel t’aidera (Heaven Helps Those Who Help Themselves). These political fault lines, however, had their roots in the very writing of the Charter of 1814, which had to balance between the wants of liberals and constitutional monarchists, who wished to retain many of the gains of the French Revolution, and Ultras, who wished to reassert absolutist rule.16 Although the conservative Villèle Ministry was unable to enact the most authoritarian of policies (the Law of Sacrilege failed in the Chamber of Peers), the Restoration Monarchy electorate was too small, too easy manipulated, and too skewed towards groups uninterested in the protection of political rights for stable liberal majorities to emerge. The actions of the Villèle Ministry not only raised questions about the Charter of 1814 in a directly political manner, but also coincided with a very public theoretical debate about the nature of sovereignty and the origins of political order. The publication of Maistre’s Du Pape and De l’Église gallicane overlapped with the Ultra turn in Restoration Monarchy politics, and added a theoretical element to the public discourse. Maistre’s texts were more than just counter-Enlightenment defenses of absolute monarchy – they were also political in their denunciation of the Charter of 1814, complete support for the pope, and unequivocal rejection of the Gallican Church. There are two theoretically significant responses to the overlapping political and theoretical attacks on constitutional government found in the rise of the Villèle Ministry and the publication of Maistre’s texts. First, there remained traditional Jansenists like the abbé Grégoire who defended a mixed constitution regulated by the rule of law. The other response was from liberals like the Doctrinaires, who used Pascal to articulate a religious third way, and to defend their theory of the sovereignty of reason. Maistre’s Du Pape (1819) and De l’Église gallicane (1822) were published as Ultra defenses of reactionary politics. These two texts freely associate Jansenism and those at Port-Royal with ‘leur cousins’ (the Protestants),17 and carry the argument through the entire history of French parliamentarism.18 The two works are nothing more than a complete Ultra attack on the Gallican Church, Jansenism, and constitutional politics in general: ‘Protestant 16 My treatment of the political culture of the July Monarchy owes much to the work of Pierre Rosanvallon: La démocratie inachevée and La monarchie impossible. 17 Maistre, De l’Église gallicane, p. 41. 18 Berlin, ‘Introduction’; Greifer, ‘Joseph de Maistre’; Camcastle, The More Moderate Side of Joseph de Maistre; Lebrun, Joseph de Maistre.

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in the sixteenth century, Jansenist and Frondeur in the seventeenth, then philosophe and republican in its last days, is how the parlement has showed itself to be in contradiction with the true fundamental maxims of the State.’19 The first book of De l’Église gallicane is entirely devoted to Maistre’s vitriol against these groups, but, despite the well-known fact of Pascal’s relationship to Port-Royal, Maistre is at pains to exempt Pascal from his criticisms. Port-Royal is systematically attacked for their style, influence, and supposed virtues. Maistre finds these to be lacking in not only the pedagogical texts of Port-Royal but also in their religious and moral writings. The exception to this is Pascal, who just ‘lived there for a little while.’ It is an exception Maistre makes repeatedly: ‘except Pascal – must I keep saying it?’ Nor is Maistre unaware of the relationship between Port-Royal and the Jansenism of the eighteenth century, referencing specifically the miracles of the Saint-Médard cemetery and the Nouvelles ecclésiastiques, arguing that ‘had they seen the not far of future […] they would die of shame and repent.’20 Maistre’s defense of Pascal, however, is more than deference to the genie. Rather, Maistre himself owes a large theoretical debt to Blaise Pascal, especially in how Pascal conceived of the origin of political legitimacy. Maistre’s debt to Pascal shows him reworking the Jansenist distinction of the two orders and turning it to new use. He takes advantage of the idea of an order of justification by transforming the idea of sovereignty: ‘Infallibility in the Church and absolute sovereignty are two perfect synonyms. They both express the name of a great power that dominates everything, from which all others are derived, that governs but isn’t governed and that judges but isn’t judged.’21 No longer a division of powers in concord, Maistre’s vision of sovereignty views the infallibility of the pope as analogous to political sovereignty. While Maistre maintains the parallelism of Pascal’s use of an order of justification, he closes the doors that connect religious and scientific knowledge. Rather than parallel systems of divided sovereignty, Maistre posits parallel absolutisms in which both politics and religion are strictly questions of obedience. The consequence of this transformation is that Maistre is able to use Pascal’s philosophical skepticism to do away with the limits he places on the power of the pope and religious knowledge in general.

19 Maistre, De l’Église gallicane, p. 6. 20 Ibid., 32. 21 Maistre, Du Pape, p. 2.

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The political side of this question is famously found in the scene of the executioner found in the Soirées de Saint-Pétersburg.22 In this set piece, Maistre shows how political legitimacy is founded on violence, and he seeks to unmask the origins of legitimacy through a description of how the violence of the executioner is the foundation of social order. Maistre argues that all political authority is rooted in this violence and becomes legitimate when covered by the aura of custom: It is written: it is i who makes kings. This is not just a saying of the Church […] it is the literal truth, simple and palpable. It is a law of the political world. God makes Kings […]. He matures them under a cloud that hides their origin. They later seem crowned in glory and honor.23

The ‘cloud’ that Maistre refers to here is the way custom gives mysterious justification to authority originally derived from violence. Maistre is using Pascal’s notion of custom: Merely according to reason, nothing is just in itself, everything shifts with time. Custom is the whole of equity for the sole reason that it is accepted. That is the mystic basis of its authority […]. The art of subversion, of revolution, is to dislodge established customs by probing down to their origins in order to show how they lack authority and justice […]. That is why the wisest of legislators used to say that men must often be deceived for their own good, and another sound politician: When he does not know the truth that is to bring him freedom, it is good that he should be deceived. The truth of the usurpation must not be made apparent; it came about originally without reason and has become reasonable. We must see that it is regarded as authentic and eternal, and its origins must be hidden if we do not want it soon to end.24

What is to Pascal an empirical claim – and one tempered by his own resistance to absolute power – becomes for Maistre a normative claim for submission. The scene of the executioner in the Soirées is the unmasking of this originary violence, but as a practical matter, the arbitrary justness of political rule is the imperative for obedience. The covering of foundational violence with custom is the development of political myth, or what could 22 Maistre, Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg, pp. 29-36. 23 Maistre, Essai sur le principe générateur des constitutions, p. 232. 24 Pascal, Pensées, trans. Krailsheimer, p. 16.

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be thought of as foundational beliefs. By redefining sovereignty, Maistre transforms Pascal’s parallel hierarchies of divided sovereignty into parallel absolutisms.

Jansenist and Doctrinaire Responses: Grégoire and Villemain There was a variety of responses to the publication of Maistre’s books, but two stand out as most important. The first is from the Jansenist abbé Grégoire, the second from Abel Villemain, a prominent Doctrinaire.25 Grégoire’s review takes advantage of the Jansenist use of the idea of an order of justification in order to defend a view of the monarchy as mixed and limited. Villemain’s approach helps to demonstrate how the Doctrinaires could link Pascal to their idea of the sovereignty of reason. Grégoire is one of the most important revolutionary Jansenists. He helped to write the Civil Constitution of the Clergy but rejected the radical revolution; and he worked the entire time with the father of one of Tocqueville’s friends, Jean-Denis Lanjuinais.26 Grégoire’s Ruines de Port-Royal, published first in 1801 and then expanded in 1809, romanticizes the remains of the monastery. In the version from 1801, he argues that ‘Port-Royal is the friend of liberty and from a political point of view, the savants of Port-Royal can be considered as precursors of the revolution considered not in its excess […] but in its principles of patriotism that in 1789 struck in such an energetic manner,’ and in the 1809 edition he added a defense of the theory of grace.27 In Du concordat (1818), published in La Minerve française (run by Benjamin Constant), Grégoire references his friendship with Lanjuinais and argues that ‘Napoleon reestablished religion […]. Who cannot but deplore the state of the primitive church?’28 L’Ami de la religion was not always supportive of these ‘republican’ Jansenists, but almost always spoke of moderates like Royer-Collard with praise.29 25 Grégoire, De la constitution française. 26 The Chronique religieuse openly defended the need for councils to consent to doctrine, and the liberties of the Gallican Church understood as the practices of the early church. In 1818 the Chronique published a Jansenist defense of the ‘ten truths’ of the Gallican Church, in a review titled ‘Les Maximes de l’Église gallicane. (The Maxims of the Gallican Church), pp. 111-112. 27 Grégoire, ‘Ruines de Port-Royal,’ in œuvres de l’Abbé Grégoire, XII, 96 and 212. 28 Grégoire, ‘Du Concordat,’ pp. 369-405; see also œuvres de l’Abbé Grégoire, XI, 250-268. 29 Lanjuinais and Grégoire were a bit too republican and radical; L’Ami de la religion et du roi, 14 (1817), pp. 338-349 and 386-393. As for Royer-Collard, they approved of his resistance to Absolutism; L’Ami de la religion et du roi, 128 (1846), 288-290.

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In Grégoire’s review of Maistre’s Du Pape and De l’Église gallicane in the journal l’Abeille he defends not only the name, but also the religion and politics of Port-Royal against Maistre’s ‘politico-ecclesiastical’ vision of sovereignty.30 First, Grégoire ridicules the doctrine of papal infallibility with a twist of irony: ‘Gregory XI, who revoked in his will everything he had pronounced against the faith, was mistaken in believing he could be mistaken.’31 As for the Gallican Church, Grégoire says: ‘What does this have to do with the Gallican Church [...] ask the Ultramontanes.’ More important is the ‘holy alliance’ Grégoire sees between ‘Christianity and liberty’: Therefore the Christian hierarchy, the structure of which is divine, offers to politics a type of representative system. It is the only kind proper for consolidating and placing in harmony all parts of the social edifice, the only one from which one cannot command or obey without the name of the law. This consideration is a powerful motive for attachment to the Charter and Christianity.32

The representative system offered to politics by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church by traditional Jansenism is, like the political theory of constitutional monarchy, based on a notion of divided sovereignty. Overall, Grégoire’s defense of representative institutions and the rule of law is itself something of a ‘politico-ecclesiastical’ response to Maistre’s politics of fear linked to the development of foundational beliefs. Grégoire reasserts the traditional Jansenist understanding of an order of justification and links it specifically with the parallel mixed constitutions of the Catholic Church and monarchy. Maistre’s parallel absolutisms are dominated by fear, but Grégoire’s two worlds are regulated by the rule of law. Ultimately, however, Grégoire did not have the tools to respond to Maistre’s transformation of sovereignty, and rather reasserts the virtues of divided sovereignty. Villemain’s essay ‘Pascal comme écrivain et moraliste’ is the best example of the new liberal Doctrinaire approach to thinking about Pascal. It is also a classic essay in Pascal criticism and a response to Maistre’s transformation of sovereignty. In contrast to Grégoire’s reassertion of the traditional structure of Jansenist ideas, Villemain transforms them into part of his Doctrinaire defense of reason. Villemain begins by stating the idea of an order of justification: 30 Grégoire, review of ‘De l’Église gallicane,’ in œuvres de l’Abbé Grégoire, XI, 269-287. 31 Ibid., 283. 32 Ibid., 287.

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In surveying the varieties of human knowledge, we perceive two great divisions under which all the acquirements of the intellect are comprised. In the one, mind is employed upon matter; in the other, upon itself. The one contains the whole science of external objects, from the most common mechanism to that of the heavens; the sole object of the other is the heart of man; and its instruments are Ethics, Eloquence, and Poetry.33

Villemain’s interpretation of Pascal is a based on a very subtle transformation of the idea of an order of justification. In the Jansenist formulation, the realm of religion is directed at God, and that of man at material objects. Villemain’s ‘external objects’ comprise both science and religion, while the ‘heart of man’ is the order of ethics and poetry. Villemain asks if it is possible for one person to master these disparate types of understanding. ‘Does the same genius possess the power to master these two opposite spheres of knowledge? Or is their separation as manifest as their diversity?’ Of course, Pascal is one of these rare geniuses. Villemain is not shy in praising Pascal, and like Maistre finds Pascal to be a genius not equaled by the others at Port-Royal. Today the greatest triumph of Port-Royal is to have been the school of Racine. We do not read Nicole, Hermant, or Sacy anymore. The glory of Arnauld is a problem; his quarrels seem to us ridiculous. While the purest spirits of a polite century have studied with admiration these authors so often viewed with disdain; Louis XIV used his power and politics to fight against the firmness of these few theologians. Port-Royal, then, has a true greatness attested to by their persecution and enthusiasm.34

To be sure, Villemain is not overly favorable to the memory of Port-Royal, but, in turn, he recasts the theological debates of the seventeenth century into an ‘eternal battle’ between the ‘absolute submission in the domain of intelligence and those who reclaimed the natural and free exercise of reason.’35 That itself is enough for him, and he marvels at the ‘originality’ of Pascal, who applied ‘geometry to literature’ and ‘invented his own language’ while holding a ‘distaste of false ornamentation and vain rhetoric.’36 In short, Pascal as a writer combined the ‘spirit of geometry’ and the ‘spirit 33 34 35 36

Villemain, ‘De Pascal consideré comme écrivain et moraliste,’ p. 5. Ibid., 7. Ibid., 8. Ibid., 6.

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of finesse.’37 Villemain’s Pascal, although historically inaccurate in certain respects, is not terribly far from the actual Pascal. He understands the basics of the relationship between Pascal and Port-Royal, that Pascal’s vision of Christianity is based on the dual nature of the greatness and misery of man, and that the real target of the Pensées are Pyrrhonian skeptics like Montaigne. Villemain also sees the importance of the ‘Conversation with Sacy on Epictetus and Montaigne’ as a clear defense of the theory of orders. Villemain even draws an analogy between Pascal’s Wager and Rousseau who, ‘weaker and more capricious, pinned his hopes of salvation on a rock that he skipped into the water.’38 Villemain uses this comparison with Rousseau to cast Pascal’s faith in ‘positive religion’ as giving him ‘some security, subjecting him to the power of belief’ to deal with the ‘abyss of doubt that internally terrified his soul.’ Villemain, however, does not view Pascal’s religious apology as persuasive as the Lettres provinciales the ‘proofs are not united, the reasoning is not conclusive.’39 Villemain’s strategy in this essay avoids dealing directly with the question of sovereignty, but he is successful in aligning Pascal with his own Doctrinaire liberalism through his defense of reason. In contrast to Maistre’s use of Montaigne to push Pascal’s skepticism towards universal doubt, Villemain is able to recapture the positive value Pascal places on reason. Villemain’s defense of reason, however, is connected to politics in a different way than Grégoire’s parallel hierarchies defined by the rule of law. Villemain’s defense of scientific reason, combined with his religious skepticism, is the key element that allows him to push back against Masitre’s irrationalism and to get around question of sovereignty. Although access to reason was not universal, the output of reason was: the dictates of reason are sufficient to guide citizens to vote well, make decisions for the public good, and discover universal laws in social science, politics, and ethics. In Villemain’s Doctrinaire system the size of the electorate is much less important than an electorate capable of exercising reason, and any enlightened electorate would reach effectively the same decision. Villemain’s recasting of Pascal as a dominantly secular philosopher has the effect of nearly banishing the religious from his thought. This, of course, is what enables the Doctrinaire response to Maistre to be so effective: by reclaiming reason, the plausibility of constitutional and electoral mechanisms to achieve the public good is reclaimed and the paternalism of kings shown to be unnecessary. 37 Ibid., 21. 38 Ibid., 26. 39 Ibid., 29.

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The overlapping political and theoretical debates on the Church, sovereignty, and Pascal in 1822 demonstrate the main political options available to the young Alexis de Tocqueville. While Maistre and Grégoire are locked in a debate that largely looks backward, the vision of Pascal and sovereignty put forth by Villemain is a classic statement of early Doctrinaire liberalism. In the next section of this chapter, I look at the fall of the Restoration Monarchy and show how questions of sovereignty changed under the July Monarchy. For the first time in a generation, republicanism became an important political force, and the question of sovereignty cut to the core of July Monarchy political life.

Louis-Phillipe d’Orléans: Liberal Monarch, or Prince of the French Republic? The central tension in Restoration political culture had been between constitutionalism and absolutism; under the July Monarchy, it was between republicanism and liberalism. Not only were the terms of debate changed, but the revival of republicanism itself was a major shift in political culture. There were republicans under the Restoration, but republicanism had been largely discredited by the excesses of the Revolution and degeneration into Empire. It is in the context of the rise of the July Monarchy that Tocqueville’s trip to America and defense of the ‘sovereignty of the people’ in Democracy in America must be understood. 40 Alexis de Tocqueville was seventeen and about to enter the Faculté du droit during the events of 1822. By the time the events leading to the fall of the Restoration began in 1828, he was a juge auditeur at Versailles, twentythree, and undergoing an intellectual awakening. In 1828 Tocqueville and Beaumont attended Guizot’s lectures on civilization in France. The events of 1828-1830 were in some ways replays of those of 1822, but with much more at stake as the religious politics of Charles X led quickly down the path to revolution. The events that would lead to the fall of the Restoration were not unforeseen by Alexis de Tocqueville. He blamed particularly the Ultra journals that ‘Everyday sprouts an article or pamphlet urging the king to abolish the 40 On 23 June 1832, Kergoly wrote to Tocqueville that he should not align himself with either of the major liberal Catholics journals; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XIII.1, 257. Kergolay argues that in France, there are those who want to return to a ‘Bonaparte,’ others who prefer a ‘Louis XIV,’ and a final group that wants to ‘find something new, in theory and in practice.’

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Charter and govern by decree […] the moment is critical.’41 Even Hervé’s appointment to the Chamber of Peers seems to have been diminished because it was by the hand of Charles X. 42 In 1826 many liberals had been encouraged by some of the early policies of Charles X, but by the time he had decreed the Four Ordinances in an attempt to personally rewrite the Charter of 1814, Tocqueville would speak of the ‘crazy’ royalist party, decry the ‘laws by ordinances,’ and declares it is ‘all the politics of Louis XIV.’43 He finishes by predicting the fall of the House of Bourbon. 44 Just as the Four Ordinances had been declared law by the Charles X, Tocqueville’s father wrote to him: You will have seen the news in the Moniteur upon your arrival at Versailles. Whatever are your opinions on the matter, I ask you to hold yourself and engage yourself with measure and moderation. You can easily imagine the frustrations on both sides, and that the government having chosen their path will not be able to do anything other than break everyone that opposes it. Above all young men have need of the prudence to stay in their state, and the more talent they have the more likely they are to excite jealousy. 45

The Restoration Monarchy fell no more than a few days later. The Four Ordinances had sought to restrict the franchise to large landowners, dissolve the Chamber, call for new elections, and impose new restrictions on the freedom of the press. They were nothing less than a blatant attempt by Charles X to make law by decree and once again called the constitutionality of the Charter into question. The one thing all parties – except the Ultras – agreed upon was that the fall of the Restoration was in the name of constitutional government. Le Temps wrote that the new government was the ‘reestablishment of sovereignty’; La Tribune that the ‘Rights of the people were not respected.’46 Even L’Ami de la religion et du roi, in going to pains to blame Charles’ ministers for his downfall, openly disdained his policies; they held up Chateaubriand and Royer-Collard as examples of the ‘constitutional royalists’ that they 41 Tocqueville to Edouard, 24 March 1830; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XIV, 58. 42 Tocqueville to Kergolay, 23 November 1837; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XIII.1, 118. 43 Tocqueville to Edouard, 9 August 1829, 24 March 1830; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XIV, 49-53. 44 Tocqueville to Edouard, 6 May 1830; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XIV, 67. 45 Hervé to Alexis, 27 July 1839; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XIV, p. 71. 46 Le Temps, 31 July 1830; La Tribune, 2 October 1830.

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favored. 47 L’Ami de la religion even pleaded with Guizot, ‘because he admits the separation of the civil and religious orders, we hope that religion will not at all be buttressed by the temporal power.’48 The triumph of constitutionalism, however, raised a new set of questions about how to best understand the institutions of the July Monarchy. Although nearly everyone agreed that respect for the Charter had been the main achievement of the July Monarchy, many constitutional monarchists only recognized the legitimacy of the older line. The new king, Louis-Philippe d’Orléans, embraced the liberal reputation of the younger line of Bourbons in his political alliance with the Doctrinaires, which did not help bring along wary legitimists. There was more at stake in the rise of the July Monarchy than just the king, however. The ideas of constitutional monarchy embodied by Tocqueville’s heritage were excellent for maintaining a balance between three partially sovereign groups, but much less useful in a context in which sovereignty was unitary, and the nation was above the king. 49 An anonymous pamphlet from May 1830, entitled ‘Lettre à M. le directeur du National, ou Examen des doctrines politiques du National, du Globe, de la Gazette de France et du Journal des débats,’ demonstrates how the question of sovereignty, even before the fall of the Restoration, was at the heart of political debate in France. The anonymous author uses a strategy very similar to the Jansenist theory of orders to argue against the republicanism of Le National and the Ultra Gazette de France. His main targets are the Doctrinaire journals Le Globe and Le Journal des débats. To Le National, the author argues ‘you make a contrary error to la Gazette de France,’ and defends a notion of divided sovereignty. He concludes: ‘In between accommodation and concession, there is the distance of a revolution.’50 To argue against the Doctrinaire ‘idea of sovereignty placed in reason,’ the author even uses a version of the Jansenist idea of an order of justification: reason is the rule of logic; virtue the rule of morality; the concord of the three powers, the rule of politics; and the will of God the rule of religion.51

47 L’Ami de la religion et du roi, 65 (1830), 113-116. 48 Ibid., 323. 49 The reforms of the Charter of 1830 are more symbolic than extensive. The other major revisions include the adoption of the tricolor flag, the publication of the proceedings of the Chambre des pairs, and change in the recognition of Catholicism as the religion of the majority of the French. 50 Anonymous, ‘Lettre à M. le directeur du National,’ p. 16 51 Ibid., 18.

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The traditional Jansenist and constitutional monarchist defense of divided sovereignty clearly supported constitutionalism but, with the end of the Restoration, the dominant political question changed from constitutionalism or absolutism to how to understand the nature of sovereignty: just what type of regime had been founded? The Roi des Français adopted the tricolor flag. He had been anointed by it, in fact, on the balcony of the Hôtel de Ville by La Fayette himself. La Fayette declared positively that the July Monarchy was a ‘monarchy surrounded by republican institutions,’ but Chateaubriand asked, ‘Did we establish a republic or a new monarchy?’52 Republicanism once again became a viable and popular political option. The journal Le Peuple argued simply that ‘All sovereignty emanates from the people.’53

The Liberal Monarch and his Ministers: The Doctrinaires One of the unique facets of July Monarchy political culture was the close relationship between ministers in government and professors of the University. Many of the Doctrinaires held posts in the University, and after the Revolution of 1830, they became the ‘official’ ministers of the July Monarchy. The term Doctrinaire had f irst been applied to Royer-Collard but was quickly expanded to include others like Villemain and Guizot. During the July Monarchy, Guizot was the governmental and intellectual leader of the group, which also included Victor Cousin and Abel de Rémusat. Doctrinaire ideology was focused on three elements: reason as sovereign, a defense of constitutional politics, and a pragmatic orientation to politics found in their idea of the juste milieu. These elements, as a set of philosophical ideas, allowed the Doctrinaires to cut a middle course between revolution and reaction. This middle path enabled them to square liberalism with the monarchy, but at the cost of political democracy.54 The juste milieu allowed them to try to hold onto the gains of the Revolution, but also to contain its dangerous elements. The Doctrinaire idea of reason, already seen in Villemain’s essay on Pascal, sought to build from empirical evidence of facts to abstract generalizations. 52 Cited in Rosanvallon, La monarchie impossible, p. 152. 53 Cited in L’Ami de la religion et du roi, 65 (1830), p. 254. 54 Craiutu, Liberalism under Siege; Craiutu, ‘Tocqueville and the Political Thought of the Doctrinaires (Guizot, Royer-Collard, Rémusat)’; Craiutu, ‘The Method of the French Doctrinaires’; Rosanvallon, Le moment Guizot.

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Thus, reason, although sovereign, was not truly unitary: the Doctrinaires began from the plurality of facts in the world, and then tried to identify abstract principles. In this sense, their idea of reason combined empirical observation with theoretical abstraction. Guizot’s notion of état social was an important precursor to Tocqueville’s own method. The Doctrinaires called reason applied to politics ‘political capacity.’ This idea of political capacity allowed, in combination with a theory of pouvoir constituant (constituting power) and pouvoir constituée (constituted power), for reason to remain the legitimating force and end point of liberal politics, while allowing actually existing governments to instantiate this principle. To Guizot sovereignty could not be identified in any particular body or social group, but rather though a kind of enlightened public opinion. This view was developed in contrast to republicans, Ultras, and monarchists who sought to connect, ‘the right to govern, not with capacities, but with birth.’55 Rémusat argued in Le Globe: Absolute sovereignty is not realized in this world: invisible and present, a higher reason speaks to human reason, and only to her. All hear the voice […] of a spiritual society that is the foundation of civil society. Who should wield political power? Those who have the greatest capability of seeing the common law of society, of knowledge, justice, reason, and truth.56

This argument serves equally well to argue against republicans and Ultras alike: ‘The right of sovereignty invested in men, whether one, many, or all, is an injurious lie.’57 The goal of politics is to design a set of institutions that could be relied upon to effectively identify and act upon rational principles of political action. The Doctrinaire theory of ‘constituted’ and ‘constituting’ power was most conducive to a system Guizot called ‘democracy without universal suffrage,’ meaning a set of civil rights for everyone but political 55 Guizot, The History of the Origins of Representative Government, trans. Craiutu, p. 60. See also p. 51: ‘The right of sovereignty cannot be vested in any one man, or collection of men, where does it reside, and what is the principle on which it rests? In his interior life […] the man who feels himself free and capable of action, has ever a glimpse of a natural law by which his action is regulated. He recognizes something which is not his own will, and which must regulate his will. He feels himself bound by reason or morality to do certain things; he sees, or he feels that there are certain things which he ought or ought not to do. This something is the law which is superior to man, and made for him – the divine law. The true law of man is not the work of man; he receives, but does not create it; even when he submits to it, it is not his own – it is beyond and above him.’ 56 Rémusat, in Le Globe, 11 March 1829, p. 157. 57 Guizot, This History of the Origins of Representative Government, trans. Craiutu, p. 52.

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rights only for those who with the natural and material qualities enabling them to be trusted with voting.58 This redefinition of sovereignty linked to political capacity meant that the Doctrinaire vision of an equal society was a kind of meritocracy that enfranchised those whose capacities enabled them to use political power in accord with reason. Just as reason is not unitary, the constituted powers of society – actual governments – should also be divided in order for the beneficial effects of turning power against power. Thus, constituted power is aided by the division of ‘independent and equal’ powers that ‘imposed upon each other reciprocally the obligation to search for a common truth.’59 Brought to power by the rise of the July Monarchy, the Doctrinaires were both an important intellectual influence on Tocqueville and a subject of frequent critique. He shared many similar political goals as the Doctrinaires, but he split with them over the question of sovereignty and the practices of government. Tocqueville not only envisioned a democratic and republican future for France, but was highly critical of their practices of governing: I share the majority of the ideas they have put forth into the world, but I nonetheless have always found myself following my own track […]. What is really interesting is that if you place to the side their small and often less than honorable intentions, which have always separated them from me, these are maybe the men in the Chamber with which I have the most natural political affinity. Similar to me, they want a liberal, and not revolutionary, state that is not wanted by either the extreme left or the left.60

Even though Guizot’s historical works were an important influence on Tocqueville’s political thought, Tocqueville remained a stern critic of Doctrinaire liberalism.61 The most significant difference between Tocqueville and the Doctrinaires is in the question of sovereignty. Rather than relocate sovereignty in reason, Tocqueville unequivocally embraces the sovereignty of the people. Indeed, his trip to the United States was motivated by his desire to make 58 Guizot, ‘De la souveraineté.’ 59 Guizot, Histoire de la civilisation en Europe, ed. Rosanvallon, p. 343. 60 Tocqueville to M. Corcelle, 14 November 1839; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin. XV.1, 142. Here he speaks of Rémusat, but on 19 March 1838 he wrote: ‘The morality of Guizot continues to tire me more than I am able to say’ (p. 98). 61 Drolet, review of Craiutu’s Liberalism under Siege; Varouxakis, ‘Guizot’s Historical Works and J.S. Mill’s Reception of Tocqueville.’

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sense of the new democratic world, and in American republican practices he saw a system of politics suited to a democratic age. It is to his trip to America that I now turn.

Tocqueville’s Trip to America and the Sovereignty of the People Evidence from Tocqueville’s letters demonstrate that even before 1830 and the fall of the Restoration Monarchy, he was convinced that the explanatory power of the ideas of constitutional monarchy no longer made sense in the face of ‘entirely new world.’62 The French Revolution had not only destroyed the institutions and material conditions that gave life to the old regime, but it had also been a major step in the advance of equality in the feelings and ideas of the people. The desire to make sense of this new world is what motivated his trip to the United States, and what he saw in America gave him important evidence for how to make democracy work. The supposed reason for Tocqueville and Beaumont’s trip to America was to study the prison system, but they had from the beginning hid their intentions to write a larger book on American democracy.63 What was originally conceived as a coauthored work became Beaumont’s romantic novel Marie, ou l’esclavage aux Etats-Unis and Tocqueville’s De la Démocratie en Amérique. What they saw in America changed more than their writing, however. They were astonished at many elements of American social life: not least the contrast between the highly democratic social life within the republic with that of the highly undemocratic exclusion of non-whites. The decision to write two books was partially driven by the sense that the role of race in the American republic deserved to be treated independently. Beaumont’s Marie, a tragic novel telling the story of a star-crossed biracial couple, was in many ways ahead of its time.64 While Beaumont looked at the limits of American democracy, Tocqueville focused his eye on the structure of the American republic and how the American political system regulated the democratic social state. What Tocqueville saw in American political and religious practices tapped into some of the Jansenism of his upbringing, but also made him see those practices in a different light. When he returned home to France, Tocqueville 62 DA I (Gallimard), 43. 63 There have seen several studies of Tocqueville and Beaumont’s trip to America: Pierson, Tocqueville and Beaumont in America; Damrosch, Tocqueville’s Discovery of America. 64 Slave narratives did not develop as a genre until mid-century, for example.

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was not only more convinced that the mixed sovereignty envisioned by Jansenists and constitutional monarchists would inevitably be replaced by the sovereignty of the people, but also that this fact had important effect on how the Americans practiced their faiths. From these observations, he saw a way in which the Jansenist theory of orders could be reworked to make sense of a democratic society. In a theme that runs from his notes and letters in America, through the preparatory work for writing the first volume of Democracy in America, and most especially in the text of that work itself, American political and religious practices pushed him to see this French heritage in new light.65 A letter Tocqueville wrote from America in 1831 to his cousin Louis de Kergolay helps us to understand how a modified version of the Jansenist theory of orders helped him to explain what he saw in America. This is a key letter that, although it is largely concerned with spectrum of religious opinion in America, also indicates how what Tocqueville saw in America brought out these Jansenist elements. The themes in the letter can be seen in the chapters and notes of Democracy in America dealing with the progress of belief in the democratic social state, as well as the role of religion in American political life. The entire letter is focused on the contrast of reason and authority; the same contrast that is so central to Pascal’s ‘Conversation with Sacy on Epictetus and Montaigne.’ It is an incredible thing to see the infinite subdivisions into which the [Protestant] sects have been divided in America. One might say that they are circles successively drawn around the same point; each one is a little more distant than the last. The Catholic faith is the immobile point from which each new sect distances itself a little more, while drawing nearer to pure deism. You feel that such a spectacle cannot fail to throw the mind of a thinking Protestant into inextricable doubt, and that indeed is the sentiment I think I see visibly ruling in the depth of almost everyone’s soul. It seems clear to me that reformed religion is a kind of compromise, a sort of representative monarchy in matters of religion which can well fill an era, or serve as passage from one state to another, but which cannot constitute a definitive state itself and which is approaching its end.66

In this letter Tocqueville also develops a thesis that later appears in Democracy in America: that even American Protestant sects, through time, 65 DA I (Critical Edition), 662-669; DA II (Critical Edition), 1360-1364. 66 Tocqueville to Kergolay, 29 June 1831; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin. XIII.1, 225.

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were tending towards a more Catholic type of belief. It is not only that Protestants are converting to Catholicism but that social processes at work in democratic societies are driving the practices of belief towards Catholic centralization. Tocqueville’s criticism of ‘reformed religion’ and ‘representative monarchy’ is absolutely applicable to traditional Jansenism, but he is struggling to articulate a new set of concepts to help make sense of the new world. As Tocqueville continues the letter, he begins to explicitly draw on the Jansenist trope of the order of justification, but to argue that the type of mixture between ‘reason’ and ‘authority’ that characterizes traditional Jansenism and constitutional monarchy breaks down under the political conditions of equality of conditions: It is evident that all the naturally religious minds among the Protestants, serious and complete minds, which the uncertainties of Protestantism tire and which at the same deeply feel the need for a religion, are abandoning the despair of seeking the truth and are throwing themselves anew under the empire of authority. Their reason is a burden that weighs on them and which they sacrifice with joy; they become Catholics […]. That is one of the ends of the chain; now we will pass to the other end. On the borders of Protestantism is a sect which is Christian only in name; these are the Unitarians. Among the Unitarians, which is to say among those who deny the Trinity and recognize only one God, there are some who see in Jesus Christ only an angel, others a prophet, finally others a philosopher like Socrates. These are pure deist; they speak of the Bible, because they do not want to shock opinion too strongly […]. Thus you see: Protestantism, a mixture of authority and reason, is battered at the same time by the two absolute principles of reason and authority […]. But do you not wonder at the misery of our nature? One religion works powerfully on the will, it dominates the imagination, it gives rise to real and profound beliefs; but it divides the human race into the fortunate and the damned, created divisions on earth that should exist only in the other life, and gave birth to intolerance and fanaticism. The other preaches tolerance, attaches itself to reason, in effect its symbol; it obtains no power, it is an inert work without strength, and almost without life.67

67 Tocqueville to Kergolay, 29 June 1831; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin. XIII.1, 225-227.

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This letter, which Tocqueville finishes by asking to Kergolay to keep a copy of because he will want to look at it later, indicates that Tocqueville looked at Grégoire’s defense of religious councils and the political theory of constitutional monarchy attached to it as akin to as an ‘intermediate stage.’ Like Protestantism, Jansenism is a mixing of reason and authority that has become untenable in the modern age. In this letter Tocqueville is in a certain way conceding to Maistre that sovereignty is absolute and unitary, especially Maistre’s view of Catholicism. More importantly, however, Tocqueville is rejecting the Maistrienne search for political myth to serve as the foundation of legitimacy – a search that rejects reason altogether – and that makes both politics and religion into matters of authority only. By conceding the future of religious belief to Maistre, he is able to recapture the importance of the political. Tocqueville’s juxtaposition of the ‘two absolute principles of reason and authority’ creates inverted absolutisms: the one of the soul (authority and religion); the other of the reciprocal relationships amongst men (reason and politics). The final effect of the letter is that Tocqueville recognizes the type of traditional Catholicism he prefers is a thing of the past.68 Tocqueville’s letter to Kergolay summarizes many of his central observations about the social practices of the Americans, based not only his observations and interviews but on an extensive set of notes he took on American religion. Unitarianism and Catholicism in America were of particular interest to Tocqueville. As he does in the letter to Kergolay, he views them as representative of the polarities that define the changed nature of religion in a democratic age. He returned to France with a small collection of Unitarian pamphlets, while inquiries about the American Catholics are common themes in his notes. Tocqueville’s understanding of the general trends that make divided sovereignty and reformed religion impractical in modern conditions also sets the foundation for his defense of the ‘dogma of the absolute sovereignty of the people’ in the first volume of Democracy in America.69 Chapter IV, ‘Of the Principle of the Sovereignty of the People in America,’ is the clearest statement of his defense of the ‘dogma of the sovereignty of the people.’70 In America, he argues, the dogma of the sovereignty of the people ‘is not at all hidden or sterile as in some nations: it is recognized by moeurs [mores or habits], proclaimed by the laws, it extends itself with freedom, and 68 DA II, 540. 69 DA I, 64. 70 DA I (Gallimard), 277.

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arrives without obstacle at its most remote consequences.’71 The political system he saw in America is not analogous to the divided structure of the Catholic Church; rather, it mimics God’s power over creation: In some countries power is divided, at once placed in society and outside of it. But nothing of the kind is to be seen in the United States: there society governs itself for itself. All power is centered in its bosom […] the people participate in the writing of laws by the choice of legislators; laws are applied by the election of an executive power, on top of which the part left to the administration are weak and restrained because they know of their popular origin and obey the power from which they came. The people reign over the world of politics in America like God over the universe. He is the origin and end of everything; from Him comes everything and to Him it all returns.72

This passage is Tocqueville’s conclusion to the chapter. The original French of the last sentence, translated as ‘from Him comes everything and to Him it all returns’ is particularly telling: ‘tout en sortie et tout s’y absorbe.’73 Whereas Maistre used Montaigne’s skepticism to turn Pascal’s parallel worlds of divided sovereignty into parallel absolutisms, Tocqueville envisions the two worlds of religion and politics as symmetrical opposites: religion becomes increasingly dominated by the absolute principle of authority, but as compensation, politics is opened up to reason and the ‘free play of intelligence.’74 Tocqueville maintains Maistre’s insistence that sovereignty is unitary and absolute, even conceding an important part of the future of religious belief in the democratic social state, but recaptures the distinction between the two orders by making them inverted, rather than parallel, absolutisms. Indeed, Tocqueville’s defense of absolute sovereignty is connected to his argument that there is no longer ‘a middle term between the sovereignty of the people and the absolute power of one person […] the social state I have just described is equally conducive to both of these consequences.’75 It was above all the republican heritage of America that Tocqueville went to study, but it was not only the difference between America and France that he saw. He argued that America was a European civilization, and he 71 72 73 74 75

DA I, 61. DA I, 64. DA I (Gallimard), 109. DA I, 38. DA I, 59.

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identified the shared heritage of the township – in French, the commune – as one of the most important elements of this republican tradition.76 In America he saw the transplantation of this culture but in a truly democratic manner. It convinced him that a democratic republic could work. Others recognized these republican themes as well. The notes made by his father and brother on the manuscript show that they became very nervous when Tocqueville spoke like a democratic republican.77 Guizot used a review in La Revue française of a book by Edouard Allez, entitled De la démocratie nouvelle, to attack Tocqueville by proxy and to defend the Doctrinaire vision of sovereignty tied to the ‘political capacities’ of a liberal and rational citizen. Guizot even cites Pascal – ‘if he is proud, I humble him, I he is humble I seek to raise him up’ – as a means of defending his own vision of the democratic social state regulated by a liberal monarchy.78 He argues that ‘Thought has become a power,’ and he cites Rousseau in defending his vision of liberalism against the twin ideas of ‘individual’ and ‘popular sovereignty.’79 This is why individuals, who consult their reason before using their liberty and who recognize that this rule prescribes that their conduct have morality and reason, understand at the same time that they were not at all the ones who made it. This rule is not at all the arbitrary work of his will, and it is not up to individuals to abolish or change it. Their will is free to obey or disobey their reason, but in turn reason is independent of the will.80

This theoretical debate is at the heart of the political differences between Guizot and Tocqueville during the July Monarchy. Whereas Guizot and the Doctrinaires used the idea of a democratic social state as the platform of their liberal politics, Tocqueville uses almost exactly the same trick in defense of his republicanism: ‘Democracy constitutes the social state, the dogma of the sovereignty of the people constitutes political right. These

76 DA I, 15. 77 Hervé asks: ‘Besides, isn’t this all relative to what have actually passed among us, and to the government that has succeeded the Restoration?’; Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts, C.III. b, I, 9. 78 Guizot, ‘De la démocratie,’ p. 196. 79 Ibid., 200, 202. 80 Ibid., 208.

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two things are not at all analogous. Democracy is a way of being in society, the sovereignty of the people is a form of government.’81

Conclusion: The Modern Republicanism of Alexis de Tocqueville Alexis de Tocqueville very clearly viewed republics and constitutional monarchies as the only two legitimate forms of government. In the long term, he sought to defend a republic and to introduce republican institutions into France: ‘I have always believed, you know, that constitutional monarchies eventually lead to republics.’82 At other points he hoped for a return to the Bourbons and a kind of fusion with republicanism.83 Much of July Monarchy republicanism, however, was focused on the radical deinstitutionalization of the people, whereas Tocqueville emphasized the need for ‘gradually introducing democratic institutions into France.’84 Nonetheless, his ultimate defense of the sovereignty of the people makes him distinctly republican. Having embraced Rousseau’s notion of sovereignty meant that he also had to rework many other elements of the republican tradition in France. His search for a set of theoretical tools to make sense of the new political world of the July Monarchy is what motivated his trip to America. What he saw there convinced him that the age of monarchy was over, and that the age of democracy has begun. Tocqueville sat at the crossroads between aristocratic and democratic ages; to articulate a new vision of political order, he reached back to the Atlantic republican tradition to find pieces he could refashion. Jansenism was only part of that heritage, but an important part. A robust mix of French republican theory and American republican practice enabled Tocqueville to develop a new set of theoretical tools to make sense of the emerging democratic world. In America, he claimed to have seen this world in a pure form, and from America he sought to draw political lessons for his contemporaries.

81 Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts, C.V. h I, 22. 82 Tocqueville to Ernest de Chabrol, 26 October 1831; Lettres choisies, souvenirs, p. 244. 83 Tocqueville, ‘Note pour le Comte de Chambord,’ 14 January 1852: œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin. III.3, 465-470; letter from Tocqueville to Beaumont: œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, VIII.2, 369-372. 84 DA I, 381.

5

Power and Virtue The Necessity of the Political in a Democratic Age By democracy, on the other hand, Aristotle meant to designate not simply a system of widespread participation in power […] but one in which power was widely distributed and yet despotically exercised […]. [The] precise meaning of the term would be rule by men not differentiated from each other, a system in which all power was exercised by mechanical, numerical majority, and only those goods taken into account which could be discerned on the assumption that all men were alike. Such would be a tyranny of numbers and a tyranny of equality, in which the development of individuality was divorced from the exercise of power, what a man was from what part he might play in politics. Aristotle was anticipating features of the modern concept of alienation, and there are elements of his criticism of undiscriminating equality in present-day criticisms of depersonalizing effects of mass society.1

The republic as it was understood from Machiavelli to the American founders has both institutional and moral aspects. Its institutional existence serves to regulate through law the relations of the citizens to one another, and the polis to foreign powers. And yet these institutions are also conceived as a site of moral development and the cultivation of virtue. The connection between the institutional and moral elements of the republic is a central republican claim, and whether or not one calls it prudence, interest properly understood, or just virtue, the moral relations of the republic transforms men into citizens. The category of intérêt éclairé (clarif ied interest) or intérêt bien entendu (interest properly understood) in France is an important part of the French ‘Machiavellian Moment.’ French republicans used it as a means of articulating a vision of prudence more accommodated to Christian notions of justice. It has a distinguished intellectual history running from seventeenth-century Jansenist moralists to eighteenth-century philosophes like Helvétius and even Tocqueville’s great-grandfather Malesherbes.2 In the eighteenth century, the kind of hiding or covering of self-love described 1 Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment, p. 72. 2 Malesherbes, Pensées et maximes: ‘Pride also advises modesty, calculation is adroit but it doesn’t make mistakes often,’ and ‘It is in order not to exclude the vices that one dons the name honnête,’pp. 43-44.

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by the seventeenth-century Jansenists remained prominent in the vision of the honnête homme; but at the same time it took on a second set of meanings used to reconcile the interests of subjects and sovereigns.3 The post-revolutionary liberal response to the experience of France as a republic challenged the basic republican assumption of the link between the institutional and moral parts of the state. Then, as now, the republican link between the institutions of republic rule and the virtues of citizens seemed, at best, dangerous. At worst, this link could be viewed as courting disaster, especially in light of the First Republic’s attempts to educate the citizenry and instill a regenerative virtue that degenerated into terror. Most liberals adopted this strategy in one way or another. 4 One of the main advantages, in fact, of the Doctrinaire turn to reason is that it eliminated the need for a virtuous citizenry. The turn to reason was only one liberal strategy, however. The other is best represented by the work of Benjamin Constant, who derives liberal ethics from intuition and moral sentiment, cultivated outside of the constraints of interest and power. Constant made the republican use of intérêt bien entendu a particular target in his book De la religion. For this reason, I begin this chapter with his argument interest properly understood is a kind of Epicureanism. Constant argues that interest – properly understood or not – should be replaced with a liberal vision that seeks to ensure a neutral and constrained political power that protects the development of sentiment in the private sphere. I then connect this argument about the nature of interest to his other main works, notably Adolphe and the lecture on ‘The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns.’ I argue that his criticism of utility and instrumental reason gives insight into his moral psychology, which seeks to divorce the cultivation of ethical dispositions from the corrupting considerations of power and interest. In this sense, his defense of the liberty of the moderns and negative rights has a strong normative foundation in his search for what can be called the authentic self. After articulating Constant’s criticism of the republican connection of the institutional and moral parts of the republic, I turn to Tocqueville’s modern solution. Building from French republican theory and American republican practices, Tocqueville re-envisions the category of interest properly understood in a democratic mode. This democratic republican vision of interest properly understood is cultivated in the institutions of the republic and learned through engagement with power. 3 Helvétius, œuvres complètes, p. 351. 4 Kalyvas and Katznelson, Liberal Beginnings.

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Tocqueville’s critique of Constant’s liberalism is twofold. In opposition to Constant, Tocqueville seeks to show that interest properly understood does not sap the root of the higher virtues, but instead prepares democratic citizens for the reception of them. From this first criticism, Tocqueville concludes that interest properly understood is a necessary but not sufficient condition of democratic social order. Tocqueville’s second rejoinder to Constant recaptures the republican nexus of institutional and moral parts of the republic. Tocqueville argues that the political virtues of the Americans come from the use of power. Only through the use of power do the Americans develop ethical dispositions necessary for political life, such as respect for the rights of others or the difference between violence and moral suasion. Through the use of power and a kind of learning by doing, the practices of politics themselves teach republican citizens those habits necessary for politics. In the conclusion I argue that this republican perspective contains an important criticism of those types of liberalism that, like Constant, seek to separate the cultivation of ethical dispositions entirely from the institutions of the republic. In the first case, Tocqueville’s notion of virtue is less morally demanding. Although Constant’s liberalism seeks to reduce the need for virtue, it has the perverse effect of making the private realm exclusively responsible for the development of both citizens and persons. By asking democratic citizens to cultivate political virtues in private spaces, Constant’s liberalism places a heavy burden on the private to produce the entirety of ethical dispositions necessary for political democracy. Tocqueville respects the need for private virtue and the private sphere and insists only on the necessity of a small amount of readily available and easily acquired political experience. In the second case, I argue that in an absolute separation of the ethical and the political can be viewed as ethically dangerous in its rejection of considerations of interest and power entirely. Indeed, without the opportunity to learn the lessons of politics, this kind of liberalism threatens to leave citizens less capable of responding to situations of power and, indeed, more subject to it.

The Liberal Challenge: Constant on the Liberties of the Ancients and the Moderns It might seem strange that a liberal such as Constant would be opposed to the category of interest properly understood, but a look at his political thought reveals that Constant’s turn away from republicanism also led him

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to turn away from the category of interest more generally. He argues that ‘all systems are reduced to two. The one takes interest as the guide and wellbeing as the goal. The other offers perfectibility as the goal and sentiment as the guide,’ grouping under the former Bentham’s utilitarianism, Machiavelli’s economy of violence, and the Jansenist vision of interest properly understood.5 Constant’s criticism is that interest properly understood is a kind of Epicureanism that thinks that all morality can be derived from interest alone, but he connects this criticism to the need for protected sphere of negative rights which leaves space for the development of the higher virtues of selflessness.6 In the preface to De la religion, Constant argues that while interest properly understood can lead to the creation of social order, through its ‘indifference to good and evil,’ ‘piercing irony,’ and ‘piquant gaiety,’7 it had ‘destroyed spirituality.’8 Constant presents a psychological argument about what it means to use interest as a basis of ethical decision-making. He argues that excessive attention to interest has the effect of reducing the value of other-oriented behavior, possibly even destroying the very desire to act unselfishly. Constant contests the idea that the dictates of interest properly understood are the same as a system of ethics: ‘nothing is less assured than the victory of interest properly understood to tendencies contrary to morality. This interest, when dominant, first smothers this passion, if it can.’9 His argument in De la religion paraphrases exactly the type of honnête homme that defines the earlier moral use of interest properly understood. In De la religion, he acknowledges that he is ‘separating himself’ from ‘many great men with whom I share many principles […] and honor their character.’10 The men who preach interest are ‘in defiance with religious emotions, and want to substitute them for the exact calculations of interest properly understood. This interest, they say, can establish order and make the laws respected.’11

5 Constant, De la religion, I, p. xxxix. See also his ‘De M. Dunoyer, et de quelques-uns de ses ouvrages,’ in Constant, Mélanges de littérature et de politique, pp. 125-143. 6 Ibid., xxxix. 7 Ibid., xxx. 8 Ibid., xxxv; Jaume, Tocqueville, pp. 178-190. 9 Ibid., xxxviii. 10 Ibid., xix. 11 Ibid., xxxviii.

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To Constant, however, any interest is nothing more than calculation: it is ‘prudence, egoism, and fear,’12 a ‘shameful neutrality as a demonstration of merit,’13 and while there ‘was nothing of vice in this; only prudence, moral arithmetic, the faction of reason and logic in man separated from his noble and elevated part; there you have it in a word, intérêt bien entendu.’14 This infinite ‘flexibility’ is a genuine danger for Constant, and he warns ‘don’t annihilate the only disinterested motives in him.’15 Intérêt bien entendu, he argues, will cause the ‘human species to give up all at once everything that makes it powerful […] to close it within a sphere that isn’t its own, and to condemn it to a state of baseness contrary to its nature.’16 Finally, because interest ‘makes each individual a center […] all are isolated.’17 In opposition to this ‘dry doctrine,’ Constant argues that there is a ‘religious sentiment,’ a faculty he defines as ‘being subjected, dominated, and exalted in a manner independent of, or even contrary to, interest.’18 In contrast to interest, the religious sentiment is linked to the higher virtues, like the development of love. Constant argues that if the religious sentiment is a mistake, then ‘love is a mistake […] it would be necessary to overcome pity itself.’19 No, nature has not placed our greatness in our intérêt bien entendu, but in our intimate sentiments. This feeling makes us aware of what is good and bad. Intérêt bien entendu only makes us aware of what is advantageous or harmful.20

Ultimately, the problem with intérêt bien entendu is that by following it as a rule, men ‘lose the charm that made them celestial, and by making them seem prudent, reserved, afraid of doing too much, we thought that the soul was for nothing.’21 Constant’s criticism of the principle of utility – in all its forms – is here seen in its clearest light. Instrumental reasoning of advantage

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Ibid., xxii. Ibid., xxvii. Ibid., xxxiii. Ibid., xxxv. Ibid., xxi-xxii. Ibid., xxxxiv. Ibid., xxiv. Ibid., xxvi. Ibid., xxv. Ibid., xxxi.

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and disadvantage slowly kills the intuitive and sentimental origin of the knowledge of good and bad. The lecture on the liberties of the ancients and moderns is the cornerstone of most scholarship on Constant’s œuvre.22 Constant’s answer was not, as it is sometimes portrayed, a complete turn away from political liberty but instead was an attempt to find other sources of liberty in a world in which the direct participation of all in sovereignty was impossible. Not only does the size of modern nations make it impossible for individuals to meet and discuss in person, but also the increasingly diverse populations brought together make the republican emphasis on virtue more dangerous. Constant had a normative as much as practical purpose in his criticism of ancient liberty.23 It is not only that ancient liberty in the model of Athens is unpractical, but also that Constant’s philosophical division of all systems into either interest or sentiment necessarily entails consequences for how we envision politics. He seeks to ‘separate the idea of right from that of utility’ and to defend right ‘as a principle.’24 In order to do so, he needs to carve out a social space removed from considerations of power and utility where the religious sentiment, or feeling, can flourish. He therefore not only defends the religious sentiment as the origin of human greatness but also seeks to protect the spaces in which this sentiment can flourish. To make sense of this system of private sentiment, it is helpful to look at the intersection of De la religion with Adolphe. In both of these works, Constant defends his vision of modern liberty as the cultivation of individual feeling: in the first case of De la religion, world history moves from the pagan indifference to modern respect for individual feeling similar to Adolphe’s sentimental education; in the second, the power of priests plays a similar role in preventing the development of the higher sentiments of love as Adolphe’s father and uncle. In De la religion, Constant contrasts the modern and ancient in much a similar way as in his famous lecture. Constant makes special note of the modern focus on individual dignity and sincerity to the pagan indifference of antiquity. His description of pagan practices of toleration is a particularly strong rejoinder to those who would wish to recreate ancient liberty in modern times. He demonstrates how pagan indifference to the religion of foreigners was combined with political persecution of citizens who did not

22 Holmes, Benjamin Constant. 23 Todorov, Benjamin Constant. 24 Constant, Principles of Politics, ed. Hofmann, p. 40.

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accept the gods of a particular state.25 The failure of pagan religion is that it restricted religious questions to external practices with no consideration of internal sincerity of belief.26 While the particular religious forms of Greek paganism and Christianity were important steps in the development of the sentiment of dignity, the theistic tendency in Constant’s religious works means that neither of these forms serves as a sufficient model for modern religion.27 Constant is notably anticlerical in this work. Priests, whose position of authority gives them an interest in controlling the religious sentiment, act as one of the main antagonists to its development. Constant is remarkably critical of Hinduism, the rationalism of which served only as a cover for the material interest of the priestly class.28 For sentiment to flourish freely, it must be removed from considerations of power. Constant’s ideal is a personal and authentic relationship with the divine which, separated from the interests of priests and politicians, allows the development of the higher virtues: ‘Wherever there is calculation, manipulation or interest as a motive, the plan to make an instrument of religion and to bend it to a goal outside itself, the religious sentiment at first withers, and then disappears.’29 Religious toleration, then, is only instrumental to the development of feelings of sincere belief. The genuine expression of this sentiment has been described as the ‘authenticity of subjective sentiment before God’ and the ‘free flow of feeling.’30 Where De la religion helps to identify the normative content beneath Constant’s defense of the private realm and the need to protect the private development of feeling from the incursions of political power, his great novel Adolphe is helpful in identifying the vision of the self connected to this separation of political power and ethical development.31 This vision of the self is focused on the search for sincerity and authenticity in the same way as Constant’s history of religion, but its moral is demonstrated through the tragic love affair between Adolphe and Ellénore. The corruption of Adolphe’s love in the novel always takes place as a result of the introduction of calculation or power: their initial estrangement comes as a result of 25 Constant, De la religion, IV, 202-205. 26 Ibid., II, 375-379. 27 Ibid., IV, 363-365. See also Kloocke, ‘Benjamin Constant et l’Allemagne.’ 28 Ibid., III, 170-275. 29 Ibid., III, 21. 30 Pitt, ‘The Religion of the Moderns,’ esp. p. 74. 31 The vision of Constant’s authentic self here shares much with Pitt, ‘The Religion of the Moderns,’ and Garsten, ‘Religion and the Case against Ancient Liberty.’

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Adolphe’s dissimulation of his feelings, while her ultimate death is a result of the pressure put on Adolphe by his uncle to break with her in order to pursue a career in government.32 Constant’s vision of the authentic self draws heavily on Rousseau’s romanticism in the way it prioritizes sincerity and transparency as an ethical ideal. While Constant turned away from the Rousseau of the Social Contract, the corruption of the natural goodness of man found in the Discourse on Inequality and La Nouvelle Héloïse is an important precursor of this ideal.33 The novel itself is a coming of age story: Adolphe learns to overcome his ‘indifference’ and discovers in his love for Ellénore the need to direct his actions according to sincere feeling.34 Feeling is the uncorrupted motivation of intuition that enables a kind of ‘transparency of the heart.’35 Only the development of this kind of intuition teaches the moral distinction between good and bad, and justice is only knowable to persons through the authentic development of feeling.36 Constant’s basic distinction between ancient indifference and modern respect for internal sentiment helps to fill in the normative content of his speech ‘The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns.’ Not only is ancient freedom inappropriate for modern times, but it holds the possibility of directly interfering with the development of the higher sentiments because it introduces questions of interest and power. The ancient model of freedom then, for Constant, is almost exactly backwards. While free as sovereigns, the private lives of citizens were entirely subject to the state: No importance was given to individual independence, neither in relation to opinions, nor to labor, nor, above all, to religion. The right to choose one’s own religious affiliation, a right which we regard as one of the most precious, would have seemed to the ancients a crime and a sacrilege.37

32 In Adolphe, Constant writes: ‘The instant a secret exists between two loving hearts, the moment one of them decides to conceal one single thought from the other, the spell is broken and happiness destroyed […] dissimulation brings into love a foreign element which perverts and withers it, even to itself,’ pp. 50-51. 33 Brint, ‘Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Benjamin Constant.’ For a broader discussion of ‘sensibility,’ see DeJean, Ancients against Moderns. 34 Constant, Adolphe, pp. 8-10. 35 Pitt, ‘The Religion of the Moderns,’ p. 86; his language is purposely borrowed from Starobinski, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. 36 Vincent, ‘Benjamin Constant.’ 37 Constant, ‘De la liberté des anciens,’ p. 283.

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Because the ancients viewed the state as the site of the highest ethical development, all other matters were subordinated to considerations of the state and political power. This was nothing less than ‘the complete subjection of the individual to the authority of the community.’ This complete subjection to the state means that power perverts and prevents the development of sincere belief in religion in an analogous way it interferes with commerce.38 It is easy to see, given the content of De la religion, why Constant places such normative value on negative rights and individual independence: We still possess today the rights we have always had, those eternal rights to assent to the laws, to deliberate on our interests, to be an integral part of the social body of which we are members. But governments have new duties; the progress of civilization, the changes brought by the centuries require from the authorities greater respect for customs, for affections, for the independence of individuals […]. Institutions must achieve the moral education of the citizens. By respecting their individual rights, securing their independence, refraining from troubling their work, they must nevertheless consecrate their influence over public affairs, call them to contribute by their votes to the exercise of power, grant them a right of control and supervision by expressing their opinions; and, by forming them through practice for these elevated functions, give them both the desire and the right to discharge these.

While Constant does not turn away from politics entirely, he defends a negative notion of rights. Rights are ‘guarantees’ protecting the private realm: citizens have the right to ‘assent to the laws and deliberate on our interests’ but aside from voting, Constant’s notion of the political is restricted to the ‘proxy’ of representation, and the ‘expression of opinion’ in the press. Accordingly, the most important means by which the state guarantees the moral education of citizens is by not interfering with the development of sentiment in the private sphere.39 The positive value of the ‘intellectual equality’ is in formal respect for rights, not the substantive use of rights. This reading of De la religion connects Constant’s essay on the ‘The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns’ to a theory of history and a vision of the self that fills in his normative defense of modern liberty. Constant’s strong theoretical division between interest and sentiment 38 Ibid., 261. 39 Kelly, ‘Who Needs a Theory of Citizenship?’ See also Kalyvas and Katznelson. ‘“We Are Modern Men”.’

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corresponds to a public/private distinction which seeks to restrain state power in order to free the private development of sentiment. Only sentiment teaches the difference between good and bad, and sentiment can only be developed outside of the constraints of political power.

Tocqueville’s First Rejoinder: Individualism and Interest Properly Understood Tocqueville’s first rejoinder to Constant is that interest properly understood does not sap the root of virtue; rather, Tocqueville seeks to show how this kind of interest both leads citizens to recognize a common interest, and actually prepares citizens for practicing of the higher virtues of selflessness. Where Constant argues that interest attacks the religious sentiment, Tocqueville uses Pascal’s theory of the self to show how a citizen who lives according to the rule of interest will judge it, in fact, in his own interest to embrace religious faith itself. Developing interest properly understood is doubly important for Tocqueville because it also helps combat one of the particular dangers of democratic republics: individualism. Where individualism is a habit of thought that severs persons from one another, interest properly understood is a maxim that helps reconnect citizens to one another. Using Rousseau’s theory of the state, Tocqueville views individualism as a product of the institutions of the democratic republic, and interest properly understood is uniquely placed to combat it. As a maxim, it is cultivated in the vibrant social and political life of association, and all things equal, it serves as an excellent shorthand for citizens to use to regulate their public life. Rousseau’s state in the Social Contract is based on a double relation of individuals as subjects and sovereigns, of both ruling and being ruled. The people in their collective capacity are the sovereign, and they delegate their authority to the government. The government is the administrative relationship of the people to themselves. When considered as the authors of laws, the people are sovereign, and when considered as the followers of law, subjects. The desire to minimize the gaps in the circle of sovereignty largely motivates Rousseau’s preference for small states such as Geneva, although he does admit that there is a ‘proportional mean between each relationship, there is only one good government possible for a state.’40

40 Rousseau, On the Social Contract, trans. Cress, p. 174.

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Tocqueville reworks Rousseau’s distinction of sovereign and government into a distinction between the government and the administration. To Tocqueville, centralized government is a result of the sovereignty of the people: it is the ‘power which directs general interests’ and ‘is located in one place, or vested in the same persons […] whenever it is said that the State cannot act because it has no central point, it is the centralization of the government in which it is deficient.’41 Central administration, on the other hand, is more dangerous than centralized government because it puts not just decision-making in one place, but the execution and application of laws as well: ‘centralized administration enervates the nations in which it exists by incessantly diminishing their public spirit.’42 Additionally, Tocqueville used Rousseau’s structure of the state to conceive of the origins of individualism. It is of democratic and modern origin. 43 It is partially a result of equality of conditions and partially of the tendency for the subject relation to take precedence over the citizen in the republic. In the Old Regime, Tocqueville very clearly connects the growth of French individualism of the eighteenth century to the growth of the absolutist state. 44 It is a ‘mature and calm feeling’ that causes citizens to ‘sever’ themselves from others and retire to the private society of family and friends. Individualism does not threaten public life directly, but in its tendency to cause individuals to ‘willingly leave society at large to itself […] [it] saps the virtues of public life.’45 Egoism is a ‘blind instinct’ causing individuals to prefer themselves to ‘everything in the world’ and to ‘connect everything with his own person.’46 Individualism results in a kind of atomism that causes persons to conceive of themselves as independent but, in fact, threatens to make them isolated and dependent. It is also important to note that individualism, while dangerous, is actually a rational response to a role of the citizen in a democratic republic. It is not a vice that Tocqueville seeks to eradicate, but rather a necessary one that must be counterbalanced. As a matter of political ideology, individualism itself is derived from the collective right of self-determination. Tocqueville posts as a ‘Corollary of the principle of the sovereignty of the people’ the idea that ‘everyone is the best judge of his own interest.’47 This principle 41 DA I, 96. 42 DA I, 96. 43 DA II, 620. 44 Tocqueville, Old Regime, 118-135. 45 DA II, 620. 46 DA II, 620. 47 DA I, 71.

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is reflected beyond the people considered in their collective capacity, all the way down to a sphere of individual independence, ‘In nations which recognize the sovereignty of the people, every individual possesses an equal share of public power, and participate alike in the government of the State.’ From this collective right, he argues, comes the individual right to self-determination: ‘If he be a subject in all that concerns the mutual relations of citizens, he is free and responsible to God alone for all that concerns himself.’48 Tocqueville concludes: Hence arises the maxim that every one is the best and sole judge of his own private interest, and that society has no right to control a man’s actions, unless they are prejudicial to the common weal, or unless the common weal demands his co-operation. This doctrine is universally admitted in the United States. 49

Interest properly understood is Tocqueville’s solution to how democratic citizens, as sovereigns, develop a kind of practical wisdom in the realm of association. The ‘means by which the inhabitants of the United States almost always manage to combine their own advantage with that of their fellow citizens’ is the vibrant social and political life of association; interest properly understood is ‘the general rule which enables them to do so.’50 Interest properly understood attaches itself to the considerations of individual interest and turns them towards the public good: ‘By its admirable conformity to human weakness, it easily obtains great dominion; nor is that dominion precarious, since the principle checks one personal interest by another, and uses, to direct the passions, the very same instrument which excites them.’51 As a countervailing habit of thought to individualism, interest properly understood helps to draw ‘man out of his own circle to interest him in the destiny of the State.’52 Because individualism is developed by looking at individuals as subjects, and tends to separate them, there must be a way of explaining why citizens dedicate themselves to the public, and that allows them to overcome the isolating tendencies of democratic political institutions. The doctrine of interest properly understood helps make sense of how ‘particular interest merges with general interest.’53 48 49 50 51 52 53

DA I, 72. DA I, 73. DA II, 620. DA II, 590. DA II, 627. DA II (Critical Edition), 918.

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One of the most distinguishing features of Tocqueville’s chapters on interest properly understood are the rare quotations of other philosophers. First, he cites Montaigne as the paradigmatic follower of prudence; second, he cites Pascal when looking at how interest properly understood is applied to religion: Montaigne said long ago: ‘Were I not to follow the straight road for its straightness, I should follow it for having found by experience that in the end it is commonly the happiest and most useful track.’ The doctrine of interest rightly understood is not, then, new, but amongst the Americans of our time it finds universal acceptance. Whatever ingenuity may be put forth to demonstrate the utility of virtue, it will never be an easy task to make man live aright who has no thoughts of dying. It is therefore necessary to ascertain whether the principle of interest rightly understood is easily compatible with religious belief […]: ‘To be mistaken in believing that the Christian religion is true,’ says Pascal, ‘is no great loss to anyone; but how dreadful to be mistaken in believing it to be false!’54

It should be noted that Tocqueville’s use of Pascal as a counterpoint to Montaigne is not without historical precedent. In the Pensées, in fact, Pascal’s interlocutor in the famous Wager fragment is a skeptic, and Pascal is well known for having very much loved the work of Montaigne even as he was responding to it. What Tocqueville is doing in these passages is using the idea of an order of justification and a Jansenist psychology to demonstrate how the cultivation of intérêt bien entendu can lead citizens back to religious faith. To do so he considers how the political experience of democratic citizens affects their opinions on religion. To apply the principle of interest rightly understood to religion, Tocqueville makes a strange observation. He argues that ‘founders of almost all religions’ and the ‘philosophers’ who preach interest properly understood in fact ‘speak the same language.’ He describes the similarity this way: [They] tell men that to be happy in this life they must watch their own passions and steadily control their excess; that lasting happiness can only be secured by renouncing a thousand transient gratifications; and that a man must perpetually triumph over himself, in order to secure his own advantage […]. The track they point out is the same. 54 DA II, 648, 652.

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The difference between these two tracks is that religion, ‘instead of placing in this world the reward of the sacrifices they impose, transport it to another.’ The similarity of the ‘two tracks’ of religion and interest allows them to be mutually reinforcing. Tocqueville argues that ‘It is not easy to see why the principle of interest properly understood should keep men aloft from religious opinions; and it seems to me more easy to show why it should draw men to them.’55 The influence of Pascal in these passages is evident. The prudent Americans not only use their practical wisdom to judge matters of religious belief, and thus are consciously drawn to religion, but by disciplining themselves in their search for worldly happiness, ‘it will cost little’ to ‘submit to the restrictions’ of religion: ‘Reason herself councils him to obey, and habit has prepared him to endure them.’56 Already accustomed to think towards the future through following interest, the democratic citizen strangely predisposes himself to acceptance of belief, not straight through the will but indirectly through habit. The means by which interest properly understood draws people towards religion is by inculcating the habits of self-denial and calculation that reduce the costs of religious belief. Tocqueville argues: Let it be assumed that in order to find happiness in this world, a man combats his instinct on all occasions and deliberately calculates every action of his life; that, instead of yielding blindly to the impetuosity of first desires, he has learned the art of resisting them, and that he has accustomed himself to sacrifice without an effort the pleasure of a moment to the lasting interest of his whole life.57

Interest properly understood, by itself, will not make men ‘virtuous,’ but it will discipline them in ‘habits of regularity, temperance, moderation, self-command; and if it does not lead men straight to virtue by the will, it gradually draws them in that direction by their habits.’58 And when this calculative person comes to judge the afterlife, the principle of interest advises him to take Pascal’s Wager: ‘To be mistaken in believing the Christian religion true is no great harm to anyone, but how dreadful to be mistaken in believing it false!’59 55 56 57 58 59

DA II, 650. DA II, 652. DA II, 651. DA II, 648. DA II, 652.

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Tocqueville’s opinion in these two chapters was reprised in an exchange of letters between himself and Royer-Collard, just after the publication of the first democracy. Here, however, Tocqueville uses it to criticize Machiavelli: ‘For me, the Machiavelli of the History of Florence is the Machiavelli of The Prince […] always the same indifference to justice and injustice, the same adoration for skillfulness no matter what the means, the same esteem for those who succeed.’60 ‘I cannot resist the desire to tell you, in general, what I think,’ Tocqueville writes: What has always struck me with The Prince is that, all told, it is a superficial book, despite the occasional profound thought. I will try to explain myself: in The Prince there is a great storehouse of villainy; he professes eloquently the art of crime in political matters, it is a complicated machine in which cunning, deceit, lies and intrigue are the main springs. But to what end is all of this for? It seems to me that I see at each moment a student of Machiavelli’s who outs himself while trying to perform a ruse: in wanting to fortify one side, his machinations are discovered someplace else. He is never so skillful that he is not seen as such, and his treasons are never so well hidden that he is not in the end taken for a traitor.61

What does Machiavelli miss in Tocqueville’s mind? If the author had truly known the weaknesses and vice of man, he does not at all have the air of doubting the existence, at the bottom of the human heart, a vague but powerful sentiment of justice which, sooner or later, plays a role. If it is common to see a villain succeed for a while, it is very rare to see him execute anything great and durable.62

Tocqueville’s ultimate criticism of Machiavelli is that he could have reached his goal through a much easier means of honesty (honnêteté): ‘In sum, Machiavelli works so brilliantly and laboriously to become a great criminal, but I think it would be less difficult to teach men how to perform great affairs by simply being honest.’ It is not that politicians must be perfectly ethical, but that:

60 Tocqueville to Royer-Collard, 25 August 1836; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, I, 20. 61 Ibid., 20. 62 Ibid., 20.

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For me, I imagine that, if Machiavelli had tried to teach to men the art of mixing together doses of cunning and rightness, of truth and error, which would more surely lead them to success, if he had taught them to mix together deception, violence and intrigue with great care so as to only use it in extreme cases, in lieu of always having recourse to it; if he told them how envelop their vices in simulated virtues and, when possible, in real virtues of the sort that our contemporaries rest in suspense and our posterity indecisive; if, in a word, he had showed them the means of accomplishing their designs by the least bad means possible, I think that it would be proof of a genius as perverted, but much more truly profound than the one which wrote The Prince.63

Royer-Collard, in his response to Tocqueville, argues for the same connection between virtue and utility. ‘You are right,’ Royer-Collard says, ‘usefulness, exploited by the greatest skillfulness, is even at the root of honesty and not only as goal, but also as a means. I have passed my whole life in this comparison: experience well studied and with the aid of time, has always spoken in favor of honesty.’64 So much did Tocqueville agree with Royer-Collard’s summation that ‘experience well studied […] has always spoken in favor of honesty’ that he quotes the phrase back to him in the next letter.65 It is this vision of republican virtue that Tocqueville saw in America, not an ‘ancient virtue’ based on ‘disinterestedness’ but rather an ‘interest which is well understood, which in the end is nearly the same.’66 Tocqueville’s recovery of interest properly understood transposes this earlier republican category into a democratic register. ‘As it lies within the reach of all capacities, everyone can without difficult apprehend and attain it […] the principle of interest, rightly understood, appears to me the best suited of all philosophical theories to the wants of men of our time.’ And as a guide to political action, the principle of interest properly understood is not only right more often than wrong, but also it helps to lay the foundation for the reception of religious belief. Thus, even if it is judged as ‘incomplete, it must nevertheless be adopted as necessary.’67

63 64 65 66 67

Ibid., 20. Royer-Collard to Tocqueville, 16 September 1836; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XI, 22. Tocqueville to Royer-Collard, 13 October 1836; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XI, 24. DA I (Critical Edition), 509. DA II, 649.

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The Jansenist Toolbox: Pascal, Nicole, d’Aguesseau While Rousseau gave Tocqueville the vocabulary to conceive of the institutions of a modern republic, Tocqueville’s description of the virtues of democratic citizens also draws on the Jansenist theory of the self. Tocqueville draws four lessons from the Jansenist theory of the self: the theory of the two states of man’s nature, a hierarchy of the passions, the psychology of practice, and the co-development of reason and passion. Pascal develops this philosophical anthropology from the biblical story of the fall of Adam. To Pascal, in line with Jansenist thought, there are two natures in man. The two natures incessantly conflict, and the dualism of humanity is linked to a conception of the mystery of the human heart:68 ‘What makes our inability to know things absolute is that they are simple in themselves, while we are composed of two opposing natures of different kinds, soul and body.’69 This mystery is equally the division in the will: ‘the will of man is divided between two principles: cupidity and charity.’70 Moreover, in the obscurity of the human heart there are unintended consequences: ‘There are certain mechanisms in our head so arranged that we cannot touch one without touching its opposite.’71 Using this theory of the self, seventeenth-century Jansenists set the terms for how a kind of enlightened self-love could be cultivated. To do so, they used a hierarchy of passions from fear and the desire for glory, to economic interest, and finally the desire to be loved itself, which forms the basis of social esteem. By carefully turning the passions against themselves, Jansenists argued that self-love could mimic virtue, even as it was still self-regarding. A particularly pure expression is Pierre Nicole’s essay ‘Of Charity and Self-love.’ This essay is a marvelous example of an ‘enlightened self-love,’ which ‘imitates humility,’ and even though ‘it does not speak the same language as charity,’ it will give ‘the same answer as charity does to most questions we can ask of it.’72 Building from Pascal, Nicole gives an important sense of order to sometimes difficult to connect themes in the Pensées.73 Pierre Nicole’s essay develops this system of concupiscence by

68 Mitchell, ‘Reclaiming the Self’; Starobinski, Blessings in Disguise, trans. Goldhammer, p. 128. 69 Pascal, Pensées, ed. Krailsheimer, p. 65. 70 Ibid., 177. 71 Ibid., 185. 72 Pierre Nicole had been Pascal’s secretary while he was working on the Pensées; Nicole, ‘Of Charity and Self-love,’ p. 372. 73 Sellier, Pascal et saint Augustin, pp. 112-200.

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identifying a hierarchy of passions that act to ‘check’ self-love: fear, interest, and the desire to be loved. Pierre Nicole uses Thomas Hobbes as an example of the power of fear to restrain the passions. Nicole uses an analogy with atoms expanding in space which, by coming into contact with the power of other atoms, reach equilibrium by opposing force against force. The second stage is the reciprocal needs of commercial society and is identified with the passion of interest. In a state of society where ‘open violence’ is ruled out, men are obliged to use ‘artifice instead of force,’ and turn to satisfying ‘the self-love of those whom they need, instead of tyrannizing it.’74 It is ‘by means of this trade,’ he argues, that ‘all of life’s needs are somehow met without involving charity.’75 Pierre Nicole even paraphrases commercial society and the principle of exchange as the golden rule: ‘One gives in order to be given.’76 It is the third check on self-love – the pursuit of affection and esteem – that most closely imitates charity. There is no one, Nicole argues, ‘who is not happy to be loved,’ and whereas ‘not many can even aspire to power, making oneself loved is within everyone’s reach.’ This pursuit of men’s esteem has the advantageous quality of being ‘the most common’ and feeds many other desires that ‘are favorable to it such as admiration, respect, trust.’ It is universal and insidious, combining itself and hiding in almost every passion: This inclination is so cunning and so subtle, and at the same time so pervasive, that there is no action into which it cannot creep; and it knows so well how to assume the appearances of charity that is almost impossible to know clearly what distinguishes the two; for by pursuing the same course and producing the same effects it obliterates with marvelous canniness all traces and all marks of the self-love that has given rise to it, knowing full well that it would not obtain any of the things it desires if they were noticed.77

It is in this universal, pervasive, and hidden quality of self-love that cause it to ‘assume the appearance of charity’ so that ‘it is almost impossible to distinguish the two.’ The act of ‘suppressing,’ ‘hiding,’ and even ‘obliterating’ self-love for the ‘sake of pleasing men’ is the ‘Pagan’ idea of honnêt eté, ‘a more

74 75 76 77

Ibid., 372. Ibid., 373. Ibid., 373. Ibid., 374.

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intelligent and more adroit self-love than that of the world at large.’78 The hierarchy of passions identified by Nicole is central to the reconceptualization of what constitutes interest itself. It contains both the criticism of the social emotion of fear, and a wonderful example of the kind of economy of love envisioned by this idea of prudence. While Pierre Nicole does an excellent job at summarizing and tying together many elements of the Jansenist idea of the honnête homme, the essay ‘Of Charity and Self-love’ does not consider the question of how to cultivate belief and the relationship between habit and the will found in the Pensées. This moral psychology is found in Pascal’s famous fragment on the Wager. After delivering his proof by probability that belief in God is rational, Pascal imagines the objection of his skeptical interlocutor, who admits that according to reason he ought to believe, yet still cannot. Pascal argues: Concentrate then not on convincing yourself by multiplying proofs of God’s existence but by diminishing your passions. You want to find faith and you do not know the road. You want to be cured of unbelief and you ask for the remedy: learn from those who were once bound like you and who now wager all they have. These are people who know the road you wish to follow, who have been cured of the affliction which you wish to be cured: follow the way by which they began. They behaved just as if they did believe, taking holy water, having masses said, and so on. That will make you believe quite naturally, and will make you more docile.79

While on the surface this piece of advice might seem a bit frivolous, it is based on a sophisticated observation Pascal makes of the relationship between habit and the will. Pascal’s argument here is that the practices of belief can help to turn the will towards belief in an indirect manner. ‘Custom is our nature. Anyone who grows accustomed to faith believes it, and can no longer help fearing hell, and believes nothing else.’80 By performing the rituals and external expressions of religion, the heart will slowly begin to ‘turn’ the will more and more towards belief: There are three ways to believe: reason, habit, inspiration. Christianity, which alone has reason, does not admit as its true children those who believe without inspiration. It is not that it excludes reason and habit, 78 Ibid., 375. 79 Pascal, Pensées, ed. Krailsheimer, p. 125. 80 Ibid., 125.

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quite the contrary, but we must open our mind to the proofs, confirm ourselves in it through habit, while offering ourselves through humiliations to inspiration, which alone can produce the real and salutary effect.81

The practice of the rituals themselves helps to cultivate belief indirectly, and because ‘the heart has its order, the mind has its own,’ the best thing to do for those waiting for inspiration (the true motivation of the heart) is to use the practice of religion to prepare themselves for it.82 The final element of the Jansenist psychology that needs to be understood is how the intuitive knowledge given by the heart is co-developed with the rational knowledge of the head.83 Pascal uses the idea of an order of justification to argue that the head and the heart are polarities that touch at the extremes, like following the circumference of a circle. Pascal’s description of the ‘two types of mind’ each represent one of these polarities: the esprit de finesse, the order of the heart and the intuitive understanding; the esprit de geometry, the order of the head and rational knowledge.84 The heart, defined by ‘intuition’ gives ‘first principles like space, time, motion, number, are as solid as any derived through reason, and it is on such knowledge, coming from the heart and instinct, that reason had to depend and base all argument.’85 Thus, the esprit de geometry is the logical mind, the esprit de finesse the intuitive mind, and knowledge lies in the combination of these two ways of understanding:86 ‘Love gives intellect and is sustained by intellect.’87 Chancellor d’Aguesseau’s essay ‘The Love of Country’ uses Pascal’s theory of the passions to articulate a vision of the love of country that ‘we know through sentiment […] follow through reason […] that we should

81 Ibid., 244-245. 82 Ibid., 94. 83 This polarity can also be seen in Rousseau’s political thought: Cottret, ‘Les Jansénistes juge de Jean-Jacques’; Tournu, ‘Augustin revisité.’ 84 Pascal, Pensées, fragments et lettres, ed. Faugère, pp. 151-153. 85 Pascal, Pensées, ed. Krailsheimer, p. 28. 86 ‘[T]he key to Rousseau’s thought is the tension between two polarities […] a knowledge which is both a product of reason and an outgrowth of compassion’; Cocker, Nature and Culture, p. 151. Similarly, Hayden White argues that Rousseau does not ‘set these prefigurative modes of cognition over against rational modes by way of opposition […] [he was not] interested in forcing a choice between the poetic modes of cognition and the rational or scientific ones’; Tropics of Discourse, p. xi. 87 This essay is another one that was commonly included in editions of the Pensées. See Pascal, Pensées, fragments et lettres, ed. Faugère , p. 107.

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ever follow through interest.’88 ‘Don’t tell me,’ d’Aguesseau argues, that the love of country ‘is a foreign plant in monarchies […] will it not grow as happily and taste as sweet in a monarchy as in a republic?’ This kind of love of country is where ‘each citizen […] regards the fortune of state as his own’ and develops a kind of ‘fraternal civility […] which unites citizens in a similar way as a family’ and is based on uniting self-love with the love of country: ‘The love of country has become a type of self-love,’ and citizens come to ‘love each other through love of the republic, even to love it more than themselves.’89 D’Aguesseau finishes his essay with an appeal for a regeneration of the love of country in Regency France. He argues that France has a ‘great royalty, and no country; a great population, but no citizens.’90 Interesting the citizenry in the fortune of the state is the work of wisdom or prudence, ‘attaching the state to the government by its charms, this is the great work of sagesse,’ and he connects the development of this interest to the role of the intermediate orders in France: ‘all the orders of the state, so prudently interested in the success of the government, contribute to its success through a perfect harmony.’91 His use of Pascal’s theory of the passions shows how self-love and love of country mutually develop, and to recreate the lost love of country, d’Aguesseau argues the prudent prince must make politics itself interested through the charms and delights of participation in political institutions. One of Tocqueville’s personal letters helps to understand how he is building from the Jansenist theory of the self: One cannot say absolutely that man becomes better in becoming civilized, but rather that man in becoming civilized gains all at once both virtues and vices that he did not previously have; he has become another person, that is the clearest I can make it.92

The set of qualities given by the democratic social state is a modern kind of a second nature. What is unique about Tocqueville’s use of two natures is that the second nature of man born from the democratic social state is actually closer to man’s first or primary nature. To describe how the Americans cultivate republican virtues, he puts this Jansenist toolbox to full use. 88 89 90 91 92

Aguesseau, ‘L’Amour de la Patrie,’ in Œuvres Completes, ed. Pardessus, I, 226-236 (p. 229). Ibid., 230. Ibid., 233. Ibid., 235. Tocqueville to Charles Stöffels, 21 April 1830; Lettres choisies, souvenirs, p. 147.

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From Subject to Citizen: The Moral Relations of the Republic I will now extend my analysis from above to demonstrate how this combination of French theory and American practice allowed Tocqueville to conceive of how Americans cultivated a small set of political virtues in the institutions of the republic. Rather than try to minimize the distance between subjects and sovereigns by collapsing the relationship between the government and the sovereign, what Tocqueville saw in America was a way to multiply the spaces of politics and to fill in the gaps of representation. The Americans, he explains, ‘thought it would be well to infuse political life into each portion of the territory, in order to multiply to an infinite extent the occasions for acting in concert for all the members of the community […]. This plan was a wise one.’93 To be sure, this focus on intermediate orders is influenced by Montesquieu, and can even be pulled out of certain readings of Rousseau, but it was what he saw in America that made him believe it could function.94 From towns to counties, states and the Federal Union, and then back down to citizens through decentralized administration, Tocqueville saw in America overlapping institutions in which ‘power has been disseminated with admirable skill for the purpose of interesting the greatest possible number in the common weal.’95 This multiplication of power not only works up from the citizen to the government, but back from the administration to the subject. Administration in America has ‘nothing either central or hierarchical in its constitutions […] there is no point that serves as a center to the radii.’96 The decentralized administration in America was another way that, by ‘fracturing sovereignty,’ multiplied and maximized engagement with the institutions of the republic.97 This system of association begins in the township. It is both a small, immediate circle of self-rule in which the people of the town meet in assembly as the government and elect its own administrative agents, and is the first link in the chain of association that connects citizens to the central government and each other through the cultivation of public spirit: ‘Municipal independence is therefore a natural consequence of the principle 93 DA II, 629. 94 In contrast to Montesquieu, Tocqueville viewed these intermediary orders as being artificial in democratic republics: ‘associations must come to replace the powerful individuals who in aristocracies take charge of bringing sentiments and ideas to light.’ DA II (Critical Edition), 895; Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts C.V. f, 25. 95 DA I, 74. 96 DA I, 79-80. 97 Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts C.V. h II, 104.

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of the sovereignty of the people in the United States.’98 The township has an immediate and non-representative character, ‘so perfectly natural that whenever a number of men are collected it seems to constitute itself.’99 The township itself is constituted by both a government by assembly and a numerous amount of public officers, the duties of which are ‘extremely numerous and minutely divided.’100 Administration is almost universally paid to ensure that everyone can ‘undertake these different functions.’101 The town meeting also appoints a multitude of other officers, all of whom perform smaller, but important, functions. From assessors, collectors, constables, town clerks, treasurers, overseers of the poor, school committees, they are ‘still further subdivided.’102 The circle of independent action which the township retains for itself is the key to its effects. A township is not perfectly independent, of course, but is ‘sovereign in all that concerns itself alone: subject to the state in all other matters.’103 Accordingly, the township ‘possesses two advantages which powerfully excite the interest of men, namely, independence and power.’104 As its ‘independence gives it real importance’ and ‘men’s affections are drawn only in the direction of where power exists,’ the Americans see in the township ‘a social body which is strong and free, of which everyone is a member, and that is worthy of the effort spent in trying to lead it.’105 This combination of independence and power draws the affections of men and transforms them into citizens ‘without independence and power, a town may contain good subjects, but can have no active citizens.’106 The township is also the site of the local administration of many laws and regulations decided at the state and federal level, and it further serves as a powerful means used to interest citizens in the welfare of the state: It is in the township, the center of ordinary business of life, that the desire for esteem, the pursuit of real interests, and the taste for power and popularity are concentrated; these passions, which are so often trouble

98 DA I, 72. 99 DA I, 66. 100 DA I, 69: ‘the system of representation is not adopted.’ 101 DA I, 71. 102 DA I, 70. 103 DA I, 71. 104 DA I, 73. 105 DA I (Gallimard), 121. 106 DA I, 73.

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to society, take on a different character when exercised so close to home and, in a sense, within the family circle.107 The native of New England becomes devoted to his township because it is strong and independent: his co-operation in its affairs ensures his attachment to its interest; he loves it because he has no reason to complain of his lot; he places in it his ambition and his future; he is a part of every instance of communal life: he practices the art of government in the small sphere within his reach; he accustoms himself to those forms which can alone ensure the steady progress of liberty, he imbibes their spirit; he acquires a taste for order, comprehends the union of the balance of powers, and collects clear practical notions on the nature of his duties and the extent of his rights.108

The threefold combination found here of the ‘desire for esteem,’ the ‘pursuit of interest,’ and the ‘taste for power’ recreates the Jansenist moral psychology of glory, interest, and the desire to be loved by others. Because ‘everyone, in his sphere, takes an active part in the government of society,’ the Americans develop a zealous ‘interest’ and are ‘alive to the perception of the influence exercised by the general prosperity upon their own welfare.’ Tocqueville’s notes to Democracy in America repeatedly emphasize the egoistic nature of this republican patriotism, and in the text he argues that Americans do not take part in the affairs of government ‘from a sense of pride or duty’ but instead from ‘cupidity,’ ‘vanity,’ and ‘egoism.’109 Although it is the material power of the township that draws the interests of the citizen, the psychological mechanism that actually bonds the citizen to the township is eminently Pascalian. Tocqueville even uses a religious analogy to express this idea. ‘In the United States,’ he argues, ‘they think that patriotism is a sort of religion, the devotion of which is only learned through practices.’110 The original French is notable: ‘Aux Etats-Unis on pense avec raison que l’amour de la patrie est une espèce de culte auquel les homes s’attachent par les pratiques.’ A variant substituted bienfaits (benefits) for pratiques as the last word in the sentence, and made the religious analogy more explicit: ‘They multiply the rights and obligations of the commune in 107 DA I, 73. 108 DA I, 76. 109 DA I, 281. In his notes Tocqueville writes quite simply: ‘Here is a central idea. | Egoism’; Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts, C.V. a, 5. 110 DA I (Gallimard), 123.

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order to attach, like a religion through its practices, men by its benefits.’111 This is the heart of Tocqueville’s moral psychology and the key to the system of democracy in the United States that taps and channels the egoism of democratic citizens. Just as Pascal’s advice to the unbeliever in the Pensées is to ‘kneel down and pray,’ in order that habit can slowly begin to turn the heart towards faith, so too is Tocqueville’s political analysis of the public spirit in the township underpinned by the habits and practices of everyday democracy. The townships are the motors of virtue, but, to extend public spirit to the whole nation, it is then abstracted through association and freedom of the press. This abstraction demonstrates Tocqueville’s use of Jansenist developmental psychology based on the reciprocal influences of reason and the passions. First the township and then the other republican institutions of America transform the rough egoism of citizens into the ‘thinking patriotism of republican citizens.’ In the abstraction of public spirit, Tocqueville describes how the instinctive ‘love of the homeland’ is transformed into the rational ‘love of country.’112 The ‘instinctive, disinterested, and indefinable feeling which connects the affections of man with his birth place’ is the first kind of patriotism, and it is united with a taste for ‘ancestral traditions,’ ‘customs,’ and ‘those who cherish it love their country as they love the mansions of their fathers.’113 In the United States, he argues, they were ‘thrown but yesterday upon the soil which they now occupy […] the instinctive love of their country can scarcely exist in their minds.’ Paraphrasing Pascal, Tocqueville argues in Democracy in America: It was remarked by a man of genius that ‘ignorance lies at the two ends of knowledge.’ Perhaps it would have been more correct to have said, that absolute convictions are to be met with at the two extremities, and that doubt lies in the middle; for the human intellect may be considered in three distinct states, which frequently succeed one another. A man believes implicitly, because he adopts a proposition without inquiry. He doubts as soon as he is assailed by the objections which his inquiries may have aroused. But he frequently succeeds in satisfying these doubts, and then he begins to believe afresh: he no longer lays hold on a truth in its

111 DA I (Critical Edition), 113. 112 DA I, 276. 113 DA I, 278

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most shadowy and uncertain form, but he sees it clearly before him, and he advances onwards by the light it gives him.114

The transformation of egoism that causes citizens to interest themselves in the welfare of their country is the development of public spirit. This type of enlightened egoism is ‘coeval with the spread of knowledge, it is nurtured by the laws, it grows by the exercise of civil right, and in the end, it is confounded with the personal interest of the citizen.’115 Cultivated first in the township, and then abstracted up to the nation through newspapers and associations, the idea of a ‘love of country’ based on the rational interest of citizens is at the heart of how Tocqueville explains how modern republican virtue is cultivated in a notion of participation widely understood: Laws cannot succeed in rekindling the ardor of an extinguished faith, but men may be interested in the fate of their country by the laws. By this influence the vague impulse of patriotism, which never abandons the human heart, may be directed and revived; and if it be connected with the thoughts, the passions, and the daily habits of life, it may be consolidated into a durable and rational sentiment.116

As the first link in the circle of sovereignty, the township plays an important role in linking the citizen to the central government through the development of public spirit: ‘The public spirit of the Union is, so to speak, nothing more than an abstract of the patriotic zeal of the provinces. Every citizen of the United States transfuses his attachment to his little republic in the common store of American patriotism.’117 The kind of interest that forgets itself is one very important root of Tocqueville’s notion of republican virtue. He both uses the same hierarchy of motivations, and the idea of self-love covering itself. Thus, the raw ambition of the Americans hides from itself: When the public is supreme, there is no man who does not feel the value of public goodwill, or who does not endeavor to court it by drawing to himself the esteem and affection of his fellow man. Many of the passions 114 115 116 117

DA I, 216. DA I, 279. DA I, 76. DA I, 185.

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which congeal and keep asunder human hearts, are then obliged to retire and hide below the surface. Pride must be dissembled; disdain dares not break out; egoism fears itself […]. Men learn at such times to think of their fellow men from ambitious motives; and they frequently find it, in a manner, in their interest to forget themselves.118

The covering of self-love, however, is not always as purely interested as the Americans themselves would admit. In fact, the Americans ‘sometimes seen to give way to those disinterested and spontaneous impulses which are natural to man, but they rarely admit that they yield to emotions of this kind.’ He concludes that ‘at the present time civic zeal seems to me to be inseparable from the exercise of political rights; and I hold that the number of citizens will be found to augment or to decrease in Europe proportion as those rights are extended.’119 The political practices that Tocqueville saw in America not only lead to the cultivation of public spirit but to other political virtues as well. In addition to the rational and enlightened patriotism of the Americas, the respect for rule of law and respect for the rights of others are key virtues for democratic citizens. In his descriptions of how each of these habits is cultivated, Tocqueville not only paraphrases Christian moralist language, but he does so in a way that connects power to ethical development. Respect for the rights of others and the rule of law, as virtues, are connected to the use of power in republican practices of association and the jury. The use of the right of association gives democratic citizens access to the experience that allows them to understand the distinction between the use of violence and moral suasion; the jury teaches democratic citizens habits of legality that separates political power from legal right. Citizens also learn a political analog to the golden rule: to respect the rights of others because they want their own rights respected. Only in the realm of the political – broadly understood to include the full range of political and civil society – do citizens transform the desire ‘to fight’ into the desire ‘to discuss’ and move from a Hobbesian world of naked power into one of reciprocal equality and mutual recognition. Tocqueville contrasts how rights are understood in America and France to explain how citizens learn the limits of their rights. In America, rights like the freedom of association are used within the bounds of the law; that is, with respect for the rights of others, and are ‘managed with discretion.’ 118 DA II, 590. 119 DA I, 280.

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In France, Tocqueville argues this basic limit is rarely respected, and rights are regarded ‘as a weapon which is to be hastily fashioned, and immediately tried in the conflict.’ ‘The reason,’ he argues ‘is our inexperience in using this freedom.’ Accordingly, ‘The first notion which presents itself to a party, as well as to an individual, when it has acquired a consciousness of its own strength, is that of violence: the notion of persuasion arises at a later period and is only derived from experience.’120 The moral psychology that transforms the desire to fight into the desire to debate is again based on the Pascalian mechanism of practice, but here it is paraphrased in a Christian moral language of do unto others: I am persuaded that the only means which we possess at the present time of inculcating the notion of rights, of rendering it, as it were, palpable to the senses, is to invest all the members of the community with the peaceful exercise of certain rights: this is very clearly seen in children, who are men without the strength and the experience of manhood. When a child begins to move in the midst of the objects which surround him, he is instinctively led to turn everything which he can lay his hands upon to his own purposes; he has no notion of the propriety of others; but as he gradually learns the value of things, and begins to perceive that he may in his turn be deprived of his possessions, he become more circumspect, and he observes those rights in others which he wishes to have respected in himself. The principle which the child derives from the possession of his toys is taught to the man by the objects which he may call his own […]. The same thing occurs in the political world. In America the lowest classes have conceived a very high notion of political rights, because they exercise those rights; and they refrain from attacking those of other people, in order to ensure their own from attack.121

The tumultuous life of the township brings in the rough ego of democratic citizens, but through the use of rights democratic citizens learn to respect the rights of others so that their own rights, in turn, are respected. In France, however, the ‘country is lost to their senses they can neither discover it under its own nor under borrowed features, and they entrench themselves within the dull precincts of a narrow egoism.’122 The good use of rights then, is a

120 DA I, 224. 121 DA I, 282-285. 122 DA I, 280.

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process by which citizens learn this fundamental political habit by playing the game of democracy, so to speak. The second civic virtue is the respect for the rule of law. Respect for the rule of law is one of the most foreign elements to democratic order. This habit is diffused through society through the body of lawyers that act as an aristocratic counterweight to the majority, as well as from the personal experience of democratic citizens with the institution of the jury. The body of lawyers is the ‘unique counterpoise of democracy,’ and the ‘legal spirit […] is proper to neutralize the vices inherent in popular government.’123 Respect for the rule of law is not an essential part of Tocqueville’s conception of democracy and respect for the rule of law is one of the most difficult habits to maintain in democratic republics: I do not deny that there is a secret tendency in the United States which brings the people to want to reduce judicial power […] I do not dare to say that these innovations will one day have the sad result […] of not only threatening independent judicial power but the life democratic republic itself.

As he did in his description of how the Americans learn to respect the rights of others, Tocqueville paraphrases the language of Christian moralism in political terms: [Lawyers] like the government of democracy, without participating in its propensities and without imitating its weaknesses; whence they derive a twofold authority, from it and over it […] they constantly endeavor to give it an impulse which diverts it from its real tendency, by means which are foreign to its nature.124

This description of lawyers as holding a twofold authority over democracy is again a paraphrase of the Christian (and Augustinian) argument that the Christian life should be in, but not of, this world. The habit of respect for the rule of law diffuses amongst the citizenry though their personal experience with the institution of the jury and the fact that many lawyers seek public office:

123 DA I, 322. 124 DA I, 319.

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The influence of the legal habits which are common in America extends beyond the limits I have just pointed out […] all parties are obliged to borrow the ideas, and even the language, usual in judicial proceeding in their daily controversies […]. The jury extends this habitude to all classes. The language of the law […] infiltrates all of society, it descends to the lowest ranks, and end with the entire people having contracted the habits and the tastes of the magistrate.125

The jury as a political institution always ‘retains its republican character’ and is ‘one form of the sovereignty of the people.’126 The republican effects of the jury come from the fact that it entrusts citizens with the actual execution of the power of sovereignty, and in doing so it gives the authority to judge. It gives ‘a number of citizens […] the right to judge,’ and ‘the man who judges criminal offenses is the real master of society.’ Put differently, ‘the institution of the jury puts the people itself […] in the judge’s seat on the bench.’127 It is perhaps the singular institution that directly puts the exercise of sovereignty in the hands of citizens: The jury forms the part of the nation charged with the execution of the laws, in the same way that parliament is the part of the nation charged with making laws […] it puts the real direction of society in the hands of the governed. The jury […] is the soundest preparation for free institutions. It imbues all classes with a respect for the thing judged, and with the notion of right. If these two elements be removed, the love of independence is reduced to a mere destructive passion. It teaches men to practice equity, every man learns to judge his neighbor as he would himself be judged […] the jury teaches everyman not to recoil before the responsibility of his own actions, and impresses him with that manly confidence without which political virtue cannot exist. The jury contributes most powerfully to form the judgment and to increase the natural intelligence of a people, and this is, in my opinion, its greatest advantage. It may be regarded as a gratuitous public school ever open, in which every juror learns to exercise his rights, enters into 125 DA I, 324. 126 DA I, 326. 127 DA I, 326.

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daily communication with the most learned and enlightened members of the upper classes, and become practically acquainted with the laws of his country, which are brought within the reach of his capacity by the efforts of the bar, the advice of the judge, and even by the passions of the parties […] the jury, which is the most energetic means of making the people rule, is also the most efficacious means of teaching it to rule well.128

The institution of the jury is a powerful means by which citizens learn respect for the law and the extent of their own rights. It not only teaches the same moral of equity as the use of other rights, but it slowly assimilates the notion of justice itself to the rule of law. Judges themselves, by working with juries and explaining the legal process, make their power felt ‘on all the habits of mind, extending all the way to the soul even, of those who have concurred with him in pronouncing judgment.’129 Legality thus becomes ‘fused to the idea of justice itself […] it gives to all citizens some of the habits and ideas of a judge.’130 The jury brings citizens to understand that the rule of law is not just ‘a means’ but instead ‘the only means of obtaining justice.’131 The republican practices of association and the jury that Tocqueville saw in America help to cultivate ethical dispositions of the respect for the rights of others and the rule of law through the use of rights and political power. The jury is a particularly striking example of how considerations of power are an essential part of the ethical development of citizens. This slow assimilation of the idea of justice with the idea of the rule of law is not natural to democracy, and actually demonstrates the ultimate limit of interest properly understood as an ethic. Similarly, the institution of the jury not only combat individualism but also fights the more basic vice of egoism itself: It invests each citizen with a kind of magistracy; it makes each of them feel the duties he owes to society when they enter into its government. By forcing men to occupy themselves with something else than their own business, it fights individual egoism.132

128 DA I, 326, 330-331. 129 DA I, 332. 130 DA I, 328. 131 DA I, 328. 132 DA I, 329.

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Even democratic regimes need at least a small amount of those qualities associated with aristocracies. Though interest can help to create the majority of the habits necessary for democratic politics, the ability to restrain the desire for retribution and to seek recourse through the laws of the state cannot be created by interest alone. Through political practice, the Americans also learn the virtue of prudence, or ability to judge good and bad consequentially based on the effects of actions. Political experience sharpens their judgments about what is advantageous and harmful, and gives access to a kind of information unavailable in any other realm of social life. To introduce this final habit cultivated by the Americans, it is helpful to begin with a twist that Tocqueville gives to a classic trope in political theory. Tocqueville frequently thinks of the political body of the people as analogous to a natural person. But he not only conceives of the people in their collective capacity as a person, he also assigns the democratic sovereign a kind of personality. Tocqueville frequently contrasts the restless and impatient democratic sovereign with the patient and rational aristocratic one. He uses these personalities to demonstrate how the ‘tastes’ and ‘propensities’ of the two types of social order lead them to different political tendencies. The democratic personality of the state is remarkably immature, while aristocracies think further into the future than democracies: But it is this distinct perception of the future, founded upon judgment and experience that is most frequently wanting in democracies. The populace is more apt to feel than to reason […]. The people not only see less clearly than the higher orders what is to be hoped for or feared in the future, but also suffer far more acutely from present privations.133 The difficulty which a democracy has in conquering the passions and in subduing the exigencies of the moment, with a view to the future, is conspicuous in the most trivial occurrences of the United States. The people, which is surrounded by flatters, has great difficulty in surmounting its inclinations, and whenever it is solicited to undergo a privation or any kind of inconvenience, even to attain an end which is sanctioned by its own rational conviction, it almost always refuses to comply at first.134

133 DA I, 264. 134 DA I, 265.

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When following interest does not lead to a prudential course of action, the Americans as a people have a remarkably difficult time overcoming their prejudices. This criticism of the democratic personality, however, does not leave the people with no access to good and bad. Rather, political experience itself is the means by which democratic citizens come to ‘feel’ and ‘sense’ the consequences of their actions. When all of this experience is added up, the interest properly understood of the Americans is their saving grace: When these things are pointed out to the American statesmen, they content themselves by answering that time will operate the necessary change, and the experience of evil will enlighten the people and show them their real needs […] democracy can only discover truth from experience.135 A man of the people who is called into the government of society acquires a certain esteem of himself. Because he is an authority, minds more enlightened place themselves at his service. His aid is demanded by a multitude of persons, who by trying to trick him in a thousand different ways only enlighten him by their deceit.136

The mechanism of learning is through holding power, and through the use of rights citizens do learn the difference between good and bad: ‘the experience of evil will enlighten the people and show them what they need’ (sentiment du mal éclairera).137 In his notes to Democracy in America, Tocqueville wrote: ‘The people is often blind, and it falls into incredible errors. But I have always seen that it finished by being enlightened (s’éclairé) by its proper interests.’138 Tocqueville’s description of how republican citizens develop virtue is built from a mixture of Rousseau’s structure of the state, Pascal’s theory of the self, and American republican practices. From this broad mix of republicanism, Tocqueville is able to recapture the central republican claim that connects the development of ethical virtues by citizens to the use of power within the institutions of the republic. Moreover, the list of virtues found here is not exhaustive. In Democracy in America II, for 135 DA I, 266. 136 DA I (Gallimard), 366. 137 DA I, 266. 138 Tocqueville, ‘Cahier Alphabétique’; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin , V.1, 113.

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example, Tocqueville dedicates several chapters to how political experience moderates the democratic taste for general ideas.139 The key to the system Tocqueville saw in America, however, is the multiplication of centers of power, not only to maximize opportunities for citizen involvement but also so that power could be used to check power: ‘the intelligence as well as the power of the country are dispersed abroad, and instead of radiating from a point, they cross each other in every direction.’140

Conclusion: The Necessity of the Political in a Democratic Age Alexis de Tocqueville and Benjamin Constant were not alone in using the concept of intérêt bien entendu in the nineteenth century. Auguste Levasseur, in his book about La Fayette’s travel to America, also uses interest properly understood to reconcile liberty and equality and attack the institution of slavery by appealing to the ‘true interests’ of the Americans.141 Several historical works on the early modern Italian republics, like Machiavelli’s Florence, also contain references to the idea of interest properly understood.142 Constant developed a liberal response to this republican conception of virtue, but he was not against the idea of interest properly understood altogether. It does, he acknowledge, lead men to discipline themselves and work towards the future.143 However, he is clear in that interest properly understood should be replaced with a vision of ethical self-development removed from considerations of power and interest. In order to do so, Constant develops a very strong separation of ethics and politics on a liberal foundation, one that seeks to ensure neutral political power that protects the development of private feeling from interest and power. For Constant, power always remains a threat to ethical self-development and for a liberal society to function political power must be cut off from the private realm. Only a private realm free from political power allows for the self-cultivation of individuals through the expression of natural feeling.144 139 DA II, 528-529. 140 DA I, 212. 141 Levasseur, Lafayette en Amérique, p. 445. 142 Roscoe, Illustrations, Historical and Critical, p.  28; Sismondi, Histoire des républiques italiennes, p. 172. 143 Constant, De la religion, I, p. xii. 144 Constant’s vision of the self has been subject to several criticisms. The criticism I develop here is closest to that of Gauchet, ‘Tocqueville, l’Amérique et nous.’

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There are two unintended consequences of the way Constant separates private feeling from political power: first, in a strange way, his ideal of the authentic self is actually more morally demanding than Tocqueville’s modern republicanism; second, it can be viewed as is ethically dangerous in its categorical rejection of interest and power as a part of ethical development. In the first case, this separation of political power and ethical self-development puts a lot of weight on the private realm to develop the habits and ideas that underpin democratic politics. In the second case, Tocqueville demonstrates that the use of power is a necessary part of ethical development, not only in cultivating political virtues such as patriotism and respect for the rights of others, but more importantly in coming to understand ethical distinctions between good and bad, or political power and legal right. On the surface, Constant’s separation of the development of the principle of love from political power seems to require less of citizens, because it locates the development of sentiment in the private realm, seemingly freeing them from more dangerous and stringent political requirement. In Constant’s attempt to create politics with a different kind of citizenship, however, he unintentionally increases the role played by the private in creating ethical dispositions. The search for authenticity has to be a complete ethic to create both good persons and good citizens, and it is unclear if the private realm has the ability to create the entirety of public virtues unaided. In this way, Constant’s separation of ethics and politics is actually more morally demanding because it requires the private to do more for politics. Of course, Constant does not argue for giving up political activity altogether, but his vision of ethical development as antithetical to power does mean that politics as a sphere of action is in a uniquely poor position to develop ethical dispositions. To Constant politics is either instrumental to the pursuit of interest or principled in the defense of right, and there is no middle ground. Tocqueville’s modern republican notion of virtue does not require that one realm of social life cultivate a complete ethic for both persons and citizens. In this way, it is more accessible than Constant’s moral individualism. While there is little doubt that private virtue is conducive to public virtue, they are not synonymous. The republic requires virtues that are particular to itself, and which are easily available with a small amount of political experience. While citizens are frequently drawn into political space for reasons of power or interest, once there the action of using rights slowly transforms these rough passions into public spirit and respect for the rights of others. The moral psychology Tocqueville pulls from the Jansenists

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is based on the assumption that reason and sentiment co-develop. What this means is that power and interest can be used as a way to draw citizens into politics, but, once there, republican practices transform the pursuit of power towards the common good and lead to the development of a small set of republican virtues. By using ‘the same instrument which excites’ the passions to channel the energies of citizens towards the common good, Tocqueville’s vision is much less demanding on the private.145 We do not need selfless citizens devoted to the public good, but rather ones who recognize how their individual interest is linked to the public good. In the second case, Constant’s separation of ethical development and political power can be viewed as containing a particular ethical danger, in that it rejects considerations of power and interest altogether. The lessons learned in these centers of power are unavailable in other social realms. Through the use of rights, citizens move from a Hobbesian relation of domination to a republican conception of reciprocal equality and mutual recognition. The lessons of power are therefore essential to the ethical development of citizens, and only through the exercise of power do they come to understand the limits of power. Tocqueville’s notion of interest properly understood is ultimately a democratic and republican way of teaching citizens the difference between power well used and power abused.146 Political experience acts as an essential feedback loop that helps to make citizens aware of the consequences of their actions and to form their political judgment. While the personality of the democratic sovereign frequently obeys its passions to the prejudice of its interests, political experience gives citizens access to the knowledge of the consequences of their actions. Political association teaches respect for the rights of others, and the jury, because of the role it plays in bringing together the double relation of subject and sovereign, holds a special place in orienting citizens to power. Like the use of rights, it teaches citizens to treat others as they would like to be treated. More importantly, it teaches the difference between political power and legal right. These are the lessons of power, learned in political spaces and appropriate to the relation of citizen. While Constant’s liberalism is just one kind of many, I do think that his tendency to separate ethical development and political power is found in more common types of liberalism.147 It is at the root of many versions 145 DA I, 648. 146 Machiavelli, The Prince, ed. and trans. Musa, p. 73. 147 Judith Sklar’s focus on the ‘Janus-faced’ nature of power may be an exception; see ‘The Liberalism of Fear,’ p. 37.

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of negative theories of rights and the liberal desire to protect private life from the incursions of public power. Constant’s moral individualism insists that ethical development take place outside of the constraints and considerations of power, however, threatens to leave citizens unaware of how to respond to situations of power. If the use of power is a necessary part of ethical development, then the liberal requirement to develop these dispositions in private and carry them over into the public amounts to asking citizens to learn how to play a game without ever letting them on the court. Tocqueville’s modern republicanism does not insist on the need for heroic and selfless citizens, but it does insist that political virtues must be cultivated within the political spaces of the republic. As he put it in his notes to Democracy in America: ‘Getting democracy to moderate itself. Idea of the book.’148

148 Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts, C.V. k I, 28.

6

Religion (I) The Freedom of Education and the ‘Twin Tolerations’ in France, 1843-1850

Just three years after the publication of the second volume of Democracy in America, Tocqueville turned his theoretical and political eye to the subject of education. The occasion for this study was a fractious debate in France over education policy, or what they called the liberté de l’enseignement. Education policy itself was only of minor interest to Tocqueville, but he recognized – like many – that the matter at hand went beyond education. In a series of letters and speeches Tocqueville argued that the real matter at stake was the role of the Catholic Church in the French polis, and he recognized education policy as an important piece of this bigger puzzle.1 To make Tocqueville’s insight useful to contemporary political science, I connect my Jansenist interpretation of Tocqueville’s political thought to Alfred Stepan’s seminal article ‘Religion, Democracy, and the “Twin Tolerations.”’ Although seemingly from different worlds, Tocqueville and Stepan do not come from times so different as to be incomparable. Rather, I show that they are not only highly complementary in approach, but also that Tocqueville’s sociology can be used to extend Stepan’s insights in interesting ways. Stepan himself singles out education policy as an important arena for crafting the twin tolerations, and an edited volume that contains his essay concludes with a look at Tocqueville’s sociology of religion.2 This chapter bridges this gap by using Tocqueville’s participation in these debates on education policy as a case study of Stepan’s argument. In his article Stepan argues that liberal ideas of the ‘strict separation of church and state’ and ‘wall of separation’ should be replaced with what he calls the ‘democratic bargaining’ approach to constructing the ‘twin tolerations.’3 He argues that these liberal theories both fail to describe 1 This chapter was initially published in the Journal of Church and State as ‘The Path Not Taken: Tocqueville, the Freedom of Education, and Alfred Stepan’s “Twin Tolerations” in France, 1843-50.’ 2 Stepan, ‘Religion, Democracy, and the “Twin Tolerations”,’ p. 3; see also Fradkin, ‘Epilogue: Does Democracy Need Religion?’ in the same volume, pp. 245-78. 3 Recent work has built on Stepan’s insight. Jonathan Fox argues ‘no state has full SRAS [separation of church and state] except the United States […] greater than three quarters of states do not have SRAS’; ‘World Separation of Religion and State into the 21st Century.’ See also Kalyvas, ‘Democracy and Religious Politics.’

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how actual existing democratic polities interact with religious institutions and do a poor job of explaining how and why questions of the role of religion come to actually be ‘taken off the political agenda.’4 In the vast majority of cases this has only happened after ‘long periods of democratic bargaining’ that resulted in ‘friendly’ but not ‘too-friendly’ relationships between churches and states. He argues that these are ‘democratic – but not liberal – consociational agreements.’5 Within these boundaries, however, Stepan demonstrates that the mutual accommodations between democratic polities and religious institutions take a multitude of forms. From state support for religious schools, to officially recognized churches (while still leaving a wide range of religious tolerations) and tax breaks, when it comes to the twin tolerations there are a lot of ways to do it. Tocqueville was also concerned about the role of religious institutions in political democracy. Indeed, he tried to articulate an accommodated kind of Catholicism, one that could move beyond memories of the old regime and find a place in the ‘new society.’6 To conceive a French way of crafting the twin tolerations, he combined lessons learned in America with pieces of the French Catholic traditions of Jansenism and Gallicanism. From this mix of French theory and American practice he articulated a compromise in education policy that, he hoped, would have been a step towards ‘reconciling the new society with the Church.’7 As a factual matter, he failed. Not only did the government fail to pass a law, but the parties also came away further apart. In hindsight, it is clear that the failure of democratic bargaining in this period was a prelude to the fall of the July Monarchy just four years later. In the conclusion to this chapter, I argue that Tocqueville’s insights give some sociological reasons for thinking that education may be a particularly well suited policy arena to craft the set of mutual accommodations that Stepan calls the ‘twin tolerations.’ First, Tocqueville gives several reasons to think that educational bargains are likely to have higher social payoffs than bargains of other types, and may represent a cost effective development strategy for young democracies. Second, his view of education as a uniquely

4 Stepan, ‘Religion, Democracy, and the “Twin Tolerations”,’ p. 11. 5 Ibid., 11. Dahl’s eight criteria are freedom of association and expression, suffrage, eligibility for public office, political competition, freedom of the press, free and fair elections, and institutions for ensuring that governmental policies depend on votes and voter preferences. Linz and Stepan add a robust civil society variable, and a stronger constitutional variable. See Dahl, Polyarchy. 6 Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts, C.V. k I, 44. 7 Tocqueville to M. Corcelle, 15 November 1843; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XV.1, 174.

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mixed social good can be used to help construct a human right to education for use in a contemporary context.

Setting up the Problem: Stepan and Tocqueville as Third-Way Democrats The analogous point of views offered by these two thinkers is nowhere seen clearer than in their shared analysis of nineteenth-century French political life. Stepan recounts the acrimonious culture wars between ‘anti-Catholic republicans’ and ‘anti-republican Catholics’ that lasted the length of the nineteenth century.8 Tocqueville lived this history, and shared Stepan’s understanding of the fights between ‘zealous Christians […] who confound the idea of novelty with that of evil’ and the ‘partisans of liberty […] who see religion in the hands of their foes, and look no further.’9 From these conflicts between hard secularists and fervent believers, they each try to articulate a democratic third way. Equally as important as this similar theoretical viewpoint is the fact that Stepan and Tocqueville are particularly concerned with Catholic democracies. Tocqueville’s puzzle was trying to get France to transition to stable democracy; Stepan’s concern was the young democracies of Latin America. The need for each of them to make democracy in their own way pushed them to search for innovative solutions to the relationship between church and state. Stepan’s third way combines three elements: the use of democratic institutions to manage conflict and make public negotiations over matters of importance, the establishment of a set of mutual accommodations between religious institutions and states, and the role of individual choice in crafting the twin tolerations. Tocqueville shares these three elements but adds to them a sophisticated sociology that underpins his view of education. Using his notion of democratic social state, Tocqueville conceives of the ensemble of changes that France needed to undertake to transition and consolidate her democracy.10 ‘Far from wanting to stop the development of the new society,’ Tocqueville writes, ‘I seek to produce it.’11 8 Stepan, ‘Religion, Democracy, and the “Twin Tolerations”,’ p. 22. 9 DA I, 17. 10 There is a wider literature that has looked at how Tocqueville can be applied to other factors involved development and democratic transitions: Drescher, Dilemmas of Democracy; Bendix, ‘The Lower Classes and the Democratic Revolution’; Aron, Main Currents in Sociological Thought, trans. Howard and Weaver. 11 Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts, C.V. k I, 44.

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Stepan develops a typology of what he calls ‘hostile,’ ‘friendly,’ and ‘toofriendly’ regimes. He shows that both ‘hostile’ and ‘too-friendly’ states are frequently nondemocratic regimes, whereas democratic regimes tend towards a ‘friendly’ separation of church and state.12 Hostile states often view religious institutions as competitors, even to the point of being antagonistic to religion, whereas too-friendly states give one religion constitutional prerogative and preference. The ‘friendly’ relationship Stepan calls the ‘twin tolerations’ is a result of processes of democratic bargaining: Politics is about conflict, and democratic politics involves the creation of procedures to manage major conflicts. In many countries […]. In many of these cases the political containment, or neutralization, of religious conflict, was only constructed after long public arguments, and especially political negotiations, in which religion was the dominant item on the political and discursive agenda.13

While democratic bargaining is the means, the ends of the twin tolerations cuts a third way between too-friendly and hostile ways of thinking about church and state. For states, the ‘key area of autonomy’ is that ‘religious institutions should not have constitutionally privileged prerogatives which allow them to authoritatively mandate public policy to democratically elected governments.’ For churches, the ‘key area of autonomy’ is not just restricted to the freedom for individuals and communities to private worship, but also contains the right to participate in civil and political activities on equal standing with other groups. As long as churches and individuals obey the rule of law and refrain from violence, they have the same rights as any group to ‘advance their values in civil society, and to sponsor organizations and movements in political society […] [or to form] a political party.’14 The third element of Stepan’s approach is a focus on the importance on the political choices of democratic elites. To create the twin tolerations, Stephan also requires political elites to sell compromises to hardliners in efforts to build political support. In this case, political actors are often required to defend compromises from within the terms of religious and cultural worldviews, whether religious or secular. It is for this reason that 12 I am simplifying his typology, but for these purposes it is acceptable. See also Kunkler and Leininger, ‘The Multi-Faceted Role of Religious Actors in Democratization Processes.’ They too build from Stepan’s twin tolerations: ‘Recent research has shown that such a separation can rarely be found de jure, and is de facto nowhere present in contemporary democracies’ (p. 1064). 13 Stepan, ‘Religion, Democracy, and the “Twin Tolerations,”’ p. 12. 14 Ibid., 10.

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Stepan argues that when ‘a significant component of one of the world’s major religions may be under the sway of a nondemocratic doctrinally based religious discourse,’ then religious and political leaders are charged with the task of articulating ‘theologically convincing public arguments about the legitimate multivocality of their religion.’15 Stepan’s insight is that crafting the twin tolerations is a project that goes both ways: it not only requires a vision of the state accommodated to religion, but also a vision of religion accommodated to the needs of democratic political institutions. In 1843-1844, the religious landscape in France was changing.16 ‘Liberal Ultras’ like Montalembert or Lammenais drew from the thought of Restoration Ultras but fit this vision of religion to a new democratic context. There continued to exist nationalist Gallicans and a strain of Janseno-Gallicanism, but these too were increasingly being put to new uses. Even later into the Second Empire, it remained true that to distinguish between these two types of Gallicans, it was usually enough to look at their opinion on the appointment of bishops by the French state. Seeing in religion a powerful state interest, nationalist Gallicans tended to approve of this right, whereas reformists unanimously disapproved. Tocqueville’s attempt to craft a third-way between Ultras and republicans in France builds from the reformed Catholic traditions of Jansenism and Gallicanism. In these he finds pieces more suited to France’s contemporary needs, pieces that could help him create his own third-way. Nor was he alone in this project of articulating a version of Catholicism more accommodated to democratic political institutions.17 There were still reformist Gallican bishops in France (some of whom Tocqueville corresponded with) who not only looked at Rome with mistrust, but also were very willing to recognize a secular vision of the state. But the Absolutist and Napoleonic heritage represented by nationalist Gallicans worried him as well. Indeed, he saw this as a church ‘semi-nationalized’ and ‘an illogical compromise’ between the two powers.18 During the Second Empire, Louis-Napoleon’s manipulation of Catholics represented this mentality to Tocqueville, but during the July Monarchy it was the liberal Doctrinaires.

15 Ibid., 12. 16 Perreau-Saussine, ‘French Catholic Political Thought,’ p. 151; Perreau-Saussine, Catholic Political Thought in a Democratic Age. 17 Gough, Paris and Rome. Two of Tocqueville’s most well-known religious correspondents were the liberal Bishop Dupanloup and the Ultra Mme. Swetchine. 18 Tocqueville, ‘Église gallicane. Libertés de cette église’; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, III.2, 601-602.

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For Tocqueville there is both a legal and cultural component to crafting the twin tolerations. The main legal criteria are that priests do not hold public appointment or have preferred status in policymaking. In America Tocqueville says he was ‘astonished’ to find that priests did not hold public appointment, and he found that priests of all sects ‘differed upon matters of detail alone; and that they mainly attributed the peaceful dominion of religion in their country to the separation of Church and State.’19 Because they are ‘entirely separated from the government,’ religious actors come to defend the ‘democratic and republican’ state of society, and even seek to ‘justify its results.’20 As with priests, so to with believers. Tocqueville argues that American Catholics are not only the ‘most patriotic of citizens, but the most zealous believers.’21 The cultural component of the twin tolerations for Tocqueville is the reconciliation what he called the ‘spirit of liberty’ and the ‘spirit of religion’ in the mœurs of the people.22 The remarks I have made will suffice to display the character of AngloAmerican civilization in its true light. It is the result (and this should be constantly present to the mind) of two distinct elements, which in other places have been in frequent hostility, but which in America have been admirably incorporated and combined with one another. I allude to the spirit of religion and the spirit of liberty […]. These two tendencies, apparently so discrepant, are far from conflicting; they advance together, and mutually support each other.23

Tocqueville clearly views this project of reconciling liberty and religion as a necessary but not sufficient condition for consolidating a democracy. In Democracy in America, he argues that the ‘harmony’ of these two spirits is the ‘key to the entire work.’24 What Tocqueville means by ‘spirit’ here is simply that the majority opinion current in political and religious society tend towards a mutual respect for the activity of the other, ‘no religious doctrine displays the slightest hostility to democratic and republican institutions […] and the human intellect flows onward in one sole current.’25 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

DA I, 356. DA I, 348. DA I, 348. DA I, 373. DA I, 48. DA I, 31. DA I, 349.

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To try to craft this reconciliation in France, Tocqueville defends a vision of moral Catholicism more accommodated to democratic political institutions. He recommends a strategy of demonstrating respect for those ‘democratic tendencies not absolutely contrary to’ religion, while making ‘use of several of them for its own purposes.’26 He advocates minimizing the ‘external forms’ and ‘obligations’ imposed by religion. Tocqueville draws on what he saw in America to argue that ‘religions ought to assume fewer external observances in democratic periods than at any others’ in order to satisfy the democratic desire for ‘distinct, simple, and general notions.’27 Through the reduction of these forms, their value is increased: I firmly believe in the necessity of forms […] [but] it would be peculiarly dangerous to multiply them beyond measure; and that they ought to be limited to as much as is absolutely necessary to perpetuate the doctrine itself […] articles of faith must be carefully distinguished from the accessories connected with them.’28

It is important to notice that the role of dogma – however minimal – means that Tocqueville remains squarely within the realm of positive religion. The type of respect religion needs to find for the habits and passions originating in equality means that, even as it acts as a countervailing force to democratic tendencies, like materialism and individualism, it does not seek to ‘unnecessarily run counter to them.’29 What Tocqueville adds to this shared analysis of third-way democracy is a sophisticated sociology of religion. America provided important evidence for Tocqueville to see how democratic societies function, but he built his sociology of religion from tools found in the works of Blaise Pascal, the Baron de Montesquieu, and J.J. Rousseau. To make sense of how he used his sociology to think about education, one idea in particular stands out: the philosophical anthropology Tocqueville found in the works of Pascal and Rousseau. This theory of the ‘duality of man’ or the ‘theory of the two states of man’s nature’ posits that man is composed of two natures of different types: the religious and the political. One important consequence of this philosophical anthropology is that the religious sentiment is natural. While Tocqueville suspends metaphysical 26 27 28 29

DA II, 539. DA II, 534-535. DA II, 535-536. DA II, 536.

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considerations of which religion is right, he notes that all societies have some form of religion. He concludes that religious element is ‘one of the constituting principles of human nature’: Man alone, of all created beings, displays a natural contempt of existence, and yet a boundless desire to exist; he scorns life but dreads annihilation. These different feelings incessantly urge his soul to the contemplation of a future state, and religion directs his musings thither. Religion is simply another form of hope and it is as natural to the human heart as hope itself. It is only through a kind of intellectual aberration and the aid of a kind of moral violence on their true nature that men distance themselves from religious belief. An invincible pull brings them back: unbelief is an accident while faith alone is the permanent state of mankind. If religion is considered solely from a human point of view, one can say that all religions f ind an element of strength that can never be lost in man himself, because they are attached to one of the constituting principles of human nature.30

This philosophical anthropology also has strong roots in the works of St. Augustine, especially as interpreted by the Jansenist religious tradition in France: ‘It was not man who implanted in himself the taste for what is infinite [...] those lofty instincts are not the offspring of his capricious will; their steadfast foundation is fixed in human nature.’31 This philosophical anthropology justifies the separation of church and state institutionally.32 While men are composed of heterogeneous elements, they need not necessarily conflict. In Democracy in America, Tocqueville writes: There is a closer tie than is commonly supposed between the improvement of the soul and the amelioration of the body. Man may leave these two things apart, and consider each of them alternately, but he cannot sever them entirely without at last losing sight of the one and of the other.33

Indeed, these two parts of human nature are tied together by bond of necessity. It is for this reason that Tocqueville argues religious belief is 30 DA I, 357. 31 DA II, 659. 32 Tocqueville, Old Regime, 151. 33 DA I, 676.

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necessary for all free peoples and for democratic peoples more than any other. Tocqueville describes his ‘general idea’ this way: These are all holy things, if I can speak this way, because the greatness and happiness of men in this world can only be the result of the unity of all these things at once. From this I saw that one of the best enterprises of our time would be to show that all of these things are not at all incompatible, that on the contrary, they are held together by necessity, so that each of them is weakened by being separated from the others.34

One of the main ways Tocqueville looks at the ties between the two parts of man’s nature are the political variables at work in his sociology of religion. To explain the violence of the French Revolution, for example, he argues that ‘what led the French to commit such singular excesses was […] [because] it tended to upset their mental equilibrium. When religion was expelled from their souls […] a host of new loyalties and secular ideals filled the void.’35 This example can be multiplied.36 Education was also an important way in which the ties between the religious and political natures of men could be shown to share common interests, and in which mutually beneficial compromises between church and state institutions could be exploited.

The Freedom of Education and the Failure of Democratic Bargaining, 1843-1844 In 1843, Tocqueville was a member of the Chamber of Deputies, and his political alliances indicate that he was trying to exploit the shared ground between legitimists and republicans in his project to develop a moderate party on the ‘constitutional left.’37 Prior to the debates on education, Tocqueville was having some moderate success trying to pull liberal Ultras like Montalembert further left, and other republicans toward the center.38 From 1843 to 1844, the successes Tocqueville had in forming these alliances were almost entirely undone. Tocqueville’s participation in this debate 34 Tocqueville to Eugene Stoffels, 5 October 1856; œuvres Complètes, ed. Beaumont, V, 433-438. 35 Tocqueville, Old Regime, 156. 36 Other example include how self-interest properly understood leads democratic citizens back to religious belief, or how democratic political elites can best support religion by ‘acting as if they believe’; DA II, 650, 675. 37 Changy, Le mouvement légitimiste, pp. 1-20; Ramos, ‘A Prisoner of Liberalism.’ 38 Tocqueville, ‘Note Politique’; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, III.2, 134.

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shows that he was trying to use the means of democratic bargaining to craft the ends of the twin tolerations. Tocqueville’s analysis of what he called the ‘war between the University and the Church’ left neither side free from blame.39 The Charter of 1830 had promised the right of education to all religious denominations in France. Protestant and Jewish schools had already been recognized in law, but the legal reform recognizing Catholic schools had been delayed for years. The university (the main educational institution in France) was also of Napoleonic origin, with the Royal Council as its main decision-making body. The Napoleonic structure of these institutions meant that the state enjoyed a monopoly in the realm of secondary education, as it did with other questions of political sovereignty like the use of force. Many Catholic schools were filled with students who had no intention of entering the priesthood, and all kinds of irregularities, local concerns, and black markets dominated the French educational landscape. 40 The Concordat of 1801 had been modified, but still governed most of the practices of the July Monarchy liberties in nominating bishops and regulating the Church. The existence of many religious orders, chief among these the Jesuits, were neither permitted nor prohibited. Moreover, the governments of the July Monarchy de facto continued policies of nominating pro-government bishops in order to secure support for the government. In October 1843, the Catholic journal L’Univers published a series of letters demanding freedom of education for Catholics as promised under the Charter, the first of which were written by Bonald, the son of the famous Restoration Ultramontane. 41 Louis Veuillot was the director of the paper, and Montalembert was a leader of the political wing of the Catholic party. The fact that Montalembert chose to work with L’Univers was something of a personal disappointment for Tocqueville.42 Montalembert even argued that there could be no alliance between Catholics and Gallicans. 43 Montalembert’s alliance with L’Univers had signaled one broken political alliance, and 39 Tocqueville, ‘Morceau que C. m’a empêché d’insérer dans Le Commerce,’ c. 15 August 1844; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, III.2, 516. 40 Furet and Ozouf, Reading and Writing in France. See also Gontard, L’enseignement primaire en France de la Révolution a la loi Guizot. 41 Moody, ‘The French Catholic Press.’ 42 Tocqueville became somewhat embittered towards Montalembert in the 1840s. He wrote to Beaumont that Montalembert was ‘full of pride with a great cross painted beneath,’ and that ‘after Voltaire [he] was the greatest enemy of Christianity in France.’ Tocqueville to Beaumont, 5 December 1850; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, VIII.2, 330. 43 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, N.a.f. 24633

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the response of Le Siècle to a series of letters written by Tocqueville in Le Commerce signaled a second. Beaumont, Tocqueville’s travelling companion and ally, wrote a public letter withdrawing his cooperation with Le Siècle. 44 In reaction to the attacks upon the French University, the Doctrinaires and most republicans made common cause against the Catholic party. The Doctrinaires were the official philosophers and ministers of the July Monarchy, and most of them held positions in the University. Education reform directly threatened their political power. The alliance between Doctrinaires and republicans was made public when Michelet and Quinet gave a series of lectures at the Sorbonne on the history of the Jesuits in France. The governmental reaction also led them to further embrace the kind of Napoleonic and Bourbon strategies that sought to contain the influence of the Church by taking a larger role in Church affairs. Nowhere was this highlighted more than in an attempt by the upper Chamber to make the belief in the Four Articles of 1682 mandatory for the French clergy. 45 When a new education law was proposed by the Doctrinaire Villemain, it favored the university so heavily that it seemed designed to further infuriate Catholics.46 The education law died in 1844 when Villemain – the minister of education – resigned for health reasons. The freedom of education remained a central Catholic concern into the 1850s, and the failure of democratic bargaining damaged the legitimacy of the July Monarchy. The law failed, and the parties came out of this episode further apart. In private letters Tocqueville complained that the reconciliation of the spirit of liberty and the spirit of religion in France was no longer tenable. 47 He criticized the government for a lack of political vision and for writing such a bad law that it seemed intended to provoke a radical response. It 44 Benoît has a good treatment of this episode; Tocqueville: un destin paradoxal, pp. 242-249. 45 The Four Articles of 1682 had formed the foundation of the liberties of the Gallican Church in the eighteenth century, but they had been significantly modified by the Revolution and by successive Concordats between the French state and the Catholic Church. 46 ‘But instead of placating the majority of the bishops who were eager to compromise, the government’s education bills […] almost deliberately violated the basic principles which the bishops considered vital to the Church’s position in education. Each one was avidly defended by the Universitarians and their supporters in the legislature and the press. The bishops needed the Catholic press and laymen to defend the Church from this attack’; May, ‘The Falloux Law, the Catholic Press, and the Bishops,’ p. 82. 47 ‘The religious question is a preoccupation of mine, as with you; no more, it affects me profoundly. One of my dreams, the principal one perhaps upon entering political life, was to work to reconcile the liberal spirit with the spirit of religion, the new society with the church. This reconciliation so necessary to liberty and public morality is now impossible […]. The last polemics by the clergy were really intolerable’; Tocqueville to M. Corcelle, 15 November 1843; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XV.1, 174.

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may have been. Nor did he hesitate to criticize Catholics for demanding favoritism from the state and immunity from the regular laws of education. Many of Tocqueville’s letters and writings also contain explicit references to the policies that led to the fall of the Restoration Monarchy and his conviction that ‘it is inevitable that there will be a reaction sooner or later.’48 Regarding the clergy, Tocqueville was particularly harsh. He argued that the daily attacks from the Catholic press would only provoke an irreligious reaction: The violent and provocative language of a part of the clergy in regards to the freedom of education has begun to have the effect that the sincere friends of religion feared it would. The type of peace that had reigned between philosophy and Catholicism is broken. War is reignited more lively than ever between our century and faith. 49

But Tocqueville’s criticism of the government focuses on the ways in which they used Napoleonic and Bourbon strategies of manipulating the clergy as a means of building support: The July Revolution did a great service to religion; she completely separated it from politics, and she has enclosed it within the sacred sphere outside of which religion can have no force or greatness. After the July Revolution […] religious belief seems to have been reawakened and reborn. The government did not know to respect this source of social life that does things in its own manner.50 They did not see in this happy return to religious belief anything more than a new political force to be brought to heed. It sought to attract the clergy to itself, it treated them, not as one of the great moral authorities in the country, but like an auxiliary soldier to be enlisted in battle. It sought in every manner to increase the power of the Church, it has sacrificed to her, against the advice of the majority of the clergy itself, one of the most precious freedoms won in 1789, religious freedom.51 48 Tocqueville to M. Corcelle, 28 December 1854; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XV.2, 128. 49 Tocqueville, ‘Morceau que C. m’a empêché d’insérer dans Le Commerce,’ c. 15 August 1844; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, III.2, 516. 50 The French here is notable. The phrase is ‘qui s’ouvrait inespérément à ses côtes,’ which can also be translated as ‘which only reveals itself in its own way’ or ‘which has its own means of operating.’ 51 Tocqueville, ‘Discussion de l’Adresse,’ 17 January 1844; oeuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, III.2, 492, p. 489: ‘Cast your gaze around us and see what is going on. What has been the result of all

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This is Tocqueville’s criticism of the Doctrinaires continued use of Napoleonic strategies of seeking to contain the political power of the Catholic Church by co-opting it. Commenting on the attempt to impose belief in the Four Articles, Tocqueville argues, ‘This seems to us an absurdity without equal. An order like this would be tyrannical if joined with a sanction. As there is none, it is ridiculous.’52 To Corcelle he argued this Napoleonic strategy of using the Church to build support for the government was more dangerous in the long-term than the attacks coming from the Catholic journals: ‘I think that the faults of the clergy are infinitely less dangerous to liberty than their enslavement.’53 The model of church-state relations in Tocqueville’s writings on education are connected to a reformist Jansenist-Gallican interpretation of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Tocqueville uses the political history of Gallicanism against the clergy. He argues directly with Ultras: ‘You have in front of you a wild century […] you live amongst a skeptical nation […] that has no respect for any power.’ And amongst all the forms that one could consider Catholicism you choose the one where authority is the most absolute, the most arbitrary, and this is the belief you want to impose? When you have the good luck to find, already introduced into France, a type of representative doctrine in the matter of religion, one that respects certain constitutional limits, if one can say it, on papal authority. And you renounce this form of French Catholicism so conforming to the actual spirit and institutions of France in order to throw yourself violently into doctrines and principles so foreign to our history and our mores that even the old regime itself did not want them […]. Is Gallicanism the real sickness you suffer from? [...] The of these injuries, threats, all of these great efforts, and all of this loud noise from the clerical press produced? An irreligious reaction. But it’s not for liberty that we fear […] it is for religion’, ‘Morceau que C. m’a empêché d’insérer dans Le Commerce,’ c. 15 August 1844; oeuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, III.2, 517. 52 Tocqueville, ‘Séance de la Chambre des Pairs,’ 7 March 1844; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, III.2, 605). ‘Catholicism, which produces admirable effects in certain cases […] will never be able to adapt itself to the new society. It will never forget the place it had in the ancien regime and all the times it has been supported with power’; Tocqueville to M. Corcelle, 15 November 1843; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XV.1, 174. 53 Tocqueville to M. Corcelle, 15 November 1843; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XV.1, 174. See also the fragment ‘Notes Détachées,’ in which Tocqueville compares his policy to that of Charles X. Clearly talking to himself, he writes: ‘Make them understand the insensibility of the ideas emitted and the tendencies indicated by Guizot to the Chambre des pairs on making the clergy enter political life’; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, III.2, 553-554.

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enemy at your door is unbelief, absolute unbelief, the complete negation not only of one form of Catholicism but all forms, not only Catholicism but Christianity, not only Christianity but spirituality itself.54

The type of ‘representative doctrine’ in matters of religion is the history of the Gallican Church in France. Tocqueville was not limited to this view of the Church, but he saw it as a set of native French religious resources more suited to the needs of democratic politics. To Tocqueville, the mutual accommodation between states and churches was a matter of necessity, and he focuses on how much each side has to lose if it fails to accommodate to the other. Tocqueville asks what hope religion can have for success if it fails to accommodate itself to the reality of political democracy. At the same time, he returns to his conviction that religion is in some sense a ‘necessity’ for free peoples: What can the Church be if the spirit of the times passes her by? If her only power is old memories, if she is exclusively attached to the debris of a bygone age, if she doesn’t mix at all with our mœurs, our ideas, our passions, our interests in this world, then what does she have? If she hangs like a cross in a forgotten cemetery, where the living no longer dare to set foot? Sooner or later she too will fall and turn to dust. And us? How can we live in a society without religious belief? Has such a thing ever been seen in history? Not a single example can be cited. In all of history, only skepticism and decadence have ever come close. If to some religion seems anathema to the spirit of the times, to others she is an excellent answer to many of the most pressing needs of our age. Who does not see that amongst this multitude of petty affairs and small interests, of puny ambitions that absorb us entirely, the horizon of our thoughts and sentiments threatens to close in more and more? It is more important today than ever to turn our hearts and minds towards objects larger than ourselves; it is good to open ourselves from time to time to the light of the other world. Only religion does this; only her. It is important to remember that she is able to exercise a permanent and efficacious influence on the regularity of private mœurs and through that, to powerfully assure (even if only in an indirect manner) the steady conduct of affairs. How can we have a regulated public life, if private life is disordered and troubled? This is what free peoples have always 54 Tocqueville, ‘Séance de la Chambre des Pairs,’ 7 March 1844; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, III.2, 605.

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understood: that they cannot surpass the limits set by belief. Even if priests often show themselves to be hostile to liberty, we should not forget that for free peoples religion is a necessity.55

This long quote is a perfect summation of how Tocqueville sought to create the twin tolerations from both ends. The eloquence of his prose is brought out in the contrast of a religion that ‘hangs like a cross in a forgotten cemetery’ to one that turns ‘hearts and minds towards objects larger than ourselves.’ Tocqueville’s conviction that the bonds of necessity hold religion and politics together not only means that politics needs religion, but also that religion needs politics.

Two Models of Education: Moral and Civic One element that these debates bring to the fore is how education policy is connected to larger political attitudes and worldviews. The republican and Doctrinaire vision of civic education was tied to their worldview of the French state as universal and secular. For them, the goal of education is to create literate and critical citizens capable of using their reason to make decisions about the public good. The Ultra vision of religious education looked at education as a kind of moral formation and was tied to their view of France as a Catholic nation, and of men as fundamentally in need of restraint. Tocqueville’s language of reconciling the Catholic Church and the new society was used by parties on all sides of this debate, even as they differed radically on the terms of this reconciliation. Montalembert’s speeches are a particularly useful contrast because he argues directly with Tocqueville, even seeking to use Tocqueville’s work on America as a defense of his own position. He complains that bishops associated with L’Univers have been called ‘the accomplices of absolutism,’ and he defends a vision of the priesthood that is not ‘a prefect in a frock’ but instead a power ‘independent of all human authority’: Bishops are commissioned by God for the government of the Church, they have receive this holy mission to guide our conscience and to disturb it as needed; they are the ambassadors of God amongst us. The king appoints them, but it is thanks to Him that they hold their power; the 55 Tocqueville, ‘Morceau que C. m’a empêché d’insérer dans Le Commerce,’ c. 15 August 1844; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, III.2, 516-520.

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law recognizes their authority, but it is not the law that has created them; they hold their authority from God, not from any person.56

Montalembert’s vision of the relationship between church and state is what Stepan would call ‘too-friendly.’ Montalembert argues the state should serve the Catholic Church and aid it in its religious mission: ‘princes, by becoming a child of the Church, should not become its master, they should serve it and not dominate it, bow at its feet and not impose their yoke on it.’ Indeed, the sphere of authority given to the Church ‘always and everywhere, whatever kind of authority of the state has always respected the special work given to the Church in education.’ Montalembert concludes that the new law ‘is a mandate that usurps, in the name of the state, the most delicate and sacred moral authority and takes for itself what had been the exclusive domain of religious obedience.’57 Montalembert represents a new ‘liberal’ Catholic approach to politics. He recognizes representative institutions as a legitimate form of government but ties this vision to a complete rejection of any vestige of the Gallican Church, and the nearly total domination of the public life of the citizen by the clergy. Montalembert views the state itself as a believer, and uses a religious model of obedience to think about the relationship between church and state. ‘All states are secular,’ he argues, ‘[but] there are two ways of being secular for states as well as individuals: either secular but faithful and religious, or secular and an unbeliever. And today the state is an unbeliever, officially an unbeliever.’58 Montalembert’s target is the Doctrinaires, and he cites Pierre-Paul RoyerCollard that ‘the state has a monopoly over university teaching like that of military or judicial power.’59 Montalembert responds that this vision of sovereignty ‘confounds the two orders that have been distinct and inviolable since the foundation of Christianity.’ He then cites Tocqueville: [The] United States is at the same time profoundly moral and religious […] M. de Tocqueville said that what prevents the republican society of America from falling into anarchy is religious sentiment, that this religious sentiment comes from education and, because education is 56 Montalembert, Trois discours sur la liberté de l’église, la liberté de l’enseignement, p. 60. The speeches were given on 12, 16, and 26 April 1844. 57 Ibid., 21. 58 Ibid., 90. 59 Ibid., 91.

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totally free from government control, it is a gift of this freedom itself and is practiced by the clergy of all the different religions (emphasis added).60

Religion not only has an intrinsic value, but because of the tight connection between education and religious formation, the sphere of religious authority defended by Montalembert entails the right for religious schools to run themselves how they see fit. Finally, he argues that ‘there are two results to achieve, that liberal society should get used to religion, and that religion should get used to liberalism,’ but for it to be ‘durable and sincere it must be founded on justice.’61 In education policy the Doctrinaires shared much more with French republicans because of their focus on the rational citizen connected to a model of civic education. To the Doctrinaires, the meaning of citizenship is participating in the public sphere through the use of reason. This focus on reason necessitates a secular and philosophical method of teaching tied to the development of what the Doctrinaires called ‘capacity.’62 The Doctrinaires were also attentive to education. After the fall of the Restoration and the rise of the Orléans Monarchy – the so-called ‘liberal’ or ‘bourgeois’ monarchy – Guizot’s first major law was an extensive reform of primary education. Guizot even conducted an early kind of survey or census of French education. The Napoleonic heritage of the University gave the government legal monopoly on secondary education. They did not hesitate to argue, in the law itself and the various Doctrinaire defenses of it in public, that the state’s exclusive right in education is similar to the exclusive right to use force. This clearly meant that only state-run education qualifies as rational and civic. Indeed, moral education and moral formation on the Catholic model is a genuine danger to the creation of this type of citizen: it habituates them away from the use of reason and creates substate identities that compete for the loyalty of citizens. This discourse, even today, is dominant in French studies of education.63 The alliance between French liberals and republicans was founded partly on political interest and partly on this shared vision of civic education focused on reason. Republicans were not afraid of citing Tocqueville either: Le National ran a front-page article summarizing Tocqueville’s argument from the introduction to Democracy 60 Ibid., 99. 61 Ibid., 105. 62 Guizot and the Doctrinaires had an idea of reason itself as sovereign. 63 A good analysis of the political origins of the republican view of education can be found in Nique and Lelièvre, La République n’éduquera plus, esp. pp. 91-111. For a general review, see Compayré, Histoire critique des doctrines de l’éducation en France.

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in America. They argue that he is a ‘publicist-prophet,’ and that ‘struggling against democracy is like struggling against God himself,’ before concluding with his defense of the sovereignty of the people.64

Tocqueville’s Compromise In addition to the public letters and speeches on education, Tocqueville kept an alphabetic notebook labeled ‘Education’ in which he compiled notes and saved newspaper clippings. In his notes and public writings, Tocqueville draws a distinction between education and instruction. This distinction is rooted in the philosophical anthropology of the duality of man that underpins his sociology of religion. Education is moral formation meant to teach the heart; instruction is civic education and the development of scientific judgment. In Democracy in America, he describes the ‘practical education of the Americans […] [that] contributes to the support of a democratic republic; and such must always be the case, I believe, where the instruction which awakens the understanding is not separated from the moral education which amends the heart.’65 From his notes to a ‘Conversation with M. Dwight,’ Tocqueville writes: ‘I said to him that there are many people in France who think it is enough to give a person education in order to make him a good citizen. Does this same error exist in America? M. Dwight responded “No. […] education should be moral and religious […]. All of our children learn to read from the Bible.”’66 Tocqueville did not go as far as M. Dwight, but he did appreciate the way in which religious belief can be a powerful motivation for education. In Democracy in America he admired the ‘attention to Public Education’ in America. He notes the religious preamble and the stringent rules for opening and attending schools, before concluding that ‘in America religion is the road to knowledge and the observance of the divine law leads man to civil freedom.’67 This distinction between education and instruction corresponds to the necessary tie Tocqueville saw between the religious and the political. It is because of the mixed nature of education itself that cooperation between

64 65 66 67

Le National, 8 January 1843. DA I, 367. Tocqueville ‘Alphabetic Notebook 1’; Journey to America, p. 47. DA I, 46.

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states and churches can be so highly beneficial. In the period from 1844, Tocqueville argued: But the respect and the consideration which I have to the University does not prevent me from saying there are things that can be improved. Certainly instruction has made progress, but education […] the instruction of hearts and mœurs, is it at the same level? I say no. This is not the interested criticism of someone who wants to see your ruin, it is the voice of a sincere friend of the institution, as I am on your side in opposition.68

Tocqueville argues that cleverly mixing instruction and education is even in the ‘public interest,’ because there is not a zero-sum relationship between allowing the clergy to take a part in instruction and the quality of scientific education at school: What we must avoid is purchasing social benefits at too high of a price. It is not true that in giving future generations more religious education, we necessarily give them a worse education in sciences, or contrary to the laws of the state. That is why it is necessary to impose on the clergy – like everybody else – the obligation of obtaining a certificate and of submitting to the inspection of the state. When these guarantees have been met, the incorporation of clergy into public instruction, the mixing of priest and layman in the same school is not to be feared. It is highly desirable even. Both science and morality can only hope to gain from this agreement; the University itself has always been of this opinion. She is always recruiting and retaining clergy and even today, many of its highest officers are priests.69

Here Tocqueville is exploiting his distinction between education and instruction, seeking to demonstrate the ways in which these two types of education – like states and churches – can be complementary to one another. Indeed, he saw religion itself as a powerful motivator for individuals to pursue education and well understood the institutional role of the Catholic Church in providing education. Finally, because of the ties between the two natures of man and the two kinds of education, Tocqueville argues 68 Tocqueville, ‘Discussion de l’Adresse,’ 17 January 1844; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, III.2, 492. 69 Tocqueville, ‘Article sur un vœu du Conseil Général de la Vendée,’ 24 September 1844; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, III.2, 525.

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that a law respecting a wide toleration from the state in matters of method and content would be more effective in achieving the republican goal of an educated and rational citizenry. By using the view that education is a mixed social good, Tocqueville is able to articulate a practical compromise that, although it leaves a large space of independence for religious schools, is still regulated by the state. Moreover, Tocqueville’s defense of a larger sphere of freedom in education is also based on his republican conviction that political freedom is not as difficult as the Doctrinaires argue. Indeed, Tocqueville argues that democratic institutions can develop the virtues they need in genuinely political spaces of association, juries, local institutions, and voting. In place of the Doctrinaire category of political capacity and the Ultra category of moral education, Tocqueville argues that the practical education and the political experience of the Americans led them to develop public spirit, respect for the rule of law, and respect for the rights of others.70 These three basic habits formed the core of his conception of virtue, not rational-critical judgment. Tocqueville argues Catholic schools deserve the same rights that had already been given to Protestant schools. He criticizes Villemain’s plan for ‘completely sacrificing the liberty of method, and we oblige everybody to learn the same things and to learn them in exactly the same way; we therefore draw around the human spirit a fixed circle, and prevent it from leaving.’ In addition, he argues that in effect this law would force the closure of almost all nonstate schools: What of the ability to teach and to found schools, a freedom promised by the Charter, what has become of it in the new law? [...] the existence of free schools will be so troubled and precarious that it would be preferable for the state to only allow authorized schools […] none will be able to continue under these conditions. We say then that the commission, in spite of the respect we have for its members, to accomplish in this way the promise of the Charter of 1830 is to circumvent it.71 70 DA I, 273-285. 71 Tocqueville, Le Commerce, 29 July 1844. ‘Liberté de l’enseignement’; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, III.2, 512-515: ‘We will not consent to give the priest a privileged place in education; but we are equally opposed to those who […] declare that they are incapable of educating, which is to say lacking in the necessary dignity for education. In our eyes, exclusion is as contrary to the spirit of our institutions as the monopoly, and we are not any more tempted to tolerate one versus the other […]. When the priest wants to benefit from advantages of the laws we share by submitting to the charges they impose, when it accepts like the layman the obligations indicated by this law in the manner of teaching and the inspections it establishes; in a word,

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Each citizen has the right to raise his child as he wants. It is from here that it is always necessary to begin: this is the origin of the right […] the state, in giving rights, does not have the right to insist on matters of morality, of science, of aptitude […] it is not necessary to give the University the ability to close free institutions or to prevent them from being founded. The University can be in sole charge of composing examination committees, but she cannot close an open school. It is the state, without a doubt, but represented by a disinterested administration, like ordinary trials.72

Tocqueville was aware that a smart bargain could be an important step in democratic construction and the crafting of the twin tolerations. His letters and speeches highlight both the value of his plan and the destructive effects of a situation in which ‘the religious writers’ demand an ‘absolute freedom which would be confusion and anarchy,’ whereas those who defend the role of the state give to government ‘a general supremacy which would quickly turn into an official religion’: In our opinion, the church should not be as free as the first ask, nor as regulated as the second demand. The state has the power to intervene in anything that touches on civil matters and to the Church, to the conscience only is given the right decide matter of dogma. Outside of this there is only confusion between the two powers, as impious for the one as for the other […]. The best way to keep the clergy in their sphere, and to keep them there when they want to leave it, is to never leave our own. I mean to render visible and durable the line that separates these two powers.73

Tocqueville’s conditional support for widening the freedom of education and ending the official government monopoly on the right to teach and determine curricula is based on his vision of education as containing both an element of moral formation envisioned by Catholics and of republican civic education. He writes: when he gives to society the same guarantee that all the other citizens do, he has the right to be treated like all other citizens. To create a special rule just for him, to deprive him as a priest of the faculties he enjoys as a man is nothing but tyranny exercised in the name of liberty. And it doesn’t matter from where tyranny comes, it will always be our enemy.’ 72 Tocqueville, ‘Discussion dans un Bureau de la Chambre’; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, III.2, 510-511. 73 Tocqueville, ‘Séance de la Chambre des Pairs,’ 7 March 1845; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, III.2, 603.

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For our part, we have never renounced the hope of seeing a rapprochement between the Church and the new society, each to the other. We hope for it still and we arduously desire it. It seems to us that each of them would be able to draw from this union certain strengths that they lack.’74

Tocqueville also views democratic bargaining as a way to bring the clergy back into mainstream French social life. He argues the clergy had been alienating itself from democratic political institutions, and that incorporating them on equal footing as other groups into the regular processes of politics and enjoyment of rights would attach them more to democratic institutions: The isolation in which a part of the clergy lives, surrounded by the rest of that nation, seems to us a great danger, as much for religion itself as for the country. We must try to incorporate them, not estrange them further. Far from wanting to more and more restrict the priest to a special status, sometimes better and sometimes worse than the status of other citizens, we should be wanting to find a way to attract them every day into the sphere of common action, and in doing to slowly make them aware of all the rights that our society confers, while at the same time it teaches them to submit to the obligations it imposes.75

Again, it is important to remember that what Tocqueville means by the reconciliation of the spirit of religion and the spirit of liberty is a general recognition and mutual respect between religious and political authorities in public discourse. After the Revolution of 1848, Tocqueville did not stop thinking about education. Though Tocqueville was ill and out of politics when the Falloux Law was signed in 1850, it created an educational system in France along the lines of what he envisioned in his writings in 1843-1844. The Falloux Law did not end hostilities between republicans and Ultras in France, but it was a significant step for the French toward creating the twin tolerations. While freed from supervision by the University (but not the French state), a new body composed of Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and secular educators was created to set national standards. The Falloux Law enabled anyone with certification the right to open a school: as a result, 74 Tocqueville, ‘Morceau que C. m’a empêché d’insérer dans le Commerce,’ c. 15 August 1844; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, III.2, 516-520. 75 Tocqueville, ‘Article sur un Vœu du Conseil Général de la Vendée,’ September 24, 1844, OC 3, no. 2, 526.

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nearly any kind of Catholic organization that wanted to could, and did, open a school. Two areas in which Catholic schools compared favorably with secular schools were in educating women and the poor: Both church and state wanted schools to disseminate their ideals. Despite differences, they had a common interest in developing a network of schooling throughout France. The period then can be recognized as one during which universal primary schooling was basically achieved by the joint efforts of church and state. The Ferrv Laws, the legislation of 1886 affecting teachers, the Law of Associations in 1901, and ultimately the Law of 1904, excluding religions from teaching, laicized a preexisting educational system. This legislation, rather than the Falloux Law, divided France as Catholic schools became alternative ones within a secular system rather than supplementary ones. The Falloux Law, in fact, inaugurated a unique period of cooperation between the church and state in achieving the common goal of schooling French children and finding an accommodation between religion and secularism.76

It is unclear if, given a democratic instead of authoritarian regime after 1851, the Falloux Law would have had a stronger effect in contributing to democratic consolidation.77 Indeed, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte took power less than two years after the passage of the Falloux Law, and Tocqueville rightly recognized a despotic tendency in French conservative politics that left him in genuine despair for their political future. Indeed, he saw in Napoleon III the image of the nationalist Gallican tendencies so adroitly exploited by the first Napoleon. Tocqueville’s warnings about this imperial policy are nearly the same as his criticism of the Doctrinaires during the period studies here.78 This consideration might, in fact, justify the repression of religious schools in the Third Republic.79 And while this chapter certainly gives support to the current revisionist trend in studying French education

76 Harrigan, ‘Church, State, and Education in France from the Falloux to the Ferry Laws,’ p. 80. 77 Some of Tocqueville’s very negative remarks on the Church at this time have been cited in the footnotes above. For reference, see Anderson, Education in France, 1848-1870. 78 After Tocqueville left the ministry in 1849, however, he soon became very ill; Watkins, Tocqueville and the Second Republic, pp. 436-440. 79 Context is important in these cases, and Napoleon III did not hesitate to appeal to the interests of Catholics to increase domestic support for his regime, especially through the 1850s. Most notably, Fortoul’s reform of 1852 gave religion a bigger role in the schools by teaching great French religious texts; Zind, ‘La religion dans les lycées sous le régime de la lois Falloux.’

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policy, we ought to expect the state to be taking a larger role in education through time because of mandates for obligatory universal education.80

Conclusion: The Path not Taken, and Reconstructing the Right to the Freedom of Education The passage of the Falloux Law in 1850 was enacted through successful process of democratic bargaining. Whereas in 1843 liberal Ultras like Montalembert were radicalized, in 1850 there was a much stronger moderate element amongst the clergy. Part of this seems to have been a reaction on the part of the bishops to demonstrate that they – not layperson journals – determined church policy. But Falloux and Dupanloup also went out and sold this compromise to important members of the upper clergy. They not only defended it using a language of education and instruction similar to Tocqueville’s, but also even circulated a petition in support of the new law that garnered the signatures of thirty-six bishops.81 Tocqueville’s experience in trying to craft the twin tolerations confirms the intuition of Stepan’s democratic bargaining approach. The failure of bargaining in 1843-1844 contributed to democratic destruction and the coming of the Revolution of 1848; in 1850 the successful agreement on education might not have saved the regime, but it did lay the foundation for universal education in France and take a very important religious concern off the table. Secondly, his experience demonstrates the importance of crafting the twin tolerations from both ends. Tocqueville not only articulated a vision of moral Catholicism that he thought was more conducive to democratic political institutions, but he actively sought out religious political actors that shared his point of view. Stepan is right that political actors must mount convincing arguments about the ‘legitimate multivocality’ of their religion, but they must also go further: they must actively work to take advantage of native religious resources, and seek out moderate religious actors in coalition building. Tocqueville’s analysis also extends Stepan’s approach, especially for young democracies. First, Tocqueville gives several sociological reasons for thinking that education policy is a uniquely suited policy arena for crafting the twin tolerations. Second, Tocqueville’s insights on education 80 Furet and Ozouf, Reading and Writing in France; Compére and Savoir, ‘L’histoire de l’école et de ce qu’on y apprend.’ 81 May, ‘The Falloux Law, the Catholic Press, and the Bishops,’ p. 93.

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can be used to identify the basic contours of a human right to education for use in contemporary circumstances. The path not taken in 1843-1844, then, does shine light upon the possibility for grand bargains in matters of education to act as a light kind of consociationalism. The compromise Tocqueville envisioned in 1843-1844 was also theoretically underpinned by this sociology of religion, which enabled him to conceive of education from both a moral and a civic standpoint. The Second Republic did not last long enough to be able to tell if France might have been able to stay on this particular path, but other democracies may succeed where France had failed. Indeed, educational bargains may also avoid some of the pitfalls of more formal mechanisms of institutionalizing power.82 Additionally, the ways in which moral and civic education can complement one another might mean that educational bargains have a higher chance of success and greater social payoff than other mechanisms of institutionalizing power. Tocqueville’s prediction that a compromise in education could both give more latitude in education and more efficiently achieve the republican need for civic education seems to hold true. Young democracies may be able to harness the energies of ethnic and religious groups in civil society that have an interest in education. Because educational development correlates strongly with political and economic development, leaving a wide range of toleration for religious and linguistic communities to open schools may be a cost-effective development strategy for weaker states.83 There is a second way in which Tocqueville’s analysis that education is a mixed social good can speak to young democracies today. Tocqueville’s insights on the nature of education can be used to articulate the contours of a human right to education applicable to modern circumstances. The mixed nature of education as a social good is well recognized in human rights literature, and on terms very similar to Tocqueville’s distinction between moral education and scientific instruction.84 The United Nations Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, for example, recognizes that education is linked to the development of the ‘dignity’ of persons, as well at the right of parents to ‘ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions.’85 The right to 82 O’Leary, ‘Debating Consociational Politics.’ 83 Hanushek and Wößmann, ‘The Role of Education Quality in Economic Growth.’ 84 Beiter, The Protection of the Right to Education by International Law, p. 38. 85 Articles 13 and 14 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. Available online: [accessed 7 December 2014].

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education entails both ‘State support, in the form of cultural programmes, cultural equipment and easy access to the “benefits of culture” for the underprivileged’ as well as a limitation on the state’s power to interfere with the cultural expression of the individuals and groups that make up the nation.’86 Education is no more important for making citizens than for perpetuating communities. In conditions of modern states and capitalistic economic systems, those cultural groups that loose the right and ability to educate their young face the constant threat of extinction. Rights are generally derived from one of two sources: the dignity of a rational individual, and the respect due to such as an end-in-itself, or the inherent value of cultural ways of life and the right for communities to perpetuate themselves.87 While these two foundations for rights are frequently viewed to be in conflict, the right of education is derived from both of these sources. Tocqueville’s insight that education is a mixed social good, in this sense, works in a similar way as Rawl’s defense of the ‘co-original’ nature of individual and collective rights.88 The right to education demonstrates the interconnectedness of individual development and cultural self-preservation. Accordingly, it is derived from both of these sources, and must be balanced between the claims of communal self-preservation and individual development. There is a second variable that needs to be recognized, however. Unlike most rights that are accorded to fully developed individuals or established communities, the right to education must be granted to developing persons. The right, then, must not only be balanced, but also needs to take into account the progressive nature of human development. The younger the child, the more the cultural right to preservation, exercised by parents, is dominant.89 As children develop into adults, however, the more their own 86 Meyer-Bisch, cited in Beiter, The Protection of the Right to Education in International Law, p. 42; Beyani, ‘The Prerequisites of Education.’ 87 The first is frequently defended on the liberal basis, usually Kant; the second on a communitarian or cultural perspective that is usually traced to Hegel or Rousseau. In contemporary discourse, Charles Taylor has used Hegel to defend the importance of group rights, while John Rawls has focused on individual rights grounded in Kant, especially in his early career; Taylor, Source of the Self; Rawls, A Theory of Justice. 88 Rawls, ‘Reply to Habermas.’ Will Kymlicka uses a liberal foundation to defend group rights; see Multicultural Citizenship. 89 It does seem that the communal element of this right is mediated by parents’ rights to raise their children in the way they see fit, and not directly from a larger social group. In the debates over education in France, all parties were in agreement that this right goes first to the parents, and the UN Charter on Social and Economic Rights accords this right first to parents. Article 13 [accessed 7 December 2014].

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individuality and inherent dignity need to be respected as such. Alongside the cultural right exercised dominantly by parents and derived from the inherent value of ways of life, persons also have the right to determine their own ends. The progressive nature of human development and the need to balance the claims of individuals and persons are the two elements needed to construct the right to education. While the exact bounds of this balancing cannot be categorically decided, the rough contours are evident. First, the cultural right to self-preservation entails a large latitude (perhaps even state support) for religious or primary language education in primary schools. It also entails the right to found private schools and limits state power in public schools from favoring a religion or way of life. The state’s role in secondary education, however, must be larger, and it must ensure that persons receive the practical and abstract skills that allow them to choose their own ends, as well as to participate in the economic and political life of a larger political community. At all levels, the respect due to a rational individual means that what Tocqueville called ‘instruction’ must be ensured by the state, either directly or indirectly. Directly, states must provide free and universal education. For those parents who choose to send their children to private schools, the state must ensure quality of instruction indirectly through regulation. The right for the state to regulate, set standards and minimal curriculum, prevent violence, and accredit private schools is derived from the right for individuals to determine their own ends, and to develop to their fullest human potential. It is clear that the right for communities to self-preservation cannot trump this individual right. The closer children come to being adults, the more the state needs to ensure they are treated as ends-in-themselves. Primary education, then, should leave a larger space for private schools in content and method of teaching, and as children get older, the state ought to take a larger role in directly or indirectly securing this right. Primary education is of such high importance that securing this right for all children must be the first priority of states, even as they can leave a larger realm of freedom of parents. Even with this progressive understanding of the right, however, it seems clear from the diversity of educational systems around the world that the state need not educate every citizen itself, and that even in secondary education there can be a wide range of latitude in content and method of teaching. Nonetheless, the need to ensure citizens receive a broad civic education that not only provides them with the tools to be a citizen, but to find a job and participate in the economic life of the polis, means that the state should play a bigger role in secondary and higher education.

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One reason states can tolerate so much diversity in education policy may be that these two types of education are mixed and seem to complement each other. Math and science education in a primary language is far more effective, and even where there is a shared common language, the ethnic matching of students and educators has been demonstrated to have a similar effect.90 Thus, the creation of rational-critical citizens not only takes place within the bounds of ethnic and linguistic communities, but also is more effective when supported by common ways of life. Moral formation of persons in the form of the acculturation to the norms of a community not only has an intrinsic value of its own, but also helps to achieve the ends of civic education required by democratic states.91

90 Krashin, Condemned without a Trial. 91 Nowak, ‘The Right to Education’; Coomans, ‘Clarifying the Core Elements of the Right to Education.’

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Religion (II) Tocqueville Antinomies, the Political Utility of Religion, and the American Double Foundation

In this chapter I continue the redescription of Tocqueville’s sociology of religion from Chapter 6. To do so, however, I leave behind the historical method that has been the basis of this book in favor of Tocqueville’s sociological method of ideal-types. Switching to this sociological method also helps to make Tocqueville useful to today, for these rational abstractions are designed for comparative purposes. In order to diagnose France, Tocqueville needed a kind of template or table of thought that was something different from the empirical evidence found in particular societies, and the ideal-type of the democratic social state is the tool he developed for this purpose. After this description of Tocqueville’s ideal-type, I turn to how he used it to read the histories of America and France, as well as to what this perspective opens up for twenty-first century America. As I suggested in the introduction, the America of 1831 no longer exists, and in order to make Tocqueville useful today we need to perform the same act of translation through time that he performed through space. We need to understand how his ideal-type diagnosed France and then, in turn, use his method to look at the America today. This chapter moves in four steps. First, I take a brief look at how Tocqueville uses a modified form of the Jansenist theory of orders to help him conceive of religion and liberty as antinomies, a relation he places at the center of his ideal-type. Second, I use a brief comparison with Jon Elster and Robert Bellah to look at how Tocqueville describes the political utility and social function of the antinomy of religion in democratic political life. In the third section, I look at how Tocqueville used the ideal-type as an analytic device to make sense of the French and American foundations. Lastly, I use this look at Tocqueville’s ideal-type as a comparison with America today. I argue that in contrast to the argument that the American foundation was unitary and democratic, Tocqueville sees it as having a two-fold nature: democratic in the North, to be sure, but aristocratic and unequal in the South. I conclude the America of today may be seeing a similar set of consequences as Tocqueville’s France, but that this should ultimately leave us with an optimistic view of the future of American democracy.

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Tocqueville’s Antinomies and the Democratic Social State The idea of ‘social state’ in Tocqueville’s sociology is analogous to a Weberian ideal-type.1 Tocqueville dominantly relies on the democratic and aristocratic social states, but he also uses a kind of hunter-gatherer social state as well. These ideal-types are composed of an ensemble of legal and cultural relations, or laws and moeurs.2 As tables of thought they act as a template of comparison for thinking about how particular societies approximate or fall away from the ideal. In developing his conception of the social state, Tocqueville drew heavily on the theories of Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Guizot.3 Volume II of Democracy in America is nearly entirely dedicated to the many predictions and tendencies Tocqueville developed from the ideal-type. The def ining relationship of the democratic ideal-type is what Tocqueville calls the reconciliation of equality and liberty. Here, in the internal structure of his democratic social state, the influence of a modified version of the Jansenist theory of orders is clear. Tocqueville uses this idea to first separate the antinomies of equality and liberty but also, second, to imagine the indirect effects that these differentiated realms of social life can have on one another. The religious, like the political, has an anthropological origin. Each is a constitutive part of the human condition: Immortality of the soul The need for the infinite and the sad experience of the finite that we encounter at each step torments me sometimes, but does not distress me. I see in it one of the greatest proofs of the existence of another world and of the immortality of our souls […] I cannot believe that God put in our souls the organ of the infinite, if I can express myself in this way, in order to give our souls eternally only to the finite, that he gave it the organ of hope in a future life, without future life. 4

1 Nisbet, The Sociological Tradition; Poggi, Images of Society; Drescher, Dilemmas of Democracy. 2 DA I, 373. 3 Aron, Main Currents in Sociological Thought, trans. Howard and Weaver, I; Richter, ‘The Uses of Theory: Tocqueville’s Adaptation of Montesquieu’; and Richter, ‘Comparative Political Analysis in Montesquieu and Tocqueville’; Mitchell, ‘The Changing Conditions of Freedom’; Knee, ‘Religion et souveraineté du peuple,’ p. 211. 4 DA II (Critical Edition), 958.

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His defense of the anthropological origin of religious faith that ‘does things in its own manner’ did, on a personal level, seem to give him a minimalist amount of deistic hope that there might be a future life.5 As I argued in Chapter 4, Tocqueville uses this Jansenist idea to conceive of the two worlds the material and immaterial, religion and politics, as inverted absolute hierarchies. It is in this context that his chapters on religion considered as a political institution need to be understood. The inverted nature of these two hierarchies is nowhere more evident than in his description of a state of things where ‘every principle of the moral world is fixed and determinate, although the political world is abandoned to the debates and experiments of men.’6 Nonetheless, the internal structure of these antimonies are analogous in form: ‘The people reign over the world of politics in America like God over the universe. He is the origin and end of everything; from Him comes everything and to Him it all returns.’7 Tocqueville seemed to think there was something particular about the democratic social state that was causing the increasing differentiation of the two principles of reason and authority. In the letter to Kergolay from America, Tocqueville argues: It is evident that all the naturally religious minds among the Protestants […] are throwing themselves anew under the empire of authority. Their reason is a burden that weighs on them and which they sacrifice with joy; they become Catholics […]. On the borders of Protestantism is a sect which is Christian only in name; these are the Unitarians […]. Thus you see: Protestantism, a mixture of authority and reason, is battered at the same time by the two absolute principles of reason and authority.8

Tocqueville’s antinomies are here seen in reason and authority, but they take shape in the matched pairs of equality-liberty, authority-reason, and religion-politics. In the words of John P. McCormick, we might say that these

5 Tocqueville, ‘Discussion de l’Adresse,’ 17 January 1844; oeuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, III.2, 491. As to the majority of religious doctrine, he usually adopted a skeptical attitude. 6 DA I, 352. In the notes he argues: ‘Extreme obedience to established rules in the moral world, extreme independence, restless spirit of innovation in the political world, these are the two diverse and seemingly opposing tendencies that are revealed at each step in the course of American society’; DA I (Critical Edition), 69. 7 DA I, 64. 8 Tocqueville to Kergolay, 29 June 1831; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin. XIII.1, 225-227.

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antinomies are the ‘objectively rational’ and ‘subjectively romantic.’9 When Tocqueville describes the fundamental relationship between equality and liberty, he speaks of the ideal-type; when he writes of the reconciliation of the spirit of liberty and the spirit of religion in America, he is invoking the same distinction in regards to a particular case. A second consequence of the antinomial relationship is that, in contrast to the view that increasing enlightenment and reason brings a necessary decrease in enchantment, Tocqueville sees a generally positive relationship between reason and authority.10 In this way, Tocqueville’s use of antinomies places him squarely against the view that links secularization or increasing rationalization of society to the decrease of the religious or enchanted.11 In Democracy in America, Tocqueville takes up the hypothesis of ‘enlightenment philosophers’ that explained the ‘decay of religious belief in a very simple manner. Religious zeal, they said, must necessarily diminish the more liberty is established and knowledge diffused.’12 Through the rest of the chapter, Tocqueville develops an argument about the positive relationship between religious belief and political patriotism meant to disprove this hypothesis. He argues that ‘religious zeal is perpetually stimulated in the United States by the duties of patriotism’ and cites an anonymous American that it is in their ‘interest that the new States should be religious, in order to maintain our liberties,’ before concluding that ‘unfortunately, facts are not in accordance with their [the enlightenment philosophers’] theory.’13 The antinomial relationship described by Tocqueville means that democracy needs religion but also that religion needs democracy. Tocqueville argues that the ‘two tendencies, seemingly so discrepant, are far from conflicting’ and that they have a positive relationship to one another.14 It is incontestable for me that political liberty has sometimes weakened and sometimes animated religious passions. This depends on a lot of circumstances […] [but] in general, I think that political liberty animates 9 McCormick, Carl Schmitt’s Critique of Liberalism, p. 78; Schmitt, Political Romanticism, trans. Oakes, p. 101. 10 The spirit in which I approach thinking about modernity here is closest to that of Ernst Troeltsch, who emphasizes the heterogeneous nature of modernity. See Troeltsch, Protestantism and Progress. 11 For a brief introduction to this old argument, see Gorski and Altinordu, ‘After Secularization?’; Shiner, ‘The Concept of Secularization in Empirical Research’; Chaves, ‘Secularization as Declining Religious Authority’; Hughey, ‘The Idea of Secularization in the Works of Max Weber.’ 12 DA I, 355. 13 DA I, 355. 14 DA I, 48.

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more than she restrains religious passions. I believe first of all that there are more family connections than you suppose between political and religious passions. Of one and the other, you can see good things, immaterial in some measure; in both of them one follows a type of ideal human society, a certain kind of perfection, the picture of which raises the soul out of the contemplation of particular interests and carries it along. For my part, I far more easily understand a man animated at once by religious and political passions than by the passion for well-being and politics, for example. The first two are able to hold together and join in the same soul, but not the second two. In fact there is another reason, less general and less grand but perhaps conclusive, which explain why these two passions walk together and mutually spire upwards […]. Free institutions have often been the natural, and sometimes indispensable, instrument of religious passions. Nearly all of the efforts which the moderns have made towards liberty were made by the need to maintain or defend religious belief. It is religious passion that drove the Puritans to the Americas, and brought them to govern themselves. Religious passions have in all of these cases roused political passions and political passions have served the free development of others.15

The caveat in this letter is that Tocqueville is not convinced that there is a single answer to the relationship between religious and political passions. The ‘family resemblance’ between religious and political passions is the root of ‘the service with which they have so often been called upon to render for each other’ and allows, ‘these two passions walk together and mutually spire upwards.’ The antinomies of equality-liberty, authority-reason, and religion-politics come to the fore in the chapters on the ‘progress of belief’ in the democratic social state. ‘Two things must be accurately distinguished,’ he argues. First, there is the tendency for the democratic social state to give men a desire to ‘form their own opinions.’ The first tendency pushes them away from dogmatic religious belief. The second trend, however, gives us a ‘taste’ for the ‘idea of unity, simplicity, and impartiality in the power which governs society.’16 This is why Catholicism has a special appeal in the democratic social state because democratic citizens, ‘feel a secret admiration for its discipline, and its great unity attracts them.’ At the same time some men

15 Tocqueville to Kergolay, 18 October 1847; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XIII.2, 210. 16 DA II, 540.

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are driven more and more into centralized forms of religion, while others are driven towards rational religions that increasingly challenge all dogma: Men living in democratic ages are therefore very prone to shake off all religious authority, but if they consent to subject themselves to any authority of this kind, they choose at least that is should be single and uniform. Religious powers not radiating from a common center are naturally repugnant to their minds […] Roman Catholics are seen to lapse into infidelity, and Protestants to be converted to Roman Catholicism.17 I have always believed, you know, that constitutional monarchies would arrive at the republic; and I am persuaded as well that Protestantism will necessarily end up at natural religion. What I am saying to you is felt very deeply by many religious souls here; they are revolted at the sight of this consequence of their doctrines, and the reaction throws them into Catholicism, whose principle is very questionable, but where, at least, everything is linked together.18

Again, it needs to be emphasized that the vision of Catholicism Tocqueville adopts here is historically bounded: it is, in fact, the vision offered by Joseph de Maistre. What is important is that to Tocqueville, this tendency towards religious centralization comes from the democratic social state as well. He finishes the chapter by arguing that ‘our posterity will tend more and more to a single division into two parts – some relinquishing Christianity entirely, and others returning to the bosom of the Church of Rome.’19 The Jansenist theory of orders and the antinomial approach can also be seen in some other elements of Tocqueville’s sociology, notably how these different realms can indirectly affect one another through affinity, transfusion, and accommodation to political context. Tocqueville was not only attentive to general tendencies in belief derived from his ideal-type but also the political affinities of religious form. He was not unaware of how religious ideas can serve to structure political thought, and sometimes used the logic of affinity to match religious and political forms to one another: ‘Next to every religion is found a political opinion linked to it by affinity.’ Of course, American Puritanism was a ‘democratic and republican religion’ that ‘corresponded in many points 17 DA II, 540-541. 18 DA I (Critical Edition), lxix. 19 DA II, 541.

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with the most absolute democratic and republican theories.’20 The evidence from Tocqueville’s notes indicates that he is here using a tripartite scheme of Protestantism/classical republicanism, traditional Catholicism/constitutional monarchy, and modern Catholicism/democratic republicanism: ‘If Catholicism predisposes the faithful to obedience, it certainly does not prepare them for inequality; but the contrary may be said of Protestantism, which generally tends to make men independent, more than to render them equal.’21 Although religions have natural affinities with political forms, context remains an important variable in Tocqueville’s sociology of religion. He argues that the Catholic clergy of France were often connected to ‘the governing powers of society,’ in which ‘religious influence has sometimes been used to secure the interests of that political state of things.’22 In America, however, the priest is ‘entirely separated from the government,’ and Catholicism in the United States has accommodated itself to the ‘democratic and republican’ state of society, even seeking to ‘justify its results.’23 The Catholic priests in America have divided the intellectual world into two parts: in the one they place the doctrines of revealed religion, which command their assent; in the other they leave those truths which they believe to have been freely left open to the researches of political inquiry. The Catholics of the United States are at the same time the most faithful believers and the most zealous citizens.24

Political context is very important to Tocqueville: it leads religious leaders to view themselves in certain ways, and even to have certain interests. The case of Catholics in America demonstrated to Tocqueville that there was nothing essentially anti-democratic about Catholicism, and that with reasonable accommodations it could thrive in modern conditions. In his notes to Democracy in America, Tocqueville writes: ‘It should not be forgotten that particular circumstance and interests of the moment can easily separate religious doctrines from their political consequences.’25 In the case of modern Catholicism, he worried that the contested political heritage of the French Revolution was preventing French Catholics from 20 21 22 23 24 25

DA I, 346. DA I, 348. DA I, 348. DA I, 348. DA I, 348. Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts C.V. h. IV, 72.

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achieving this kind of prudent accommodation. But yet he thought that once this kind of accommodation was achieved, Catholicism could take advantage of the Catholic doctrine of equality: Catholicism is like an absolute monarchy, if the sovereign be removed, all other classes are more equal than they are in republics […] but no sooner is the priesthood entirely separated from the government, as is the case in the United States, than it is found that no class of men is more naturally disposed than the Catholics to transfuse the doctrine of the equality of conditions into the political world.’26

What Tocqueville calls the transfusion of doctrines looks something the secularization of religious concepts into political realms of life. The universality of Catholic equality – driven by its hierarchical and centralized structure – makes it in its own way conducive to democratic politics. It is because of this link of equality that Catholics, Tocqueville argues, are ‘the most republican and most democratic class of citizens which exists in the United States.’27

The Political Utility of Religion Tocqueville’s sociological differentiation of religious and political spheres of action also helped him conceive of the role that religious beliefs have in a modern republican vision. By separating out and then demonstrating the harmony of the religious and the political, Tocqueville opens up the possibility for religion to play an important part in democratic political life. In this section, I demonstrate how Tocqueville exploits the family resemblances between religion and politics in order to imagine how this positive relationship takes shape. Tocqueville calls religion ‘the most pre-eminent’ of American political institutions but also argued that it held only ‘indirect’ influence on political life.28 What Tocqueville meant by this was that in America there existed the formal separation of church and state, but that religion also helped to regulate the habits of the populace, thereby affecting their political behavior. The exact nature of the political utility of religion, however, is of 26 DA I, 348. 27 DA I, 347. 28 DA I, 354.

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much debate. There is far too much literature on the subject to write a proper literature review, so here I will only briefly reconstruct what Tocqueville called the ‘social function of religion’ according to a Jon Elster inspired typology of thinking of social science as a set of ‘mechanisms’ and ‘effects.’29 I argue that the political utility and social function of religion can be summarized as three effects: the ‘spill-over effect,’ the ‘separation effect,’ and the ‘restraint effect.’ Finally, I look at Tocqueville’s mechanism of practice and contrast the interpretation here with the sociology of Robert Bellah, one of Tocqueville’s most noted twentieth century interpreters. The Spill-Over Effect The first function of religion is what can be called the ‘spill-over effect’ because the virtues cultivated in religious life migrate in a way into political life. The heart of this religious virtue in Tocqueville’s mind, however, is not a set of beliefs or dogmas that serve to structure individual and collective decision-making but simply the habit of constancy. ‘You seem to contest the social function of religions. Here we assume truly antithetical positions,’ Tocqueville argues to Gobineau, but ‘whether secular or religious, the function of law is not to eliminate crime […] [but] in the regulation of matters of daily life, and in setting the general temper of habits and ideas.’30 Tocqueville argues that religion instills the ‘love of order’ and a ‘general habit of conducting themselves with a view to the future: in this respect they [religions] are not less useful to happiness in this life than to felicity hereafter; and this is one of their chief political characteristics.’31 In a democratic age, this function is necessarily indirect through the ways religion regulates private habits. The ‘American clergy […] are all in favor of civil freedom, but they do not support any particular political system’: They keep themselves aloof from public affairs and they do not mix with political parties. In the United States religion exercises but little influence upon the laws and upon the details of public opinion, but it directs the moeurs of the community, and by regulating domestic life it regulates the State.32 29 Elster, Tocqueville, the First Social Scientist. Except for the spill-over effect, my typology varies somewhat from his, as I am here only looking at the effect of the religious on the political. 30 Tocqueville to Gobineau, 2 October 1843; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, IX, 60. 31 DA II, 675. 32 DA I, 351-352.

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The spill-over effect, however, is a two-way street, and political liberty is no less necessary to religious health than religious belief is to democratic health. Not only does self-interest properly understood prepare democratic citizens for the reception of faith, but the choices of political elites can do the same.33 When Tocqueville asks what can be done to ‘bring men back to spiritual opinions or to hold them fast to religion,’ one of his answers is to try to create great projects that ‘remove to a distance the object of human actions.’34 By acting with a ‘view to the future,’ political elites can have a downright positive role on the development of religion: ‘the leading men of democracies not only make public affairs prosperous, but they also teach private individuals, by their example, the art of managing private concerns.’35 He concludes that [by] training the members of the community to think of their future condition in this world, they would be gradually and unconsciously brought nearer to religious convictions. Thus the means which allow men, up to a certain point, to go without religion, are the only ones that remain for leading humanity by a long roundabout path back to faith.36

Another example of this spill-over effect is how political elites can directly support the belief in the immortality of the soul. ‘My answer,’ he says ‘will do me harm in the eyes of the politicians’: I believe that the sole effectual means which governments can employ in order to have the doctrine of the immortality of the soul duly respected, is ever to act as if they believed it themselves; and I think that it is only by scrupulous conformity to religious morality in great affairs that they can hope to teach the community at large to know, to love, and to observe it in the lesser concerns of life (emphasis added).37

While religious life has important effects on democratic political life, Tocqueville is equally convinced of the role that democratic political life plays in maintaining the vitality of religion. The antinomial relation between the religious and the political in Tocqueville’s thought allows for a positive 33 34 35 36 37

DA II, 650. DA II, 675. DA II, 680. DA II, 681. DA II, 675; DA II (Gallimard), 205.

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relationship between these two realms of life, giving him space to not only look at how from how religion beliefs can structure political behavior, but also to see how political practices, in turn, affects religious belief. The Separation Effect The second social function of religion – what I call the ‘separation effect’ – is the way it helps to combat cultural tendencies born of the democratic social state, notably materialism and pantheism. These are opposite tendencies that reinforce the anti-political and atomizing tendencies of democratic societies.38 It is here that Tocqueville argues that the ‘great utility of religions’ is ‘obvious’ because it inspires ‘contrary instincts’ to these two dangerous turns of thought: It must be acknowledged that equality, which brings great benefits into the world, nevertheless suggests to men (it will be shown hereafter) some very dangerous propensities. It tends to isolate them from each other, to concentrate every man’s attention upon himself, and it lays open the soul to an inordinate love of material gratification.39

The first problem, the ‘tendency’ to ‘concentrate every man’s attention upon himself,’ is the origin of pantheism and is a consequence of the effect of equality on the minds of democratic citizens. The second danger – ‘inordinate love of material gratification’ – is the root of materialism. Carried to far, either of these dangers threatens to reduce all of life to either spirit or matter. Pantheism is a vice of the mind whose ‘principle effect on philosophy’ is the search for ‘general ideas.’ From this, a ‘habit grows up,’ and we cease to consider the citizens and to think of only the people, and of overlooking individuals to only think of mankind. At such times the human mind seeks to embrace a multitude of different objects at once and it constantly strives to succeed in connecting a variety of consequences with a single cause. The ideas of unity so possesses itself of man, and is sought for by him so universally, that if he thinks he has found it, he readily yields himself up to repose in that belief. 40 38 DA II, 837. 39 DA II, 532. 40 DA II, 542.

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Carried too far this tendency to general ideas leads to the dissolution of the separation between the material universe and an immaterial creator into ‘several parts of one immense Being, which alone remains unchanged amidst […] continual change and ceaseless transformation of all that constitutes it.’ The ultimate danger is that pantheism, ‘because it destroys individuality, will have a secret charm for men in democracies.’ Tocqueville’s argument here is truly psychological: ‘All their habits of thought prepare them to conceive it, and predispose them to adopt it.’ Since pantheism is the religious expression of the democratic tendency to consider the general instead of the particular, it further reduces the already small democratic citizen and recreates the very conditions that produced it. It is, he argues, the ‘system […] most fitted to seduce the human mind in democratic ages.’41 Materialism, on the other hand, is not a danger of the mind but of the heart. The ‘love of well-being’ is a particularly intense passion in democracies, ‘infused’ by equality of conditions into ‘the heart of every man.’42 Democratic societies are not threatened by the kind of decadent corruption of aristocracies; rather, a kind of petty but regular materialism that contributes to both ‘public order’ and ‘good morals’ threatens to ‘enervate the soul, and noiselessly unbend its springs of action.’43 This ‘virtuous materialism’ is born of ‘small wants’ like ‘a few rods of land,’ or those things that are ‘comfortable and convenient.’ ‘These are small objects,’ Tocqueville argues, ‘but the soul clings to them […] to these the heart, the imagination, and life itself are unreservedly given up.’44 Furthermore, the taste for well-being ‘if it becomes excessive,’ Soon disposes men to believe that all is matter only and materialism, in turn, hurries them back with mad impatience of these same delights: such is the fatal circle which democratic nations are driven round. It would be well that they should see the danger and holdback […] lest the love of physical gratifications should grow upon it and fill it wholly. 45

The final consequence of materialism is a threat to religion because it reduces the soul itself to a material thing. Indeed, the love of physical gratification is overly attached in the democratic social state to good morals 41 42 43 44 45

DA II, 543. DA II, 537. DA II, 658. DA II, 657. DA II, 673.

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and public tranquility, ‘The reproach I address to the principle of equality is not that it leads men away in the pursuit of forbidden enjoyments, but that it absorbs them wholly in quest of those which are allowed.’46 The two dangers of pantheism and materialism are symmetrical opposites: pantheism, the vice of the mind, leads to the belief in one perfect spirit and destroys individuality; materialism, the vice of the heart, leads straight to an unbelief in the very existence of the immaterial. In this way, they are also best understood within the antinomial typology described above. Religion acts as a countervailing force to pantheism and materialism by being ‘naturally strong’ where the habits of democratic citizens are ‘naturally weak.’47 It helps to preserve the distinction between material and immaterial: Most religions are only general, simple, and practical means of teaching men the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. That is the greatest benef it which a democratic people derives from its belief, and more necessary to them than any other. 48

Simply maintaining the distinction between material and immaterial, a distinction threatened in different ways by both materialism and pantheism may, in fact, be the most important single thing religion does for democracy. Ultimately, however, it is in how religion pulls men out of this virtuous materialism that Tocqueville appreciates the most. He fears a sort of ‘abandon of virtue, a calm disorder and kind of regularity and moderation in the place of vice’ natural to the democratic social state.49 ‘The Americans are oriented more towards the earth, there is nothing but religion which from time to time makes them fix their passing and distant gaze to the heavens.’50 In democracy, only religion gives the ‘taste for the immaterial’ that raises men above daily needs and interests.51 Nonetheless, the material should not be forsaken; rather, the ‘chief concern of religions is to purify, to regulate, and to restrain the excessive and exclusive taste for well-being which men feel at periods of equality; but they would err in attempting to control it completely or to eradicate it.’52 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

DA II, 658. DA II, 537. DA II, 673. Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts, C.V. k, I, 10. Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts, C.V. a, 5. Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts, C.V. a, 5. DA II, 659.

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The Restraint Effect One of the most common effects posited by interpreters of Tocqueville’s sociology of religion is what I call the ‘restraint effect,’ or the idea that religion in some sense serves as a guide or restraint upon democratic decisionmaking. Scholars across the political spectrum have drawn inspiration from Tocqueville, sometimes to argue that religion acts as kind of foundational myths and social solidarity from outside of politics, other times in favor of a common theological framework used to judge politics. In whatever form one wishes to call it, it does seem like the religious values held in public culture do have an effect on personal behavior. My suggestion here, however, is that the public role of religion in this manner is not independent or outside of the political process but, strangely, the very product of majority rule that is so central to democratic political life. In the text of Democracy in America, Tocqueville indicates that the shared nature of Christianity in America is not a result of it holding sway as a pre-political set of beliefs, but rather as a product of democratic politics through the tyranny of the majority: Amongst the Anglo-Americans, there are some who profess the doctrine of Christianity from a sincere belief in them, and others who do the same because they are afraid to be suspected of unbelief […]. As those who do not believe conceal their doubts, and as those who do believe display their faith, public opinion pronounces itself in favor of religion [...] the instinctive desire of a future life brings the crowd about the altar, and opens the hearts of men to the precepts and consolation of religion. But this picture is not applicable to us: for there are men amongst us who have ceased to believe in Christianity, without adopting any other religion; others who are in the perplexities of doubt, and who already affect not to believe; and others again, who are afraid to proclaim openly that Christian faith, which they still cherish in secret.53

Tocqueville frequently worries about this tendency in democratic political culture to believe religion because of the power of the majority. In the notes, he writes: ‘This authority is mostly called Religion in aristocratic centuries,

53 DA I, 362.

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and perhaps Majority in democratic centuries, or more frequently, common opinion.’54 Similarly, he argues: Faith in common opinion is the faith of democratic nations. The majority is the prophet, it is followed without discussion. It creates an immense pressure on individual minds. The moral empire of the majority is perhaps called to replace religion to a certain point […] but then Religion lives like a common opinion more than a religion.55

The ability to slip between viewing religion as an outside source or restraint upon politics and as a type of common opinion that holds sway as a result of majority rule is terribly important in Tocqueville’s analysis. Even though many believe only as a result of the tyranny of the majority, religion is nonetheless something greater than politics. But it is less the myths or dogmas of religion that Tocqueville thinks important: it is the fact that religion is a set of basic laws. This fact means that religion can still help to counterbalance the tyranny of the majority itself by acting as a kind of moral backstop that keeps democratic politics from overrunning its barriers. Religion is a law, the omnipotence of the majority is arbitrary power. Religion brings the human spirit to stop itself and makes obedience the free choice of a moral and independent being. The majority constrains the human spirit […] and in forcing it without stop to obey, it finishes by depriving a free being of the desire to act for himself.56

The simple fact that religion is a kind of law means that the arbitrary power of the majority is restrained by an outside power. In the notes to Democracy in America, he puts it this way: The majority itself is not all-powerful, beneath it in the moral world are found humanity and reason, in the material world are acquired rights. The majority in all of its power recognizes these two barriers […] Voilà, that is what I mean by Republic in the United States.’57

54 55 56 57

Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts, D.V. j I, 9. Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts, D.V. j I, 8. DA II (Critical Edition), 721. Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts C.V. h II, 68.

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These passages are frequently used to defend the functionalist account of religion as a form of social solidarity which ties a citizenry together through adherence to a transcendental set of beliefs or even of foundational myths. Tocqueville’s focus on ‘common opinions’ rather than ‘what we call belief’ means that the social cohesion seen in democratic religion is not pre-political, but is instead a product of the political power of majority opinion. Similarly, the way that religious morality prevents gross abuse of power – the desire to get one’s way per fas o nefas (by right or wrong) – means that religion acts as a kind of backstop that prevents democratic politics from going beyond its field of play.58 Despite the fact that religion is not a pre-existing set of beliefs that are carried into politics, it does help set a moral limit to politics. Tocqueville argues that ‘the influence of religion […] extends to the intelligence of the people.’59 He fears that the world of politics might not have enough internal limits to the excesses experienced under the French Revolution; he sees religion, mediated by majority opinion, as helping to impose limits on the space of political innovation: The imagination of the Americans, even in its greatest flights, is circumspect and undecided, its impulses are checked, and its words unfinished. These habits of restraint recur in political society, and are singularly favorable both to the tranquility of the people and to the durability of the institutions it has established […]. American innovators are obliged to profess an ostensible respect for Christian morality and equity, which does not easily permit them to violate the laws that oppose their designs; nor would they find it easy to surmount the scruples of their partisans, even if they were able to get over their own. Hitherto no one in the United States has dared to advance the maxim that everything is permitted in the interests of society; an impious adage which seems to have been invented in an age of freedom to shelter all the tyrants of future ages. Thus, whilst the law permits the Americans to do anything, religion prevents them from doing what is rash or unjust.60

The most important element of this passage is that religion does not cause the Americans to behave justly, but rather prevents them from being unjust. The final two sentences even pick the famous phrase from the French 58 Tocqueville to Kergolay, 29 June 1831; œuvres complètes, ed. Jardin, XIII.1, 225-227. 59 DA I, 352. 60 DA I, 352.

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Revolution – ‘everything is permissible in the interests of society’ – and turn it against those who would justify the violence of the Revolution. In this way, religion keeps citizens and states from breaking the most minimal moral requirements in the exercise of liberty ‘if religion does not impart a taste for freedom, it singularly facilitates the use of it.’61 Put differently, religion does not tell the Americans what to do, it tells them what not to do. Perhaps more important, however, is Tocqueville’s emphasis on religion in public, not private culture. To make this argument work, what matters most is that in public discourse political elites respect the limits set to politics by religion, even if privately many persons do not hold genuine belief. The Mechanism of Practice: A Brief Comparison of Religion in the works of Alexis de Tocqueville and Robert Bellah One of Tocqueville’s most prolific and profound twentieth-century interpreters is Robert Bellah, whose book Habits of the Heart takes its title from a quote from Democracy in America. Indeed, the Tocqueville revival in the late twentieth century was partially motivated by the normative concerns of scholars like Bellah who sensed a loss of commitment in American civic life. Bellah is a profound social scientist, with a deep understanding of the sociological and anthropological traditions. It is easy to see why Bellah can find inspiration in Tocqueville: Bellah seeks to use ‘symbolic realism’ to defend the independence of culture, and Tocqueville is a great theorist of culture. They are also both profound sociologists of religion, and Bellah’s last book shows that he too became interested in Pascal’s psychology of practice. Although Bellah no longer uses the term ‘civil religion,’ his kind of civic republicanism still focuses on how common belief can act as both a kind of moral compass and a ground of cultural solidarity for democratic citizens. Bellah argues American civil religion is ‘a collection of beliefs, symbols, and rituals with respect to sacred things and institutionalized in a collectivity’ that provide a ‘transcendent goal for the political process.’62 This is not a religious orientation properly speaking, but more a common way of placing American politics within a theological framework. Yet there does seem to be something special about religion that makes it ‘a uniquely solid basis’

61 DA I, 354. 62 Bellah, ‘Civil Religion in America,’ p. 10; Ossewaarde, ‘Tocqueville’s Christian Citizen’; Koritansky, ‘Civil Religion in Tocqueville’s Democracy in America,’ p. 389; Dalton et al., ‘Bringing Tocqueville In’; Johnston, ‘Finding the Common Good amidst Democracy’s Strange Melancholy.’

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for instilling ethical values in democratic citizens for Bellah.63 Bellah’s main concern is the rise of individualism due to the growth of market rationality colonizing the organic life-world of community relations, and religion is a powerful means of instilling affective bonds and moral norms in democratic citizens.64 While this comparison must of necessity be brief, I suggest that Bellah and Tocqueville look at religion in subtly yet importantly different ways. Tocqueville certainly agrees that a kind of consensus exists in all societies that also have a religious component, but he does not seek to bring religious practice into the creation of political culture. To Bellah, the psychology of practice means that the creation of community is a product of both religious and political institutions; while there is a genuine separation of church and state, there is a kind of intertwining of symbols between the twin traditions of biblical religion and civic republicanism. The result of this interpretation of symbolic life which comes to exist in a fluctuating but relatively stable mix is a kind of public consensus on values that can be called ‘civil religion,’ although since Habits of the Heart, Bellah no longer uses the term. The point, however, even in the earlier writings on civil religion, has been to make sense of the role of ‘culture’ as ‘independent variables in the understanding of society.’65 All things said, it is hard to deny that there is a religious dimension to public culture that serves to structure political actions and create values, one that likely takes many different forms in different countries. Although Tocqueville is a profound theorist of the indirect effects of spheres of religious and political life upon each other, I do not think that his view of the interpenetration of symbols is a strong as Bellah’s. Bellah uses Durkheim and MacIntyre to think about how a moral community is oriented towards the sacred, and he uses induction into a religious order as an analogy for citizenship.66 Bellah builds from MacIntrye because he views social practices as ‘cooperative activities in which the participants strive to conform to establish standards of excellence that are essential to the cultivation and sustenance of virtue’:67

63 Jele, ‘Religion and the American Political Culture’; Zetterbaum, Tocqueville and the Problem of Democracy; Lawyer, ‘Tocqueville on the Religious Foundations of Democracy.’ 64 Bellah builds on Durkheim’s schema of organic and mechanical solidarity; Seidman, ‘Modernity and the Problem of Meaning.’ 65 Bellah, ‘Introduction,’ p. 4. 66 Stauffer, ‘Bellah’s Civil Religion’; Bellah, ‘Education for Justice and the Common Good.’ 67 Woolfold, ‘The Dubious Triumph of the Therapeutic,’ p. 75.

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It is the special responsibility of those of us who are intellectuals to appropriate and develop our cultural resources, even while criticizing them […] [we must] argue for the necessity of conventions, and indeed sacred conventions, for a viable culture.68

It is not only religion that should instill this sense of oneness. All social practices creates social conventions, or culture. ‘What economic individualism destroys,’ Bellah argues, ‘and what our kind of religious individualism cannot restore, is solidarity, a sense of being members of the same body.’69 Bellah presents anecdotally the example of drug run at a major pharmaceutical company that ‘could have been contaminated.’ In the heated debate between profit and ethic, the choice ultimately came to the medical director who chose to follow the basic Hippocratic oath of ‘Do no harm,’ and the drug run was cancelled.70 ‘We have to assume it was his character,’ Bellah argues, ‘formed in family, church and college, as well as in medical school, that he was drawing on, a character that had internalized the virtues, in particular the virtue of justice and concern for the common good.’71 Christopher Lasch has described this as the ‘character-forming discipline of social practices.’72 Although in his last book Bellah perhaps moves closer to Tocqueville’s position, in his works on the role of religion in democracy, he seems to overlap notions of religious and political virtue rather strongly.73 This is likely a result of Bellah’s Durkheimian foundation: ‘any coherent and viable society rests on a common set of moral understandings about good and bad, right and wrong, in the realm of individual and social action,’ and ‘these common moral understandings must also rest in turn upon a common set of religious understandings that provide a picture of the universe in terms of which the moral understandings make sense.’74 Amitai Etzioni describes the Durkheimian position of a partially religious consensus as a kind of ‘shell’ that contains the nation-state, creating affective bonds and moral norms amongst the citizenry.75 Tocqueville’s use of the 68 Bellah, ‘Is There a Common American Culture?,’ p. 620. 69 Ibid., 622. 70 Bellah, ‘Education for Justice and the Common Good,’ p. 33. 71 Ibid., 34. 72 Lasch, ‘The Communitarian Critique of Liberalism,’ p. 67. 73 Bellah, Religion in Human Evolution, p. 115: ‘various spheres of life have their own practices whose good is internal to that practice […] practice is prior to belief, and belief is an expression of practice.’ 74 Bellah, The Broken Covenant, p. xvi. 75 Etzioni, ‘Affective Bonds and Moral Norms,’ p. 133.

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Jansenist idea of an order of justification means that the religious is oriented towards the spiritual, and the political is oriented towards the material. The spiritual is real for Tocqueville, but, in contrast to Durkheim and MacIntyre, he does not see political solidarity as based upon a moral community that is oriented towards a spiritual end, but rather a political community oriented towards the material relation of citizen.76 While equally focused on how practices lead to character formation and the role of practices in creating culture, Tocqueville nonetheless views political and religious practice in very different terms. Patriotism is ‘like a religion’ (emphasis on the analogical relationship), and its practices were more oriented towards both material ends and material relations: it attaches ‘men by its benefits.’77 Interestingly, Bellah’s preference for the Anglican Church reads much like Tocqueville’s view of the progress of belief in democracy: ‘Although I was raised Protestant, my own intellectual and spiritual development has led me to the Episcopal Church which, while not Catholic, is not really Protestant either.’78 Bellah approvingly cites the Anglican Church as a lost third way combining ‘strong sacramentalism’ with ‘national diversity’ and true ‘worldwide communion’: ‘That may seem a horrifying idea to some of you,’ Bellah confesses, ‘but to me it has a certain charm.’ Tocqueville posited a double tendency in the progress of belief in democracy, and it seems Bellah, although he stops just short, may be attracted to the same sense of unity as Tocqueville’s Catholics.79 One of the more interesting consequences of this difference is that Bellah’s use of Durkheim also tends to push him into a strong distinction between interest and virtue, whereas Tocqueville seeks to transform the interest of individuals into the love of the common good. The township actually harnesses the self-interest of democratic citizens because it is a center of power, and through political activity they learn the habits necessary for democracy: Laws cannot succeed in rekindling the ardor of an extinguished faith, but man may be interested in the fate of their county by the laws. By 76 Bellah, ‘Twenty-Three Theses: A Response,’ p. 956: ‘We need Aristotle, and Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue (which was the subtext for Habits of the Heart) shows us why, especially since MacIntyre is as good a sociologist as he is a philosopher.’ 77 DA I (Gallimard), 12; DA I (Critical Edition), 113. 78 Bellah, ‘On Being Catholic and American,’ p. 33. 79 Finke and Stark also call into question many of the assumptions of the decline of religious belief in America; The Churching of America, 1776-1990. See also Wolfe and Katznelson, Religion and Democracy in the United States.

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this influence the vague impulse of patriotism, which never abandons the human heart, may be directed and revived; and if it be connected with the thoughts, the passions, and the daily habits of life, it may be consolidated into a durable and rational sentiment […]. In the United States the interests of the country are everywhere kept in view […] every citizen is as warmly attached to them as if they were his own. He takes pride in the glory of his nation, he boasts of its success […] the feeling he entertains towards the State is analogous to that which unites him to his family, and it is by a kind of egoism that he interests himself in the welfare of his country.80

Doubtless, religion is a great unifier, but Tocqueville focused fundamentally on the role of political institutions to create the habits it needs. Even the restraint effect, which comes closest to Bellah’s desire for conventions, is a result of the political mechanism of majority opinion which prevents political innovators from breaking established custom, including those of religion. While different in kind, Tocqueville does describe a kind of ‘harmony’ created of the ‘spirit of religion’ and the ‘spirit of liberty.’ What Tocqueville means by both harmony and spirit are here of central importance. First, in French esprit has strong connotations not to the heart but to the head, specifically the faculty of thinking and the mind. What Tocqueville means by ‘spirit’ here is nothing more than the opinions current amongst men; in other words, habits of thought. Second, harmony in music is the sound of multiple notes being played at the same time, creating a pleasing contrast in sound. Although frequently described as agreement in sound, this agreement is also based on the fundamental tension between the notes being struck. The musical metaphor therefore emphasizes the difference between religion and politics. In speaking of the respect the clergy have for remaining separate from politics, Tocqueville argues that ‘no religion displays the slightest hostility to democratic and republican institutions. The clergy of all the religions hold the same language, their opinions are consonant to the laws and the human intellect flows onward in one sole current.’81 The meaning of this phrase, therefore, is that in the habits of thought and practices of speech religious and political elites hold a language is in agreement and demonstrates respectful separation of activities.

80 DA I, 104. 81 DA I, 349.

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To develop political habits, such as love for the common good and respect for the rights of others, Tocqueville looks to political practices of association and self-interest properly understood. Self-interest properly understood is not only in agreement with morality in most questions, but it also prepares democratic citizens indirectly for the reception of faith: ‘it is to this theory that the moralists of today ought increasingly to turn.’82 And while Bellah’s main target in Habits of the Heart is various kinds of individualism, it should be remembered that for Tocqueville, individualism is a habit of the head: it ‘proceeds from erroneous judgment more than from depraved feelings; it originates as much in the deficiencies of the mind as in the perversity of the heart.’83 Bellah is, in spirit, rather close to Alexis de Tocqueville, but Tocqueville’s theory is a reminder that republicanism need not view interest and the common good in opposition, even though they are not the same thing. Where Bellah worries about the separation of means from ends in economic individualism, Tocqueville seeks to use political practices nearly exclusively to harness and transform self-interest into the love of the common good.

The Ideal-Type in History: From America to France What Tocqueville saw in America was the raw material he used to conceive of his democratic ideal-type. It was there, in the northeast especially, that he saw the ‘image of democracy itself’ with its central relation between equality and liberty, authority and reason. In many ways, of course, America is the ideal-type. At times he reads this ideal-type into America so much so that the two are almost indistinguishable, but he does make distinctions between things that are ‘American’ without being ‘democratic.’84 The purpose of Tocqueville’s investigations was always to understand France, and the ideal-type he found in America helped him try to conceive of a political path to a democratic republic, to complete what he called the ‘democratic revolution’ in France. In America, the reconciliation of liberty and religion approximated the ideal relation, and the tensions between religious and political institutions were mutually supportive. In France, however, the death of political liberty in the old regime cut off the positive feedback loops between the antinomies of religion and politics, with nearly 82 DA II, 648. 83 DA II, 107. 84 DA II, 547.

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fatal consequences for both. The consequences of the conflict between liberty and equality was seen in culture wars between republican and Catholics, a fight that lasted the length of the nineteenth century. Finally, the comparison of America and France brings to the fore the important role that political practice plays in clarifying religious belief. As Tocqueville himself admits, his reading of American history in Democracy in America is no more than schematic, meant to highlight the features of American history necessary for his story. The first Americans in New England not only brought ‘democratic and republican’ religious ideas with them to the New World but also English practices of the jury, the township, and elections: ‘The English colonies […] have always enjoyed more internal freedom and more political independence than the colonies of other nations; but this principle of liberty was nowhere more extensively applied than in the States of New England.’85 Religiously, they were born with a strong disposition to democratic ideas, and de facto they exercised all the ‘rights of sovereignty, named their magistrates, concluded peace or declare war, made police regulations, and enacted laws as if their allegiance was due only to God.’86 Tocqueville admires the ‘adventuresome’ spirit of the first Americans and sees in the history of Nathaniel Morton’s ‘New England’s Memorial […] the germ of a great nation wafted by Providence to a predestined shore.’87 The ‘life and mainstream of American liberty’ is the township, ‘the nucleus around which the local interests, passions, rights, and duties collected and clung. It gave scope and activity of a real political life most thoroughly democratic and republican.’88 In short, out of the combination of Puritan religious ideas and a political heritage that let the republican elements of English institutions flourish came a democracy ‘more perfect than any antiquity had dreamt of, started in full size and panoply from the midst of an ancient feudal society’:89 ‘It seemed as if New England was a region given up to the dreams of fancy and the unrestrained experiments of innovators.’90 Yet amidst all of this political innovation, Tocqueville marvels at how the Americans ‘constantly invaded the domain of conscience’ and applied the biblical law of a ‘half-civilized people’ to an ‘enlightened community.’91 85 86 87 88 89 90 91

DA I, 40. DA I, 41. DA I, 37. DA I, 45. DA I, 39. DA I, 40. DA I, 42.

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He remarks at how the death penalty was applied to so many crimes, ‘blasphemy, sorcery, adultery, and rape were punished with death,’ and yet was ‘never more rarely enforced towards the guilty.’ But he maintains that the ‘political laws’ which are connected to these barbaric punishments were ‘still ahead of our age.’92 Tocqueville admires how the law in New England provides for the poor; the maintenance of roads; surveyors; registers of births, deaths, and marriages; vacant inheritances; and even disputed landmarks. Indeed, in the ‘bosom of this obscure democracy’ there was already a much ‘loftier’ idea of ‘the duties of society towards its members […]. The law enters into a thousand useful provisions for a number of social wants which are at present very inadequately felt in France.’93 Tocqueville is using his ideal-type to read American history, and he summarizes the ‘true light’ of American democracy. This is its ability to combine ‘two distinct elements, which in other places have been in frequently hostility, but which in America have been admirably incorporated and combined with one another. I allude to the spirit of religion, and the spirit of liberty.’94 Tocqueville concludes by paraphrasing the inverted role of reason/liberty and authority/religion at the core of his ideal-type: The settlers of New England were at the same time ardent sectarians and daring innovators. Narrow as the limits of some of their religious opinions were, they were entirely free from political prejudice. Hence arose two tendencies, distinct but not opposite, which are constantly discernible in the manners as well as the laws of the country […] in the moral world everything is classed, adapted, decided, and foreseen; in the political world everything is agitated, uncertain, and disputed: in the one is a passive, though voluntary, obedience; in the other an independence scornful of experience and jealous of authority. These two tendencies, apparently so discrepant, are far from conflicting; they advance together and mutually support each other.95

Tocqueville’s reading of American history demonstrates how political freedom plays an essential role in allowing citizens to test out and clarify their religious belief.

92 93 94 95

DA I, 44. DA I, 45. DA I, 48. DA I, 48.

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This type of political practice that clarifies religious belief is at the core of Tocqueville’s reading of American history. Tocqueville paraphrases Pascal after describing the ways in which the early Americans invaded the conscience: ‘These errors are no doubt discreditable to human reason; they attest to the inferiority of our nature, which is incapable of laying firm hold upon what is true and just, and is often reduced to the alternative of two excesses.’96 The republican practices of the Americans allow them to put their ideas into practice, and from this practice to learn through experience what elements of religious truth are essential, and which are accessories. In the notes to Democracy in America, he argues: There is in the very nature of man a natural and permanent disposition which pushes his soul […] to the contemplation of things elevated and intellectual […] it can even be made greater and perfected by a kind of material and ordinary action which happens in these types of societies.97

The second case Tocqueville used his ideal-type to diagnose is France. It was his homeland, and his purpose for coming to America; in France he saw these two parts of social life in conflict. The experience of France demonstrates that the death of political life in the old regime was the cause of the radical nature of the French Revolution: The social condition of France led that people to conceive very general ideas on the subject of government, whilst its political constitution prevented it from correcting those ideas by experiment, and from gradually detecting their insufficiency; whereas in America these two things constantly balance and correct each other (emphasis added).98

French history demonstrates that the death of political life in France explains why the French Revolution had a religious nature while being run by men who were so anti-religious. The nineteenth-century legacy was the culture war over the heritage of the French Revolution. Tocqueville’s Old Regime is the classic statement of this argument, but in its basic contours it is consistent with his analysis of France in his earlier works. The reason for the disharmony of the spirit of religion and the spirit of liberty in France is the history of religion in the old regime and the 96 DA I, 43. 97 Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts, C.V. k I, 5. 98 DA II, 528.

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Revolution. In Democracy in America, Tocqueville asks ‘why isn’t this picture applicable to us?’ before rephrasing his argument of the two types of men and concluding that ‘there must be a particular and accidental cause at work that is preventing the human spirit from following its natural bent, and pushes it beyond the natural limit at which it should stop.’99 In Democracy in America, he concludes that this particular cause is the ‘close alliance between politics and religion,’ but in the Old Regime he expands this argument – it is ‘it was much less as a religious doctrine than as a political institutions that Christianity aroused these furious hatreds’100 – to show the central role of political experience. Tocqueville’s telling of French history begins with the death of political life in the eighteenth century. The title of Book III, Chapter 1 is ‘How Around the Middle of the Eighteenth Century Intellectuals Became the County’s Leading Politicians, and the Effects Which Resulted from This.’101 Tocqueville continually contrasts the exercise of reason and the literary characteristics of the Enlightenment to a Catholic Church ‘based chiefly on tradition’ which ‘recognized an authority superior to individual reason.’102 The focus on reason is the central element shared by the philosophes: However divided they are in the rest of their thinking, they all start from the same point: they all think that it would be good to substitute basic and simple principles, derived from reason and natural law, for the complicated and traditional customs which ruled the society of their times.’103

The preponderance of this attitude was due to the death of liberty in French social life. The philosophes lived at ‘almost infinite distance from practice,’ such that ‘no experience tempered the ardors of their nature’ and they ‘didn’t even have an idea of the dangers which always accompany even the most necessary revolutions.’104 They did not even have the least suspicion of them; for the complete absence of political freedom had made the world of action not merely badly known to them, but invisible. They were not involved with it, and could 99 DA I (Gallimard), 444. 100 Tocqueville, Old Regime, 97. 101 Ibid., 195. 102 Ibid., 204. 103 Ibid., 196. 104 Ibid., 197

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not even see what others did there […]. If, as formerly, the French had still taken part in government through the Estates-General, if they had even continued to be daily involved in regional administration through their provincial assemblies, we may affirm that they would never have let themselves be inflamed by writers’ ideas as they were then; they would have retained a certain practical experience which would have warned them against pure theory.105

The death of political life in France meant, very simply, that the French did not have access to the kind of political experience that the Americans developed through the use of rights and association. The French people, ‘unable to make itself felt in public affairs, had taken refuge in literature, while writers had become the real chiefs of the great party which intended to overthrow all the social and political institutions of the country.’106 The sublimation of politics into literature meant that in the minds of the French populace ‘there was slowly built an imaginary society in which everything seemed simple and coordinated, uniform, equitable, and in accord with reason.’107 The death of the political life of France that led to the preponderance of general ideas is only the first of the causes that led to the antireligious nature of the Revolution. The second cause of the radical and antireligious nature of the French Revolution was that the Catholic Church came to ‘join itself with political powers,’ and to be viewed as part of the political system of the old regime.108 This led to a variety of unfortunate consequences: the Church ‘often blessed in politics the vices that it condemned elsewhere, covering them with its sacred inviolability, and seemed to want to make them as immortal as itself.’ In addition to this very Jansenist reason, Tocqueville also adds another, more ‘personal’ one: The Church represented precisely that part of government which was closest and most directly opposed to them […] the Church, being specially charged to oversee thought and censor writings, got in the way of the writers all the time. In defending the general freedoms of the human

105 Ibid., 197. 106 Ibid., 204. 107 Ibid., 201. 108 Ibid., 205.

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mind against the Church, they fought their own battle, and began by breaking the shackles that chafed them the most.109

The personal animosity of the philosophes to the censorship gave them an additional set of reasons to attack the institution of the Catholic Church, but Tocqueville also argues that they viewed it ‘as the most vulnerable and least defended flank of the while vast edifice which they attacked.’110 Tocqueville marvels at how the Church was actually ‘more tolerant than it had been previously, and than it still was among other peoples.’111 Finally, the half-hearted persecution of the philosophes was only ‘enough to make them complain, not enough to make them afraid; they suffered the kind of hindrance which animate struggle, not the heavy yoke which crushes.’112 The combination of these particular causes, from the death of political life and the turn to general ideas, to the particular animosity that motivated revolutionaries to attack the Church, all contributed to the anti-religious elements of the Revolution. The effect of it was the radical revolution: When I try to disentangle the different effects which irreligion then produced in France, I find that they were much more in disordering minds than in degrading hearts, or even in corrupting mores; that irreligion inclined the people of that time to go to very unusual extremes. When religion deserted souls, it did not leave them, as often happens, empty and debilitated; rather, they were briefly filled by feelings and ideas which momentarily took the place of religion.113

Having their mental equilibrium disrupted, in effect, prevented religion from acting as a moral backstop for the French and ‘the human mind entirely lost its orientation; it neither knew how to hold on, nor where to stop.’ Whereas in America, political innovators are held back by the role that religion plays socially, in France it opened the way for a new kind of total revolution. Yet, Tocqueville actually admires these men in many ways. He argues that they did have ‘one admirable belief which we lack: they believed in themselves. They did not doubt the perfectibility, the power of man […] they had faith in his virtue.’ Moreover, the actual character of the French 109 Ibid., 205. 110 Ibid., 205. 111 Ibid., 204. 112 Ibid., 205. 113 Ibid., 208.

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Revolution was more like the religious revolutions like the Reformation; it ‘became a new kind of religion for them,’ he argues, one which ‘tore them away from individual egoism, encouraged them to heroism and devotion, and often made them seem insensible to all the petty goods which we possess.’ Tocqueville sums up the French Revolution as a combination of greatness and innocence: ‘The nation there displayed the chief flaw, but also the principal quality of youth, inexperience and generosity.’114 The result of the contested heritage of the French Revolution was the culture war that defined nineteenth-century political life. To regenerate that political life, however, Tocqueville did not embrace a vision of the Catholic Church so common in his day. Rather, the political utility that could come from religion could only come from a religion that gave up its privileged place in the old order. Or again, he uses the Jansenist idea of the theory of orders to explain his own political motivations: I do not want to be confused with these friends of order who sell the laws and the freedom of the will in order to sleep tranquil at night. There are too many of this type already, and I predict that they will never do anything truly great and lasting […]. My goal will be to reunite, as I said at the beginning of my letter, the two or three great things that we see separated […]. If these pure and honest men came to love liberty like they love virtue, these two things would rehabilitate the one by the other, and we would be saved […]. What has struck me the most in my country, but particularly for the last years, is to see aligned on one side men who prize morality, religion, and order; and on the other those who love liberty and the equality of men under the law. This spectacle has struck me as the most extraordinary and deplorable which could ever be offered to the eyes of man.115

What ailed the French was, in general, not too little religion in politics but, rather, too much. This is the moral of the book itself, and the memory of the privileged state of the Catholic Church continued to obsess many in the hierarchy. Through his life Tocqueville remained critical of these types. The ideal-type that Tocqueville saw in America helped him diagnose his home country of France. In the end, however, Tocqueville’s diagnosis of France is eminently republican. In contrast to liberals, who focus solely on the necessity of separating religious and political spheres of action, 114 Ibid., 208. 115 Tocqueville to Eugene Stöffels, 5 October 1836; œuvres complètes, ed. Beaumont, V, 438.

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Tocqueville shows how political experience is the means by which this differentiation occurs: In Europe, Christianity allowed itself to be intimately united to the powers of the earth. Today these powers fall, and Christianity is buried under the debris. Still alive, it has been roped to the dead: cut the cords that hold it back and it will rise again.116

The old regime manner of using religious institutions as a support for political regime is a great danger. As much as religion is necessary to liberty, so too is liberty necessary for religion. Only political freedom allows citizens to try out and test their ideas through practice, and only the practices of democracy gives them the opportunity to discover truth from experience.

Back to America: The Double Foundation and the American Democratic Revolution In the section above, I focused on the part of the American foundation that closely approximated Tocqueville’s ideal-type, and contrasted it to the French revolutionary and antireligious heritage that did not approximate this ideal-type. Nonetheless, the notion of social state helped Tocqueville to think through how he could move France towards political democracy. In this section, I look at the part of America that fell away from the ideal-type relation. I argue that, in contrast to the view that the American foundation was democratic and equal, Tocqueville looked at the American foundation as half-democratic and half-aristocratic. America has a double foundation, one built roughly equally between the democratic and equal states of the North, and the plantation aristocracy in the South. The prevailing view of the American founding is very similar to the one presented by the part of the United States that approximated the ideal-type relation. This is a view that has one of its clearest and grandest expressions in Louis Hartz’s The Liberal Tradition in America. In his view, in contrast to European inequality which was resolved with state socialism, in America the lack of class conflict and the presence of the liberal tradition prevented the growth of state socialism. Hartz even cites Tocqueville’s phrase that ‘the great advantage of the Americans is that they did not have to undergo a democratic revolution; they were born equal without having to become 116 DA I (Critical Edition), 489.

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so.’117 To Hartz, the fact that America had no genuine tradition of inequality of rank embodied in feudalism combined with a dominant cultural of liberalism meant that the Unites States had taken a different path of development than European democracies. Louis Hartz is right to find in Tocqueville’s description of the American founding a version of American exceptionalism. Tocqueville writes about the founding of the North in contrast to England: the hierarchy of rank despotically classed the inhabitants of the mothercountry, the colony continued to present the novel spectacle of a community homogenous in all its parts. A democracy, more perfect than any which antiquity had dreamt of, started in full size and panoply from the midst of an ancient feudal society.118

Not only was there less division of ranks, but the Americans brought republican practices with them from their native England. They were ‘born in a country which had been agitated for centuries by the struggles of faction […] they were more conversant with the notion of right and the principles of true freedom than the greater part of their European contemporaries.’119 In contrast to Hartz, however, for Tocqueville the most important element of this foundation was its republican nature: The English colonies (and this is one of the main causes of their prosperity) have always enjoyed more internal freedom and more political independence than the colonies of other nations; but this principle of liberty was nowhere more extensively applied than in the States of New England.120

Not only did the inhabitants of New England bring municipal freedom with them from England, but they were also the only colonies the English allowed nearly complete political freedom, ‘and to govern themselves in whatever is not contrary to her laws.’ This heritage is dominantly found in the township, ‘that fruitful germ of free institutions’ which was ‘deeply rooted in the habits of the English; and with it the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people had

117 DA II, 624. 118 DA I, 39. 119 DA I, 31. 120 DA I, 40.

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been introduced into the bosom of the monarchy of the House of Tudor.’121 This republican heritage was transplanted to the new world by Puritanism, which ‘was not merely a religious doctrine, but it corresponded in many points with the most absolute democratic and republican theories. It was this tendency which had aroused its most dangerous adversaries.’122 Despite the democratic and original nature of the foundation in the northeast, Tocqueville is well aware that it is more proper to say the Americans were born half-democratic, half-aristocratic. To Tocqueville the American foundation has a kind of double nature, including both the democratic equality of the North and the aristocratic inequality of the South. ‘The absolute supremacy of democracy’ only tells part of the story, and ‘the inhabitants of the New World may be considered from more than one point of view.’123 In the concluding chapter to the first volume of Democracy in America, Tocqueville looks at the treatment of those groups that are exceptions to the rule of equality, practices that are ‘American without being democratic.’124 ‘Two branches may be distinguished in the Anglo-American family,’ he argues, ‘which have hitherto grown up without entirely comingled the one in the South, the other in the North.’125 Only in the North was the democratic social state preponderant; in the South he saw a racial aristocracy based on slavery that he had no trouble comparing to the caste aristocracy of his own history: ‘The influence of slavery, united to the English character, explains the manners and the social condition of Southern States.’ He saw that it would likely take a war to end slavery, and as for the achievement of de facto equality for non-whites (even in the North), it was so far off as to be barely imaginable. Tocqueville cites Thomas Jefferson’s opinion in his notes ‘two races equally free will not be able to live in the same government.’126 The long history from Civil War to Civil Rights is the story of the slow decay and eventual death of the aristocratic social state in the South, and of de facto political exclusion in the North. It is, in short, the progress of our democratic revolution. In the South, the plantation aristocracy based on slavery was still republican, but it was not democratic. 121 DA I, 31. 122 DA I, 35. 123 DA I, 383. 124 DA I, 383. 125 DA I, 33. 126 DA I (Critical Edition), 572.

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In the South of the United States the whole race of whites formed an aristocratic body, which was headed by a certain number of privileged individuals, whose wealth was permanent, and whose leisure was hereditary. These leaders of the American nobility kept alive the traditional prejudices […] and maintained the honor of an inactive life. This aristocracy contained many who were poor, but none who would work.127

The plantation aristocracy created men of ancient virtue but a stagnant economy based on forced labor. Tocqueville describes the differences between the free state of Ohio and the slave state of Kentucky. ‘The influence of slavery extends still further; it affects the character of the master, and imports a peculiar tendency to his ideas and his tastes’: On the left bank of the Ohio labor is confounded with the idea of slavery, upon the right bank it is identified with that of prosperity and improvement; on the one side it is degraded, on the other it is honored […]. The white inhabitant of Ohio, who is obliged to subsist by his own exertions, regards temporal prosperity as the principal aim of his existence […] he is tormented by the desire of wealth and he boldly enters upon every which fortune opens to him […]. But the Kentuckian scorns not only labor, but all the undertaking which labor promotes; as he lives in an idle independence his tastes are those of an idle man […] the energy which his neighbor devotes to gain, turns with him to a passionate love of field sports and military exercises; he delights in violent bodily exertion, he is familiar with the use of arms, and is accustomed from a very early age to expose his life in single combat. Thus slavery not only prevents the whites from becoming opulent, but even from desiring to become so.128

Tocqueville concludes that he ‘could easily prove that almost all the differences which may be remarked between the characters of the Americans in the Southern and the Northern State have originated in slavery.’129 In the South, because the law established inequality between whites and blacks, the customs of the people actually allowed more contact with African-Americans:

127 DA I, 422. 128 DA I, 420. 129 DA I, 421.

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The negroes are less carefully kept apart they sometimes share the labor and the recreation of the whites; the whites consent to intermix with them to a certain extent, and although the legislation treats them more harshly, the habits of the people are more tolerant and compassionate.130

In the North he saw the cultural exclusion of African-Americans, which in some ways he thought more extreme: ‘the prejudice of race appears to be stronger in the States which have abolished slavery, than in those where it still exists; and nowhere is it so intolerant as in those States where servitude has never been known.’ Where intermarriage is allowed, it is not practiced because ‘public opinion would stigmatize a man who should connected himself with a negress,’ and ‘if they come forward to vote, their lives are in danger.’ Whether it be white juries deciding cases of law or the direct use of violence by whites on blacks, this prejudice creates a segregated society in all aspects: education, health, theater, housing. ‘The negro is free, but he can share neither the rights, nor the pleasure, nor the labor, nor the afflictions, nor the tomb’ of whites. He concludes: ‘in the North, the white no longer distinctly perceives the barrier which separates him from the degraded race, and he shuns the negro with the more pertinacity, since he fears lest they should someday be confounded together.’131 Not only did the South have an aristocratic social state based upon the unequal and unfree status of African-Americans, but Tocqueville thought that even in the North, the racial hierarchy in the United States was likely to be of longer duration than the status-based hierarchy of his native France, or the slavery of the ancients. Amongst the ancients slaves were both of the same race and frequently were better educated and citizens: ‘Freedom was the only distinction between them; and when freedom was conferred they were easily confounded together.’132 Amongst the moderns, however, the ‘natural prejudice’ that is the ‘secondary consequence’ of slavery lasts longer. He concludes that ‘you may set the negro free, but you cannot make him other than an alien to the European.’ He argues the Americans will have to overcome ‘the prejudice of the master, the prejudice of the race, and the prejudice of color.’133 The first lesson this analysis brings forward for today is that Tocqueville’s view of France in the July Monarchy may be a more appropriate comparative case for contemporary America than the America of the past. In order to explain 130 DA I, 415. 131 DA I, 415. 132 DA I, 412. 133 DA I, 413.

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to the French reader the nature of exclusion in America, he argues that ‘we may derive some faint notion of them by analogy. France was formerly a country in which a number distinction of rank existed,’ although the distinctions in France were closer to that of the ancients because it was based dominantly on ‘legislation.’ Yet despite the fact that ‘nothing can be more fictitious than a purely legal inferiority,’ they ‘subsisted for ages; they still subsist in many places and on all side they have left imaginary vestiges, which time alone can efface.’134 For this reason, Tocqueville is particularly pessimistic about the ability for the future Americans to share the republic with non-whites: The greatest difficulty in antiquity was that of altering the law; amongst the moderns it is that of altering the manners […] This arises from circumstance that, amongst the moderns, the abstract and transient fact of slavery is fatally united to the physical and permanent fact of color.135

Today, America has surpassed the limits of Tocqueville’s pessimistic vision in 1835. Where Tocqueville could not envision the end of this racial hierarchy, we have now seen at least a significant erosion of the political exclusion of African-Americans and other non-whites from the political process. We have to admit that the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act are likely the most significant pieces of legislation in the second half of the twentieth century. A successful movement for civil rights is the first moment we can say that blacks and other non-whites were, in any proper sense, recognized as equal citizens in the American polis. Tocqueville had seen a similar movement from inequality to equality in France. His parents had not only nearly been victims of revolutionary violence, but he also saw the greatness of the struggle for dignity and equality. Tocqueville thought that the completion of the French democratic revolution was the fundamental political cause behind their culture wars and economic individualism; the analysis here suggests that a similar set of causes may be at the root of contemporary American culture wars and economic individualism. Tocqueville dedicates an entire chapter to the thesis that ‘It is above all at the moment where a democracy has arisen out of the debris of aristocracy that this isolation of men from one another, and the egoism that is its consequence, strikes most easily at the regards of men.’136 In this state of things where ‘men have just discovered independence,’ they develop a ‘presumptuous confidence 134 DA I, 414. 135 DA I, 413. 136 DA II, 623.

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in their powers and never imagine they might need to appeal for the help of their fellow citizens.’ There is a political cause that exacerbates individualism: Those members of the community who were at the top of the late gradations of rank cannot immediately forget their former greatness; they will long regard themselves as aliens in the midst of the newly composed society. They look upon all those whom this state of society has made their equals as oppressors, whose destiny can excite no sympathy; they have lost sight of their former equals, and feel no longer bound by a common interest to their fate: each of them, standing aloof, thinks that he is reduced to care for himself alone. Those, on the contrary, who were formerly at the foot of the social scale, and who have been brought up to the common level by a sudden revolution, cannot enjoy their newly acquired independence without secret uneasiness; and if they meet with some of their former superiors on the same footing as themselves, they stand aloof from them with an expression of triumph and of fear […] democratic revolutions lead them to shun each other, and perpetuate in a state of equality the animosities which the state of inequality engendered.137

Just as the French culture war between the partisans of religion and the partisans of liberty was due to the end of status-based exclusion, in America we can see the same cultural aftereffects from the end of a system of racial exclusion. Our culture war and our rampant individualism come as a result of the completion of our own democratic revolution. It seems to me that this analysis of the political causes at work in the American culture wars points to the strength of our political institutions more than their weakness. The United States of today has already surpassed Tocqueville’s pessimistic vision of the potential for the republic to end racial exclusion. We also pushed far past the western border he envisaged, and have more than twice the total population. If our political institutions were strong enough to make it through successful civil rights movements and a westward expansion nearly double of what Tocqueville imagined, then we ought not to fear for their ability to deal with these cultural aftereffects. Tocqueville is most probably correct that the habit of prejudice will take much longer to change than the legal exclusion of non-whites. Yet, for all of these warts and blemishes, American democracy is terribly robust.

137 DA II, 623.

Conclusion Building a Republic for the Moderns Variety is disappearing from the human race, the same ways of acting, thinking, and feeling are to be met with all over the world. This is not only because nations work more upon each other, and are more faithful in their mutual imitation, but as the men of each country relinquish more and more the peculiar opinions and feelings of a caste, a profession, or a family, they simultaneously arrive at something nearer to the constitution of man, which is everywhere the same. Thus they become more alike, even without having imitated each other. Like travelers scattered about some large wood, which is intersected by paths converging to one point, if all of they keep their eyes fixed upon that point and advance towards it they insensibly draw nearer together – though they seek not, though they know not, though they know not each other – and they will be surprised at length to find themselves all collected on the same spot. All the nations which, not any particular man, but man himself, is the object of these researches and their imitation, are tending in the end to a similar state of society, like these travelers converging to the central plot of the forest.1

The thesis of this book is that the Jansenist influence on Tocqueville’s life and works highlights the fundamentally republican nature of his political thought. I have drawn out the consequences of his republicanism tinged with Jansenism in several ways. From the Jansenist providential rhetoric to the notion of interest properly understood and debates over the freedom of education, these Jansenist colorations bring to light the contours of Tocqueville’s republicanism in new and sometimes unexpected ways. I have not had the opportunity to trace the influence of Jansenism on Tocqueville’s life and works beyond his participation in debates over the freedom of education, however. I have cited letters and works from later in his life, but I have not researched his negotiations with Rome during the Second Republic or the writing of the Old Regime. Nonetheless, this analysis of the Jansenist side to Alexis de Tocqueville’s life and works has brought to light in a more rigorous way this influence on his political thought. The first four chapters of this book traced the long history of Jansenism, demonstrated the presence of certain Jansenist ideas within various social 1

DA II, 769.

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realms that Tocqueville moved through, and argued that a modified form of the Jansenist idea of Providence is found in the Author’s Introduction to Democracy in America. I also showed a very important way in which Tocqueville is not a Jansenist: his defense of the sovereignty of the people and, therefore, a democratic republic. While the contours of the exact nature and extent of Tocqueville’s Jansenism can still be better understood, in this book I have argued that it largely takes shape around two linked ideas: the philosophical anthropology of the two states of man’s nature, and the theory of orders. The second part of this book looked at how these Jansenist colorations bring to the fore aspects of his political theory that have hitherto remained below the surface. From self-interest properly understood to debates over the freedom of education and Tocqueville’s sociology of religion, this Jansenist heritage was a useful and vibrant tradition from which he could draw inspiration. The philosophical anthropology allowed Tocqueville to conceive of the nature of political practices in his vision of citizenship, while the theory of orders helped him to make a very strong sociological differentiation between religious and political types of authority. These Jansenist elements add to our understanding of Alexis de Tocqueville’s life and works but are squarely within the dominant understanding of his political theory as a mix of elements. I have helped to clarify the historical origins and particular use of these two ideas in Tocqueville’s works, but I have not, ultimately, done much more than give a clearer description to parts of his theory that were already generally acknowledged to exist. What this Jansenist influence fundamentally brings to light, I have argued, is the republican nature of Alexis de Tocqueville’s political thought. When I say ‘republican,’ I mean here, as I have throughout the book, a term of art used by historians to denote a shared way of making political life intelligible. Republicanism is a political tradition or paradigm that helps to give structure and meaning to the political world, shapes what questions we ask, and even what kinds of evidence we take for answers. 2 Aristotle remains in a certain way the intellectual grandfather, but notable republicans include Cicero, Machiavelli, Harrington, and Montesquieu. There are also liberal, Hegelian, and Marxist ways of

2 Historians often use Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions as a model. For an example, see Pocock. Politics, Language, and Time, p. 13; Sullivan, ‘Political Science in Late Medieval Europe.’

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understanding political life, amongst others. Taken on its own terms, any political tradition is a coherent and plausible way of understanding the social world. I aim do two things in this conclusion. First, in contrast to the dominant view that Tocqueville is a liberal, I present the case that his political thought is fundamentally of a republican character. Second, I move to look at questions within the contemporary scholarship of republicanism on the nature of the political, the cultivation of civic virtue, and the institutionalization of the republic. I conclude with a short discussion of some unexpected avenues of research highlighted by Tocqueville’s modern republicanism.

Tocqueville’s Modern Republicanism Contemporary debates on the nature of freedom are frequently understood in the terms established by Isaiah Berlin in his essay ‘Two Concepts of Liberty.’ Inspired by Benjamin Constant’s essay ‘Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns,’ Berlin proposes a distinction between negative and positive liberty: negative liberty is understood as protection from power; positive liberty is found in a life of ‘self-mastery’ and the realization of a higher self. As Berlin acknowledges, there are different ways of conceiving of positive and negative liberty. The republican view of civic virtue is just one version of positive liberty; Hegelian notions of recognition and liberal notions of autonomy are other kinds. It is beyond the scope of my argument to discuss these other political ideologies here, but by adding a second dimension to Berlin’s typology we can make the following table (Table 3): Table 3 The Contours of Liberalism and Republicanism

Negative Freedom

Positive Freedom

Liberal

Republican

Benjamin Constant Thomas Hobbes Judith Sklar John Locke John Locke Jurgen Habermas Immanuel Kant François Guizot

Quentin Skinner Phillip Pettit Cicero Niccolò Machiavelli Aristotle J.G.A. Pocock Jean-Jacques Rousseau Niccolò Machiavelli

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The key difference between liberals and republicans is in the location of sovereignty.3 Republicans locate political authority in the collective person that is the body politic. Liberals, on the other hand, seek to derive political authority from individual rights or consent. Liberals need not reject group life entirely, but they do hold that individual rights are philosophically prior to collective self-determination. Likewise, republicans rarely reject notions of consent or individuality, but they hold that the public condition of collective freedom is a necessary condition for individual freedom. This basic difference leads liberals and republicans to look very differently at many aspects of our political and social life. Liberals tend to highly value free market institutions, sometimes even seeing the marketplace as a uniquely important site of individual freedom, while republicans often worry that inequality and economic individualism can threaten the vitality of civic life. Liberals tend to favor a privatist and tolerant attitude towards religion, conceiving of the separation of church and state in the terms of a wall of separation; republicans view religious institutions as an important demonstration of the social nature of persons, sometimes even an institution second only to the political. Liberals view the state as instrumentally good to the extent that it protects individual liberty; republicans see state protection as either a necessary condition of personal freedom or the institutional setting for the cultivation of civic virtue. The cells in this chart are not absolutes, and certain thinkers like Locke and Machiavelli are easily categorized by political ideology but not so easily categorized by their view of freedom. 4 When reading John Locke’s chapters on property and the dissolution of government, it looks like he is strongly in the negative freedom camp; turn to look at his view of reason that masters the passions and uncovers a universal natural law, and he can be taken to be defend a liberal view of positive liberty.5 Similarly, the two kinds of republicans both claim Machiavelli but interpret his political thought in subtly yet substantially different ways. The difference between the two kinds of liberals is generally in their view of reason. Positive freedom liberals value reason as being generative of universal rules and principles that can guide individual behavior and the political process; negative freedom liberals tend to have a view of 3 This is generally well understood, but for a good discussion, see Habermas, ‘Human Rights and Popular Sovereignty.’ 4 Pettit argues Locke as a republican, which although not entirely misplaced, is a bit too strong a claim; ‘Reworking Sandel’s Republicanism,’ p. 85. 5 Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Laslett.

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small-r reason based on the information of particulars only available to individuals.6 Similarly, positive freedom liberals from Kant to Habermas differ in the content and mechanisms used to identify reason, but share a general strategy of trying to construct ethical rules from outside of political considerations of power and interest as a means of making politics adhere to notions of universal justice.7 The key difference on the republican side of this chart is the role of civic virtue. Positive liberty republicans continue to insist on what I have called the connection between the moral and institutional relations of the republic, and to view the political as an intrinsically valuable good-in-itself. In this Aristotelian formulation, they argue that only within the institutions of the republic do citizens develop civic virtue, however conceived. Negative freedom republicans tend to draw more from the Romans than the Greeks.8 They use Roman legal and institutional contributions to republicanism to argue that, while collective freedom is a necessary condition of personal freedom, it is a ‘negative concept, and essentially consists in not being dominated by any person or group.’9 Non-domination is a negative concept of freedom because it signifies the absence of dependency upon the will of another person. Alexis de Tocqueville’s political thought is best categorized as a positive liberty republican, for two reasons. First, Tocqueville unambiguously defends the sovereignty of the people. In America the people is a ‘sovereign power’ which exists ‘above’ the legislation, ‘beyond’ the current structure of institutions, and which may ‘destroy or modify them at its pleasure.’10 In place of Aristotle’s six-fold classif ication of regime-type, however, Tocqueville argues that the modern age is defined by ‘a state of things which may be despotic or republican, but will surely be democratic.’11 This was the rhetorical point of his providential argument in Democracy in America, and what it meant was that the mixed constitution that defined the early modern republican solution had to be reimagined to suit modern conditions. The vibrant realm of civic and political associations in America was Tocqueville’s democratic substitute for an aristocratic class. Although 6 Constant, ‘De la liberté des anciens’; Sklar, ‘The Liberalism of Fear’; Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom. 7 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Guyer and Wood; Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action. 8 Nederman and Sullivan, ‘Reading Aristotle through Rome.’ 9 Skinner, ‘On the Slogans of Republican Political Theory.’ 10 DA I, 197. 11 DA I, 228.

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Tocqueville replaces Aristotle’s typology with a binary classification, he retains Aristotle’s view that democracies are particularly liable to degenerate into the despotism of one man: ‘it is therefore very difficult to discover a medium between the sovereignty of all and the absolute power of one man.’12 The second reason Tocqueville is a republican is that he did not give up on an Aristotelian vision of the good life based on a dialectic of ruling and being ruled. Indeed, the best remedy for the danger of the tyranny of the majority is political experience: I hear it said that it is in the nature and the habits of democracies to be constantly changing their opinions and feelings. This may be true of small democratic nations, like those of the ancient world, in which the whole community could be assembled in a public place and the excited at will by an orator. But I saw nothing of the kind amongst the great democratic people which dwells upon the opposite shore of the Atlantic Ocean. What struck me in the Unites States was the difficulty in shaking the majority of an opinion […] nothing but experience will avail, and even experience must be repeated.13

In his description of how Americans cultivate civic virtue through political participation, Tocqueville recaptures the psychological mechanism of learning by doing (that is, of developing uniquely political virtues in political spaces invested with power) in the institutions of a democratic republic. Only through participation in the power relations of the republic do citizens develop the love of the common good, learn to respect the rights of others, and cultivate public spirit. Tocqueville’s vision of republican prudence can be summarized as the seemingly liberal principle of self-interest properly understood, but it is learned through the eminently republican practice of political activity. In contrast to the view that Tocqueville’s political thought is of a liberal character, these two arguments are powerful reasons for viewing it as fundamentally republican in nature. Liberals are not wrong to notice certain themes and tendencies in Tocqueville’s political thought, however. Liberals point to a letter in which Tocqueville calls himself a ‘liberal of a new type’ and connect this argument to a defense of negative rights and a fear of the majority.14 These liberal elements, however, are generally accommodations 12 DA I, 59; DA II, 871. 13 DA II, 802. 14 Tocqueville to Eugene Stöffels, 24 July 1836; œuvres complètes, ed. Beaumont, V, 429.

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to the democratic age or outright dangers to freedom. This is not to say they are unimportant. Tocqueville worried about materialism and individualism, but he also studied the political economy of Jean-Baptiste Say and worked on projects of economic development. The republican nature of Tocqueville’s political thought is perhaps clearest in relation to prominent liberals of the time, foremost Benjamin Constant and François Guizot. Both Constant and Guizot looked at the monarchy as favorable in their readings of French history, and even sought to update various elements of monarchical theory to the nineteenth century. Not only did Tocqueville disagree with the basic thesis of Guizot’s History of the Civilization in France, but during the July Monarchy he also increasingly grew tired of Guizot’s political maneuverings. While disagreeing with the substance of most liberal political theory, he did agree with the political orientation of his liberal contemporaries who sought to create in France a middle way between reaction and revolution. The letter where he claims to be a ‘liberal of a new type’ is part of an exchange with the very conservative Eugene Stöffels about Tocqueville’s support for a democratic republic; Tocqueville defends himself by reprising his argument that France is torn by a culture war between the ‘partisans of religion’ and the ‘partisans of liberty.’15 It is in this context that his claim to be a liberal of a new type needs to be understood. Some scholars have argued that Tocqueville is part of a tradition of ‘aristocratic liberalism’ in the style of Montesquieu and centered on a defense of intermediate orders.16 The approach taken in this book is consonant with the general framework of these scholars, but I have argued that this tradition is far more republican in nature than they allow. Even the analyses of Lucien Jaume and Annelien de Dijn, which focus on this aristocratic liberalism as a sense duty, a fear of despotism, and a defense of the intermediate orders, read far more republican than liberal.17 As Chancellor d’Aguesseau asked, will the love of county ‘not grow as happily and taste as sweet in a monarchy as in a republic?’18 In addition to this strictly historiographical question, there is another consideration that is perhaps even more important. Tocqueville himself does not seem to associate this tradition with liberalism. In the Old Regime Tocqueville argues that the centralizing monarchy was the ideological root of the economic liberalism of the Physiocrats, even 15 DA I, 14 16 Kahan, Aristocratic Liberalism. 17 Jaume, Tocqueville, pp. 240-280; de Dijn, French Political Thought, pp. 5-9. 18 Aguesseau, ‘L’Amour de la Patrie,’ in œuvres complètes, ed. Pardessus, I, 229.

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connecting this economic liberalism to nineteenth-century socialism.19 In contrast, he praises the local liberties of the commune, the parlements, and the intermediary groups; all of which he envisions in republican terms.20 There is a Straussian version of this aristocratic liberalism thesis. According to this view, Tocqueville’s political thought has a kind of esoteric meaning defending the role of elites to lead, and the necessity of myths and beliefs to regulate the masses.21 In this way the Straussian approach is rather similar to Sheldon Wolin’s view of Tocqueville as ‘enlisting the masses in the mystification of politics.’22 The evidence presented in this book, however, demonstrates that Tocqueville was more concerned with demystifying politics. In place of this cloaking of power strategy, Tocqueville defends ‘enlightened patriotism’ and ‘clarified interest.’23 Tocqueville is enough of an aristocrat to defend an important role for elites, but too much of a democrat to view this space as anything other than smaller and less important than previously thought: ‘Thus the question,’ he argues, ‘is not how to reconstruct aristocratic society but how to make liberty proceed from that democratic state of society in which God has placed us.’24 The case can be summed up as follows: it is difficult to call someone a liberal who agrees with Aristotle and Rousseau but disagrees with Constant and Guizot. Tocqueville can make many accommodations to liberalism and the needs of a democratic age, but he always understands liberty in republican terms. To create this modern republicanism, Tocqueville makes recourse to nearly the entire range of republican thinkers, the most important of which were French. From Rousseau, he draws the structure of a democratic republic; from Pascal, the moral psychology of practice; and from Montesquieu, the importance of intermediate orders, all the while mixing in elements all of his own. While properly understood as positive liberty republicanism, Tocqueville’s political theory can act as a kind of bridge to many kinds of liberalism. Indeed, the self-consciously modern and liberal tendencies makes his political theory particularly well placed for being able to talk to liberals of various kinds. Three contemporary liberals who can be placed in conversation with this interpretation of Alexis de Tocqueville are Judith Sklar, Isaiah Berlin, and John Rawls. 19 Tocqueville, Old Regime, 213. 20 Ibid., 212. 21 Boesche, The Strange Liberalism; Lawler, The Restless Mind. 22 Wolin, Tocqueville: Between Two Worlds, p. 560. 23 Carrese The Cloaking of Power; Zetterbaum, Tocqueville and the Problem of Democracy. 24 DA II, 874.

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Sklar would certainly not accept the republican psychological mechanism of practice or the connection between the moral and institutional relations of the republic, but she is notably sensitive to the questions of power that are connected to this republican vision of democratic citizenship. Although their means are different, I think the goal is very similar: Tocqueville’s distinction between power well used and power abused is perhaps not significantly different from her insistence to restrain public power based on an understanding what it means to be subject to power through the notion of a summum malum (greatest evil).25 Furthermore, both Tocqueville and Sklar were sensitive to questions of revolutionary violence and, even if their methods differ, their intuition is that the judge power one has to have been subjected to it. Isaiah Berlin’s concept of moral incommensurability and of having to choose between ends that are equally legitimate is also another liberal way of making sense of the same insight that the criteria of political judgments are different from those of other realms of life.26 The ends of political freedom may be of their own order or nature, if you will, and the idea of moral incommensurability means that activities of different natures should be judged by different standards. From this liberal point of view, it could still be argued that a certain amount of political experience is necessary for being able to judge these ends of different natures. In this way, a republicanism of practice could be the condition for judging things of a political nature, even if those things are not of a higher nature than other realms of life such as art, religion, or business. A liberal vision such as this could also defend a limited republican position and even combine it with notions of autonomy or negative liberty as well. This liberal-pluralist notion could meet Tocqueville’s modern republican halfway, as it leaves a certain amount of space open for positive liberty. Indeed, Tocqueville’s use of the theory of orders makes his vision of modern republicanism particularly well suited to talking to liberals of this type. Nonetheless, the necessity of the political means that to a republican, political freedom is not just one good amongst others, it is at minimum a primary human good like the family. In this view, the political need not be conceived as the highest end or good, while still being a necessary part of the human condition, if you will. If a liberal of this type can recognize this minimal republican claim of the necessity of the political, then a very strong bridge can be built to this kind of liberal pluralism. 25 Sklar, ‘The Liberalism of Fear.’ 26 Indeed, this value pluralism helps to fill in some of the normative value of negative liberty; Berlin, ‘Two Concepts of Liberty.’ See also Dzur, ‘Value Pluralism versus Political Liberalism?’ and Crowder, Isaiah Berlin.

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A third contemporary liberal interlocutor is John Rawls. In Chapter 6 I highlighted how Tocqueville’s educational compromise could be used to derive a right to education from both the cultural right of self-preservation and the individual right to be treated as an end-in-itself. Tocqueville’s insight that education is a mixed social good, in this sense, works in a similar way as Rawls’ defense of the ‘co-original’ nature of individual and collective rights.27 While they are very similar in approach, Tocqueville nonetheless tends to view the collective right as prior to the individual right. From the collective right to ‘an equal share of public power, and participate alike in the government of the State,’ comes the individual right to be ‘free and responsible to God alone for all that concerns himself.’28 It is for this reason that the argument that ‘everyone is the best judge of his own interest’ is a ‘Corollary of the principle of the sovereignty of the people.’29 Nonetheless, the elements are here to develop a kind of political republicanism. The way Tocqueville conceives of political activity as generative of cultural norms can be viewed as a version of Rawl’s overlapping consensus, one that also leaves space for many particular visions of the good life or comprehensive worldviews to flourish.30 Given Tocqueville’s self-consciously modern political orientation, it is surprising that few contemporary republican philosophers seek inspiration from his works. Indeed, ancient and early modern republicans easily excluded women and slaves from the institutions of the republic, generally viewed inequalities of wealth and status as natural, and even institutionalized these inequalities in different spaces of political participation for elites and masses. This has led Philip Pettit to argue against ‘traditional republicans’ in favor a ‘characteristically modern or inclusive brand.’31 John Maynor and Isuelt Honohan have self-consciously sought to adapt republican ideas to modern circumstances of the nation-state, commercial society, market economics, moral individualism, and ethical pluralism.32

27 Rawls, ‘Reply to Habermas.’ Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, uses a liberal foundation to defend group rights. 28 DA I, 72. 29 DA I, 71. 30 See also the Freeman, The Cambridge Companion to Rawls, p. 93. 31 Pettit, Republicanism, p. 34. 32 Maynor, Republicanism in the Modern World; Kimpell, ‘Neo-republicanism’; Honohan, Civic Republicanism.

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Other scholars have pushed republicanism into philosophical debates on cosmopolitanism and global justice.33 Tocqueville saw that the age of inequalities and exclusions was fading away, in certain ways faster in France than in America. He sought a means of constructing political order that could make republican liberty fit with democratic equality. I now turn to further explore how Tocqueville’s modern republicanism fits within these attempts to update republicanism for a democratic age.

Power, Non-Domination, and Realist Republicanism Quentin Skinner’s early work on the ‘neo-Roman theory of the state’ began as a criticism of Pocock’s more Aristotelian formulation of early modern republicanism in The Machiavellian Moment.34 The literature has largely followed, and tends to argue that early modern republicans read Aristotle through Rome, if you will.35 While this distinction has merit, these two kinds of republicans are closer than such an analysis suggests. Skinner and others have rightly focused on Roman contributions to republicanism, but the early moderns felt no more beholding to the Romans than we are to them. Indeed, it would have been odd for Machiavelli or Harrington not to read Aristotle through Rome because, in the first place, it was Rome; but also, secondly, because they read Rome through the history of Florence, Venice, Geneva, Paris, London, or wherever else they were. Following the path laid by Skinner and Pettit, there is today a cohesive group of scholars working on applying and extending a view of republicanism defined as a particular type of negative liberty. The view of freedom advocated by this group of scholars can be summarized in two claims. First, in place of the liberal view of negative freedom as non-interference, neo-Roman republicans argue that negative freedom is properly defined as non-domination. Second, they claim there is a necessary link between individual and group freedom: free persons only live in free states.36 The first claim made by these republicans is used to differentiate themselves from liberals who view freedom as the absence of interference. In 33 Nussbaum, ‘Human Functioning and Social Justice’; Laborde, ‘Republicanism and Global Justice.’ 34 Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment, pp. 66-77. 35 Nederman and Sullivan, ‘Reading Aristotle through Rome,’ p. 223. 36 Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism, p. 59.

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contrast to the Anglo-American tradition rooted in Thomas Hobbes that views freedom as constrained by interference – ‘where law ends, liberty begins’ – Skinner and Pettit argue that even the potential of domination can limit freedom.37 It is ‘not just the extent that another person interferes,’ Pettit argues, but ‘the extent that another agent has the capacity to do this.’38 Persons who are subject to the unconstrained will of another will modify their behavior in subtle ways just on the potential of power being exercised.39 Non-domination – the absence of being subject to the arbitrary will of another, even in potential – is the public condition that protects personal freedom: the distinctively republican argument is one about subjection to arbitrary power, and hence about the possibility rather than the actuality of arbitrary interference. The hated figure of the dominus in the republican tradition is someone who hopes to be able to exercise his or her invigilating powers successfully without ever having to stoop to actual interference.40

The second claim made by Skinner and Pettit is that individual independence is only secured by collective independence. Using the ancient analogy of the body politic with that of a natural person, republicans conceive of the collective person in the mold of a natural person that can be sick or healthy, grow old, and, if conquered, die. To the neo-Romans, this analysis of the importance of collective self-determination and the absence of dependency on the will of others leads them to legitimate the use of state power in order to prevent domination: ‘If just laws have the function of making us free by checking the arbitrary will of others, their influence on our conduct and the prohibitions they impose do not amount to a reduction of our freedom.’41 The legal and political conditions include civil and political rights, the rule of law, and perhaps even a certain amount of economic redistribution. This psychological insight into the nature of dependency and domination can be demonstrated in republican notions of the rule of law. In well-worn debates over the independence of the magistracy, republicans argued that judges who held their position at the goodwill of a monarch or emperor interpret the law with an eye towards pleasing the sovereign, whereas 37 Ibid., 5. 38 Pettit, ‘Republican Political Theory,’ p. 118. 39 Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism, p. 46. 40 Skinner, ‘On the Slogans of Republican Political Theory,’ p. 96. 41 Larmore, ‘Liberal and Republican Conceptions of Freedom,’ p. 99.

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juries and judges that can only be removed with cause will make judgments based on interpretation of the of the law. 42 With a similar purpose, Skinner quotes a description of the freedom of the subjects of the sultan who are ‘constrained […] by the reflection that, as Harrington put it, even the greatest bashaw in Constantinople is merely a tenant of his head, liable to lose it as soon as he speaks or acts in such a way to cause the sultan offence.’43 Positive liberty republicans begin from the same argument that, ‘sharing with others the power to control all’ is a necessary condition for personal freedom, but they connect it to the use of power within the institutions of the republic to the cultivation of civic virtue. 44 They accept, at least contingently, Aristotle’s argument that man is a political animal: Aristotle was well aware that the making of decisions meant power, and that power was exercised over others. Each group in the politeia, and each citizen in virtue of his group membership […] was to have power to pursue each groups particular good in such a way as to involve it in the pursuit of other goods by other groups, and since the pursuit of each good was carried on by means of decision affecting the priorities of other groups, each group like each citizen must be subject to power as well as the exerciser of it. The evil to be avoided was the situation in which any group was able to exercise an unshared power over the whole. 45

Aristotle conceived of these different social groups as highly varied and manifold but often returned to an analysis of the few and the many as a means of demonstrating how the mixed constitution could bring the divergent interests of various social groups into the larger interest of the whole. An important lesson from this kind of republicanism is the way in which they view a certain amount of conflict, when properly channeled to the public good, as a sign of the health of the body politic. Montesquieu argues that the Roman distribution of plebeians and patricians was a kind of ‘hidden war’: writers only say that these divisions would cause Rome to be lost, but nobody sees that these divisions were necessary, that they were always 42 Tocqueville reprises many of these arguments; DA II, 858-859. 43 Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism, p. 86. 44 Pettit, ‘Republican Political Theory,’ p. 118. 45 Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment, p. 71.

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there and that they should always be there […] what is called the unity of the political body is something truly equivocal: the real is a union of harmony which makes all the parts, however opposed they may seem, coincide to the common good of society; just as dissonance in music makes the agreement of a chord. 46

Montesquieu’s description of the necessary division between the few and the many social classes is equally seen in Machiavelli’s distinction of les grandis and il popolo. This division of society into classes also entails the view that each class had virtues and vices particular to itself. On the one hand, the few possess foresight and political skill but are ambitious, wishing fundamentally to aggrandize power. 47 The many, on the other hand, are frequently led astray but are also the reservoir of martial strength that maintains the republic, as well as the best judges of poetry, music, and political leaders. 48 Positive liberty republicans do sometimes insist upon a heavy element of moral education in the family, church, and other social organizations to act as virtuous preparation for political life. They tend to be focused on how culture creates a sense of unity and tradition, instilling a thick sense of the common good amongst citizens. 49 Following Machiavelli we can say that this type of communitarian republicanism prizes tradition and a ‘tranquil’ political life above all else:50 Either you have in mind a republic that looks to founding an empire, as Rome did; or one that is content to maintain the status quo. In the first case, it is necessary to do in all things as Rome did. In the second case it is possible to imitate Venice and Sparta.51

There is a strong element of this type of republican in Rousseau, but it is wrong to say he insists upon this political form for all peoples. At the extreme this kind of liberty is only plausibly practiced in a relatively 46 Montesquieu, ‘Considérations sur la grandeur et décadence des Romains’; œuvres complètes, IV, 75-76. 47 Machiavelli says that the people are of ‘two dispositions’ or ‘two humors’: those who ‘desire to dominate’ and those who, ‘desire not to be dominated’; The Discourses, trans. Walker, p. 113. 48 Aristotle, The Politics, 1281b; Machiavelli, The Discourses, trans. Walker, p. 115. 49 The more a republican insists upon the proper ‘education’ the more he tends to branch into various kinds of communitarianism; Aristotle, The Politics, 1323a. 50 Machiavelli, The Discourses, trans. Walker, p. 121. 51 Ibid., 117.

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de-differentiated society, and would likely necessitate a tyrannical amount of state power to achieve in contemporary circumstances.52 It is important to remember, however, the ways is which republicans since Aristotle have considered the political as independent from other relations of family, church, or work. In this sense, Aristotle has a relatively strong notion of social differentiation: ‘The common good of any community, then, is an order of parts that explains and enables their coherence and activity without damaging their own internal integrity.’53 For Aristotle each of these smaller groups is in a very real sense dependent upon the others: for example, the division of labor within the city means that farmers need tools and artisans need food. Only the political association of the city is self-sufficient in the sense of having all of its basic needs secured; it is because of this complete quality that Aristotle views it as highest. The political incorporates and balances the interests of farmers and tradesmen, parents and children, proprietor and renter, priest and believer: Republican theorists believed that being a citizen meant not so much belonging to a self-governing ethno-cultural community as exercising the civil and political rights that derived from belonging to a res publica, or civitas, that is, a political community whose goal was to allow individuals to live together in justice and liberty […] a republic built on a specific conception of goodness […] will not be a republic for everyone.54

In short, the political should not be reduced the cultural in the way that some of the most communitarian forms of republicanism would prefer. As Machiavelli recognizes, to protect its way of life Sparta was forced to ban ‘foreigners,’ whereas Venice refused to ‘employ its plebs in wars.’55 In relation to these closed societies, the institutions of the Roman republic were relatively open: there was, at very least, the eventual possibility of joining. In contrast to more communitarian forms of republicanism, Machiavelli can be understood as the paradigmatic interpreter of a realist republican perspective that views conflict as the guarantor of freedom, the political as necessarily linked to power, and civic virtue as prudence or political skill. In The Prince, he treats the qualities of the great legislator or founder 52 Holmes, ‘Aristippus In and Out of Athens.’ 53 Lewis, ‘The Common Good in Classical Political Philosophy,’ p. 5; Simpson, ‘Making the Citizens Good.’ 54 Viroli, Republicanism, pp. 66-67. 55 Machiavelli, The Discourses, trans. Walker, p. 121.

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of a new political order, but it is clear that for Machiavelli virtú is not just an elite virtue: But, someone may object, the means used were extraordinary and almost barbaric. Look how people used to assemble and clamor against the Senate and how the Senate decried the people, how men ran helterskelter about the streets, how the shops were closed and how the plebs en masse would troop out of Rome – events which terrify, to say the least, anyone who read about them. To which I answer that every city should provide ways and means whereby the ambitions of the populace may find outlet, especially in a city that proposes to avail itself of the populace in important undertakings. The city of Rome was one […] when the populace wanted a law passed, it either behaved as I have described or it refused to enlist for the wars, so that, to placate it, it had to be satisfied to some extent.56

It should be remembered that Machiavelli praises the barbaric or beastly part of human nature as an important part of virtú. His view of the strikes and agitations of the plebs in ancient Rome means that they too possess the same qualities of skill, judgment, and the use of violence in the pursuit of their political ends, just as much as the virtuoso Prince. Machiavelli recommends quite simply to have ‘a large population, and this well-armed.’57 In Tocqueville’s contrast between democratic and aristocratic regimes, he makes a similar argument as Machiavelli. Aristocracies, he argues, ‘are infinitely more expert in the science of legislation’ and have more ‘selfcontrol,’ which allows them to ‘form lasting designs which they mature with the assistance of favorable opportunities.’58 In contrast to the superior wisdom of aristocracies that proceeds with the ‘dexterity of art,’ democratic government has the advantage that legislation is ‘useful to a greater number of citizens’: There is indeed a secret tendency in democratic institutions to render the exertions of the citizens subservient to the prosperity of the community, notwithstanding their private vices and mistakes; whilst in aristocratic institutions there is a secret propensity, which, notwithstanding the talents of those who conduct the government, leads them to contribute 56 Ibid., 114. 57 Ibid., 122. 58 DA I, 274.

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to the evils which oppress their fellow-creatures. In aristocratic governments public men may frequently do injuries which they do not intend, and in democratic states they produce advantages which they never thought of.59

The demos is a ‘superabundant force’ which Tocqueville does not hesitate to describe in the terms of an omniscient and omnipotent, but not always benevolent, deity.60 From how democratic armies fight wars to democratic tendencies in literature and commerce, Tocqueville consistently argues that democratic republics are the most powerful and innovative because they distribute political liberty the most broadly.61 Although distinctly closer to Machiavelli’s vision of realist republicanism, Tocqueville’s republicanism is ultimately a reminder of the family resemblances that make up the republican political tradition.62 Tocqueville not only warns of the dangers of economic inequality and an ‘aristocracy of manufactures,’ but also views political rights as analogous to a ‘weapon’:63 ‘I am not saying that political rights must be granted as of today to the universality of citizens,’ he writes, but ‘I am saying the unlimited extension of rights is the end toward which you must always tend.’64 To be sure, Tocqueville sought to restrain democracy, but to do so he used the same manner of channeling the energies of the people that Machiavelli offered. And while sometimes critical of Machiavelli’s praise of violence and trickery – the beastly side of politics – that did not prevent him from using national interest to justify the use of force in Algeria.65 In relation to more communitarian visions of republicanism, Tocqueville leaves wide latitude for more particular visions of the good life within the republic. And while he never doubted that this kind of moral education is conducive to the public good, he found it doubtful that such conditioning is a necessary condition for citizenship. Indeed, the Jansenist philosophical anthropology and theory of orders helped Tocqueville identify a much

59 DA I, 278. 60 DA I, 290, 294-296. 61 DA II, 822; DA II, 570; DA I, 491. 62 McCormick, Machiavellian Democracy; Pasquino, ‘Machiavaelli and Aristotle.’ 63 DA II, 690; DA I, 221. 64 DA I (Critical Edition), 392. 65 Writings on Empire and Slavery, ed. and trans. Pitts.

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stronger logic of social differentiation than either Aristotle or Machiavelli allow.66 In relation to the neo-Roman focus on non-domination, however, Tocqueville’s insight that certain ethical distinctions are only learned through the use of power is a reminder that republicans cannot give up on the notion of civic virtue entirely: Men attend to the interest of the public, first by necessity, afterwards by choice: what was intentional becomes an instinct, and by dint of working for the good of one’s fellow-citizens, the habit and the taste for serving them is at length acquired.67

While Tocqueville recaptures the meaning of Aristotle’s notion that civic virtue is a set of qualities that perpetuate and further a common political life, his vision of a kind of democratic honor code demonstrates that civic virtue need not be as demanding as sometimes portrayed: ‘True information is mainly derived from experience; and if the Americans had not been gradually accustomed to govern themselves, their book-learning would not assist them much this present day.’68

Practical Experience, Political Activity, and Civic Virtue Overall, Tocqueville’s republicanism is rather ecumenical in approach, as it leaves space for the varieties of republicanism to work together. In this section I extend my analysis of Tocqueville’s modern republicanism to his notion of civic virtue and argue that his vision of democratic virtue is suitable to contemporary conditions. Aristotle’s conception of civic virtue is obviously important, but few republicans took any one account of virtue as definitive. The most important element of civic virtue as articulated by Aristotle is its grounding in experience. It is ‘the quality of ruling that is only developed by being ruled.’69 The personal experience of political life, in turn, creates the bonds of a friendship of equals, and the development of prudence as a kind of 66 Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment, p. 67; Blythe, Ideal Government and the Mixed Constitution in the Middle Ages. 67 DA II, 629. 68 DA I, 367. 69 Aristotle, The Politics, 1277b.

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political skill focused on judging how to fit means to ends. While not itself virtue (arête), prudence (phronesis) is the means by which virtue makes itself known; arête without phronesis is incomplete.70 The Romans tended to combine these two meanings, and they pushed Aristotle’s theory of politics in other ways as well, especially by linking prudence more closely with necessity and the use of force.71 But not all republicans upheld Roman or Spartan martial valor as the epitome of virtue. Aristotle himself argued that there would be a different notion of virtue for each political order, and there is little doubt that the malleability of republicanism as a description of political life also entails a highly malleable notion of civic virtue. What positive liberty republicans share is the view that learning to use public power is a necessary part of the ethical development of citizens, and that civic virtue is only learned through political activity within the institutions of the republic. The nexus between the institutional and moral relation of the republic is the basis of the republican claim that political activity is in some sense transformative. To express this insight republicans frequently use an analogy with sports. This means that political skill is learned by experience, just as learning to play a sport happens on the field. Learning a sport not only includes certain skills but also how much force is allowed to be used, in what way, and how. Whether it is called virtue, prudence, or virtú, the skill of the political actor is fundamentally the ability to pursue objectives in strategic ways: to have great political vision, to appeal to the emotions and diverse personal motivations of others, and to have great diplomatic and martial ability. There are two basic elements to civic virtue: the first is the skill of acting in politics, it is what Tocqueville called ‘practical experience’ and other republicans called prudence or virtue; the second is a small amount of ethical habits appropriate to the relation of citizen. Civic virtue is a set of ethical habits learned in the institutions of the republic and through the personal experience of power. As I argued in Chapter 5, the lessons of power are a necessary part of the ethical development of citizens. Only through the use of power and a kind of learning by doing do the practices of politics slowly teach citizens key ethical distinctions such as respect for the rule of law and respect for the rights of others.

70 Ruderman, ‘Aristotle and the Recovery of Political Judgment’; Irwin, ‘Prudence and Morality in Greek Ethics.’ 71 Salmon, ‘Cicero and Tacitus in Seventeenth Century France’; Cornish, ‘Augustine’s Contribution to the Republican Tradition.’

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In a typical example of how prudence is based on experience, Machiavelli advises that rulers should ‘always be out hunting.’72 Hunting not only teaches a ruler the ‘lie of his land,’ but also how to use this knowledge to gain an advantage in foreign lands as well: ‘with his knowledge and experience of terrain, he can grasp easily the layout of any other terrain he may have to explore for the first time.’ He praises Philopoemen for his ‘constant meditation’ on things like the strategic value of terrain, because ‘it is knowledge of terrain that enables you to locate the enemy, choose a campsite, lead the troops, set them up for battle, and besiege cities, all to your own advantage.’ Similarly, ‘for the exercise of the mind’ Machiavelli concludes the chapter by returning to a common theme: that the virtuous prince must study and learn from the examples of great leaders in history, ‘the prince should read history, and in it study the actions of distinguished men […] in order to learn what to avoid and what to imitate.’73 Tocqueville builds from this tradition a notion of virtue suited to modern conditions. Practical experience of the use of public power within the institutions of the republic shapes the political judgment of citizens; it brings citizens to understand the consequences of their actions, even allowing them to ‘correct their ideas by experiment.’74 Perhaps the most important democratic skill, however, is that of combining their energies with others. Tocqueville argues that ‘political innovators’ in America begin by ‘calculating upon those interests which may be collected and amalgamated’ and that the ‘skill of actors in the political world lies in creating parties.’75 This skill not only allows democratic citizens to pursue their ends in politics, but political parties also help to counterbalance the tyranny of the majority opinion. The second element of civic virtue is a unique kind of social solidarity appropriate to the political relation of citizen. Montesquieu’s Persian Letters looks at the absence of this kind of public spirit and bonds of trust in a despotic political system.76 His analysis is very much in line with Skinner’s view of the ‘bashaw of Constantinople’ but builds from this psychological insight to demonstrate how the condition of domination also prevents citizens from forming bonds of friendship and trust that Aristotle viewed as the highest kind of friendship.77 The central theme of the book is domination 72 Machiavelli, The Prince, ed. and trans. Musa, pp. 121-23. 73 Ibid., 122-123. My translation differs slightly from Musa’s. 74 Tocqueville, Old Regime, 164. 75 DA I, 204. 76 Montesquieu, The Persian Letters, trans. Healy. 77 Aristotle, The Politics, 1281a; Nicomachean Ethics, 1156a.

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subverted the love relationship that the prince Usbek sought with his wives. Not only are the wives in the harem unfree in the neo-Roman sense, but they are unable to develop any sense of trust or solidarity amongst themselves. Montesquieu shows how the negative view of republican freedom as nondomination that allows ‘you to be your own man’ is linked to the sense that we are all in this together.78 Tocqueville was keenly aware of how power was at the root of patriotism. In his description of the township, Tocqueville argued that public spirit in America is a result of the independence and power of the township, ‘without independence and power, a town may contain good subjects, but can have no active citizens.’79 Tocqueville’s notion of civic virtue is of a small set of ethical habits and bonds of trust developed by democratic citizens within the structure of the republic. It is here that Tocqueville’s moral psychology of practice is clearest, and it is notable that Tocqueville develops his theory in contrast to Hobbes. Again using the metaphor of the body politic as a natural person, Tocqueville argues that when first ‘invested with political rights,’ the people ‘stands in relation to those rights in the same position as the child does to the whole of nature, and the celebrated adage may then be applied to them, Homo puer robustus.’80 ‘The first notion which presents itself,’ Tocqueville argues, ‘is that of violence: the notion of persuasion arises at a later period and is only derived through experience.’81 Through ‘experience’ the child learns to ‘observe those rights […] he wishes to have respected himself. The principle which the child derives from the possession of his toys is taught to the man by the objects which he may call his own.’ Tocqueville’s purpose in citing Hobbes is to demonstrate that in the condition in which violence and force is ruled out, the principle of reciprocity takes its place. Tocqueville concludes that ‘the Americans have conceived a very high notion of political rights, because they exercise those rights; and the refrain from attacking those of other people, in order to ensure their own from attack.’82 In addition to reciprocity, citizens also learn respect for the rule of law and public spirit. The short list of democratic virtues – respect for the rights of others, public spirit, and respect for the rule of law constitute something of a democratic honor code, one suitable for use in modern conditions.83 In 78 Skinner, ‘On the Slogans of Republican Political Theory,’ p. 97; Hankins, ‘Modern Republicanism and the History of Republics.’ 79 DA I, 73. 80 DA I, 285. 81 DA I, 225. 82 DA I, 283. 83 DA II, 770.

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contrast to aristocratic notions of honor derived from unequal status and station, Tocqueville argues that the Americans develop a ‘manly reliance and reciprocal courtesy […] alike removed from pride and meanness’84 Although honor in America is ‘less imperious and less stringent,’ this reciprocal courtesy does create a kind of ‘easy familiarity.’85 Underneath this honor code, however, is a fundamental equality of political power. The ‘same man who is full of humanity towards his fellow-creatures when they are at the same time his equals,’ Tocqueville argues, ‘becomes insensible to their afflictions as soon as that equality ceases.’86 This democratic honor code is based on a real equality of political power and is cultivated through a minimal amount of experience with the exercise of power within the institutions of the republic. Tocqueville was well aware of the limits of this honor code, however, especially for blacks and Native Americans. These groups were not only excluded from the institutions of the republic but also from the set of ethical virtues cultivated through participation in the American polis. Whites continued to use force on blacks through most of the twentieth century, arbitrarily and with impunity. Lynchings represent the most common example of this kind of violence, and it is important to also recall their collective and ritualistic qualities. In this way, Tocqueville’s chapters on race and Beaumont’s Marie can be read as treatments of the psychology of despotism and dependence in the line of Montesquieu’s Persian Letters. The Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, in fact, represent the earliest that republicans can mark the incorporation of non-whites into the republic. The exclusion of non-whites from political power – that is political inequality – also excluded these groups from the honor code developed in the institutions of the republic. Although Tocqueville shares a similar criticism of Hobbes and liberal notions of interference as Pettit and Skinner, it is worth noting how these two critiques are subtly different. To defend his view of domination as a capacity, Pettit recounts an old joke: ‘Do you know how to play the piano? I don’t know, I’ve never tried.’87 The moral, for Pettit, is that domination is ‘a capacity that is ready to be exercised – not a capacity that is yet to be fully developed.’ He uses an analogy with antimatter to argue that political institutions create ‘antipower’ which acts in ‘the way that antimatter relates 84 85 86 87

DA I, 10. DA II, 782. DA II, 699. Pettit, ‘Freedom as Antipower,’ p. 580.

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to ordinary matter […] as something repellent to subjugating power […]. If institutions get rid of certain forms of domination without putting new forms of domination in their place – any new ways in which some have power over others – then we may say they promote antipower.’88 Except for the realm of the law, however, the institutions of the republic do not seem to operate in a way that this analogy suggests. Rather than dispel power, modern states more clearly resemble the classical republican technique of turning power again power. Tocqueville’s writings on how the Americans combat the tyranny of the majority are steeped in this classical republican language of pitting power against power. The majority ‘governs in the name of the people’ and ‘is a being whose opinions, and frequently whose interests are opposed to […] a minority.’89 The majority treats the legislators ‘as a master does his servants when they are always at work in his sight, and he has the power of directing or reprimanding them at every instant.’90 The majority not only rules through the formal process of legislation but also directly through the moral power it exercises on thought. Through the power of shame, the majority enforces social conformity to its opinions; it ‘raises very formidable barriers to the liberty of opinion: within these barriers an author may write whatever he pleases, but he will repent if he ever step beyond them.’91 The moral influence of the majority – the tyranny of majority opinion – takes shape largely through shame, and the mechanism it uses to enforce its judgment is a kind of internal exile. Those who openly avow opinions contrary to the majority are turned into a ‘Pariah’ and refused all ‘esteem’ and ‘glory’ because they have ‘offended the only authority which is able to promote [their] success.’92 Tocqueville’s answer to how to prevent tyranny is squarely within the republican tradition of checks and balances. To Tocqueville, there are many restraints to this ‘irresistible authority’ and ‘superabundant force’ of the demos:93 decentralized administration, the rule of law, trial by jury, political parties, and the freedom of the press, just to name a few.94 In regards to decentralized administration, Tocqueville points out that ‘townships, municipal bodies, and counties may be looked upon as concealed 88 89 90 91 92 93 94

Ibid., 589. DA I, 197, 300. DA I, 303. DA I, 301. DA I, 305. DA I, 307. DA I, 291.

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breakwaters, which check or part the tide of popular excitement.’95 Similarly, ‘the only way to neutralize the effect of public journals is to multiply them indefinitely,’ and the practice of political association allows the minority ‘the means of establishing themselves upon their own basis, and of opposing the moral authority of the minority to the physical power which domineers over it.’96 Perhaps nothing is more important than political association in Tocqueville’s mind: ‘There are no countries in which associations are more needed to prevent the despotism of faction or the arbitrary power of a prince, than those which are democratically constituted.’97 It is odd that in Pettit’s formulation unfreedom is associated with the actual capacity for domination, but freedom signifies an absence. Nondomination is secured not just by the legal condition of formal rights and protections, but the political condition of having the means and ability to defend oneself. The experience of ethnic minorities in the United States demonstrates that even with a certain amount of legal protection, those groups excluded from sharing in the political institutions of the United States were not only excluded from the honor code, but also lacked the ability to defend themselves. According to this view, Pettit’s joke about the piano applies to freedom as much as domination: it is a capacity. Capacity refers not only to an ability but also the cognitive understandings appropriate to a task or skill. Alongside sport, music was the second favorite republican analogy for freedom because it is a skill developed from being used, that is, developed by experience. A man who owns but has never played the piano is not unfree, but he has neither the skills nor the cognitive categories appropriate to the task of making music. It is for this reason that the positive liberty republicans continue to insist upon a certain amount of political experience as intrinsic to republican freedom. Tocqueville does not think that we need a citizenry of virtuosos because the game of democracy is relatively easy to learn but, without at least a small amount of democratic virtue broadly distributed amongst the citizenry, he had difficulty imagining how a republican polis could sustain itself. The necessity of politics, for Tocqueville, is the necessity of dispersing a certain amount of political experience broadly amongst the citizenry. To make a system of majority rule work, we are perhaps more dependent upon the civic virtue than ever, even as this notion of virtue has become easier

95 DA I, 314. 96 DA I, 213, 222. 97 DA I, 223.

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to achieve and more humane. Tocqueville easily slips between describing this liberty as a good-in-itself and as non-domination: What has always attached liberty so strongly to the hearts of certain men is its proper charms, independent of its benefits: it is the pleasure of being able to speak, act, and breathe with no other constraint than the government of God and laws […] do not ask me to analyze this sublime taste, you have to have felt it. It enters unaided into those great hearts God has prepared to receive it: it fills them and inspires in them a warm strength in action.98

The French verb éprouver, translated here as ‘to feel,’ can be equally translated as ‘to have,’ and has a strong secondary meaning of knowing by experience. To feel democracy, we must experience it; to love liberty, we must practice it. Indeed, Tocqueville’s writings themselves are part of this practice. His writings make political freedom beautiful, and through this beauty he seeks to bring us to love it on its own terms.

Institutionalizing the Republic and the Prospects for Freedom in a Democratic Age I wish to continue this republican synthesis by connecting Tocqueville’s modern republicanism to the literature that views the democratic nationstate as the institutional setting for the practice of modern republican freedom. After drawing this modern republican sketch of the institutional structure of the nation-state, I conclude with a few remarks on particular dangers to republican freedom. A modern republican describes the nation-state in similar terms as Robert Dahl’s Polyarchy but with a few additions and modif ications.99 Dahl’s institutional definition has eight criteria: the freedom of association and expression, suffrage, eligibility for public office, political competition, freedom of the press, free and fair elections, and institutions for ensuring that governmental policies depend on voter preferences. Tocqueville identifies the party system, the rule of law, the freedom of the press, the freedom of association, local and provincial liberties, and the twin tolerations as 98 Tocqueville, Old Regime, 217. My translation is here somewhat altered; see also the French: œuvres complètes, ed. Beaumont, IV, 247. 99 Dahl, Polyarchy; Pettit, On the People’s Terms; Bellamy, Political Constitutionalism.

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the main institutions favorable to the maintenance of republican liberty.100 These democratic political processes can be viewed as mechanisms of ‘democratic bargaining’ that help to manage conflict.101 Bellamy has demonstrated how the ‘standard mechanisms of electoral democracy’ can be understood as a type of ‘mixed government’ that uses ‘a system of equal votes, majority rule, and competing parties’ to ‘give all citizens an equal chance of power and an incentive to use it fairly.’102 Under conditions of open competition, parties moderate their demands in order to form coalitions, they ‘counter-balance’ one another, and they even act as ‘feedback mechanisms.’103 Electoral democracy encourages ‘mutual accommodations’ that are ‘not a synthesis or a consensus,’ as many compromises struck are ‘mutual second-bests.’104 Even in divided societies, the ‘mixture of executive power sharing, federalism, and special rights’ has been shown to be a workable solution to ensuring the interests of the various parts of a political community are taken into account in collective decision-making.105 This republican perspective views political decision-making and public reason as intimately tied to questions of power. Instead of a liberal ‘repository of acceptable public reasons,’ Bellamy argues for ‘paying attention to the reasons of the public,’ and his description of how parties form coalitions and aggregate interests reads much like Aristotle’s analysis of how civic life incorporates the interests of differentiated social groups into the common good.106 As Stepan points out, in many cases conflicts over religion ‘were only neutralized after long public arguments and negotiations in which religion was the dominant item on the political agenda.’107 Public reason is not the depoliticization of questions of common concern, but rather the articulation and management of conflicts.108 In this way the republican notion of public reason is a kind of collecting and balancing of the smaller and more particular practical reasons of many persons and groups in a process of coalition-building.109 100 DA I, 199-228; 313-372. 101 Stepan, ‘Religion, Democracy, and the “Twin Tolerations,”’ p. 11. 102 Bellamy, ‘Republicanism: Non-domination and the Free State,’ p. 128. 103 Ibid., 128. 104 Bellamy, ‘Republicanism, Constitutionalism, Democracy,’ p. 108. 105 Bellamy, ‘Republicanism: Non-domination and the Free State,’ p. 129. 106 Ibid., 110; Aristotle, Politics, 1252b-1252a. 107 Bellamy, ‘Republicanism: Non-domination and the Free State,’ 108; Stepan, ‘Religion, Democracies, and the “Twin Tolerations,”’ p. 11. 108 Bellamy, ‘The Republic of Reasons,’ p. 102. 109 Lewis, ‘The Common Good in Classical Political Philosophy,’ p. 31.

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This vision of republicanism is often taken to be a minimalist one, in contrast to a more positive liberty focus on civic virtue. Bellamy argues that the ‘link with self-realization proves weak at best,’ but both he and Pettit demonstrate how the balance of power in democracy creates incentives for citizens to treat one another with respect and reciprocity.110 Bellamy argues that electoral competition creates ‘inducements to practice reciprocity and trust between citizens’ while Pettit also acknowledges the need to ‘civilize the republic.’111 Indeed, any system of voting presupposes citizens who sincerely advocate for their preferred policy position, change their minds when appropriate, and even, at times, are willing to take to the streets as a body to push issues onto the political agenda. Voters may not be highly rational or even well informed, but they have enough wits about them to pick candidates and parties by balancing between their preferred policy positions, to use their judgment of the character of candidates and recent performance of parties, and to respond strategically to changes in electoral rules and institutions. Perhaps the most basic democratic virtue is leaving office after a loss, a virtue so basic that Dahl takes it as the test of democratic political order. Beyond the processes of electoral democracy and a system of law, however, any notion of republicanism must also include broader range of political practices: strikes, boycotts, sit-ins, and other types of violent and nonviolent resistance. As Martin Luther King Jr. well understood, these confrontational political practices can allow minorities to equalize power imbalances by creating a sense of crisis that forces electoral institutions to be responsive to the interests of the excluded. A virtuous citizenry needs to know how to compromise as much as how to drive a hard bargain; perhaps above all, it needs to be able to know when to do the one and when to do the other. Tocqueville’s particular vision of republicanism is not only highly complementary to this contemporary republican project, but is also one of the earliest examples of a self-consciously modern republicanism. He sat at the crossroads of modernity, when the new world was first beginning to take shape and the old one was not yet dead. Tocqueville lived at the crest of the first wave of democratic revolutions, but we are now seeing the maturation of third- and fourth-wave democracies. Looking back from the twenty-first century at Tocqueville’s works, we should be rather optimistic about prospects for modern freedom. From nearly all of South America and 110 Bellamy, ‘Republicanism, Constitutionalism, Democracy,’ p. 161. 111 Ibid., 180; Pettit, Republicanism, p. 241.

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the Caribbean, to Asia and Africa, the spread of political democracy is not just inevitable, but actual. The worldwide growth of democracy is something Tocqueville imagined, but we have surpassed the lengths of his vision in many ways. Nonetheless, the research of this book does hold some lessons for the democracies of the twenty-first century. The first lesson from Tocqueville’s modern republicanism is that there may be some shared ground between republicans and liberals. While republicans rightly focus on certain virtues of the republican tradition, we should also be looking for ways in which we can find common ground with liberal thinkers. Skinner’s and Pettit’s focus on domination and non-domination as categories of power may be a powerful way to bridge to various kinds of negative-rights liberalism. I have argued that Tocqueville provides some important bridges to liberalism as well. His respect for the private, defense of rights, and desire to restrain democratic majorities make him well suited to engage with many kinds of liberalism, not only those of Judith Sklar, Isaiah Berlin, and John Rawls. Nonetheless, republicans must prioritize collective self-determination and the right to participate in politics without discrimination as primary goals of both theory and practice. The second lesson is a reminder that republicanism does not have a strong historical relationship with equality. Even in Athens there were great families, just as in America there are the Rockefellers, Fords, Kochs, and others. While contemporary republicans are rightly worried about extreme economic inequality, it is important to remember that regime type is determined not by social but political status: in democratic states, the one man, one vote principle holds, and even though the few may at times secure undue influence, to do so they must appeal to voters as equal holders of public power. Indeed, the institutional design of the republic as conceived by Aristotle was meant to balance between the few and the many, thereby incorporating the abilities and needs of each social group into the common good. Although historically inequality has not been a particular danger to republican regimes, only time will tell how much of it modern democratic republics can sustain. A related point is that when considering the prospects for freedom in a democratic age and the threat that equality can pose, it is common for Tocqueville scholars to warn of a new kind of soft despotism and to point to the welfare state as an example of such a tutelary power that foresees and does everything for a childlike populace. ‘With every passing year, in every sphere of life, Americans have less and less control over the decisions that

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affect their lives.’112 Tocqueville most certainly did think that the moderns would prefer to have equality with despotism than inequality and freedom, but he also admired the humanitarian consequences of equality. It is for this reason he described his project as seeking to reconcile liberty and equality: equality he took as a fact, liberty as the condition of human greatness. Furthermore, despite concerns about the cradle-to-grave welfare state, the form in which we have seen it develop in Europe and the Americas does not appear seem to threaten freedom in the ways that these interpreters predict. Even if the welfare state is linked with a relatively high amount of intervention in the economy, it is difficult to properly describe it as threatening to either republican freedom or individual liberty. Quite the opposite, in fact. States with higher levels of redistribution tend to score higher on measurements of personal liberties, as well as to have higher levels of political engagement. Although it is clear that too much equality can also be a threat to republican freedom, the concerns of these authors seem a bit misplaced. The third lesson for contemporary republicans speaks to the role of the law in protecting republican freedom. There is no doubt that Tocqueville views the law as a central institution that helped to protect freedom in America, but he is also well aware that the law has an ambiguous relationship to republican freedom: Lawyers are attached to public order beyond every other consideration, and the best security of public order is authority. It must not be forgotten that, if they prize the free institutions of their county much, they nevertheless value the legality of those institutions far more: they are less afraid of tyranny than of arbitrary power, and provided that the legislature take upon itself to deprive men of their independence they are not dissatisfied.113

Tocqueville argues that lawyers have the same ‘love of order and formality’ that gives them the ‘same secret contempt of the government of the people’ as aristocratic political orders.114 Indeed, although the law is ‘the most powerful, if not the only, counterpoise to the democratic element,’ he was well aware of how Roman law had been used by absolutist kings

112 Rahe, Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift, p. 258. 113 DA I, 318. 114 DA I, 316.

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to centralize power and undermine local self-rule.115 In the Old Regime he argued Roman law is ‘slave law’ which ‘carried civil society to perfection, but it invariably degraded political society.’116 While there is little doubt that legal rights and protections are of a very high order for republican political theory, we ought to remember the ways in which the claim of legal protection, property, and order have be used to subvert processes of collective self-determination and uphold domination. The history of the American Supreme Court demonstrates this mixed heritage as well, with cases such as Plessy v. Ferguson, Lochner v. New York and Citizens United (just to name a few). When the Supreme Court of the United States takes it upon itself to overturn a century’s worth of campaign finance laws, or holds that African-Americans can have no standing in a Federal court, they perhaps demonstrate Tocqueville’s fear that the rule of law can be a threat as much as an aid to republican notions of non-domination and collective self-rule. A fourth point is that from the vantage point of the twenty-first century, the biggest threats to republican freedom continue to come in more traditional forms, such as the accumulation of power and the protection of minorities. Given the economic tendencies towards more inequality, republicans are rightly worried about the power of certain economic actors to co-opt the political process. When interest groups are able to manufacture the appearance of democratic support, the ability of republican institutions to identify the common good is compromised. Similarly, media consolidation and campaign finance deregulation in the United States has significantly altered the balance of power. Ethnic and religious minorities continue to face precarious existence in conditions of the nation-state. In many ways, democratic political institutions are more threatening to minorities as they are often simply overwhelmed in majoritarian processes of decision-making. These developments are highly concerning, of course, but to these threats to freedom there are also republican remedies. If the republic is threatened by too much accumulation of power amongst the few, it does not mean that the many will not be able to counterbalance. If it is true that we are in a New Gilded Age, then we may yet be attending a Second Progressive Era. The promise of the republic is that one side never wins for once and for all; the game is never over. This focus on the more classical republican issues of arbitrary power and tyranny (including the neo-Roman focus on non-domination) may 115 DA I, 318; Old Regime, 257-258. 116 Tocqueville, Old Regime, 223.

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also mean that modern republicans should be thinking more extensively about how republicanism relates to projects of global justice. As I showed in Chapter 6, the focus on group life in republicanism makes it well suited to projects of social and economic rights. Republicans must remain focused on projects of collective decision-making and individual non-domination, but they must also assure that this project includes women and ethnic minorities. The focus on non-domination by Skinner and Pettit is rather conducive to projects of women’s rights and economic justice. Tocqueville’s republicanism also seems well suited to be placed in dialogue with that of Martha Nussbaum and other contemporary global justice theorists, especially in debates on the role of religion in the polis and the protection of other ethnic minorities.117 Ultimately, however, these projects of global justice are testament to the progress of political democracy and, looking back from the twenty-first century, Tocqueville would have been astonished and amazed at the successive waves of democratic revolutions and the development of a nearly world-wide system of democratic states. Although we have surpassed his vision in many ways, the timelessness of his writings mean that they are still a valuable source of theoretical inspiration. Indeed, we may yet find that his political theory hold more valuable lessons for the young democracies of the world than the old.

117 Nussbaum, Women and Human Development.

Bibliography To facilitate further research, I have included in this bibliography a number of items not directly referenced in the text. They are intended as a valuable supplement for the interested reader. Primary Sources Related to Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America, trans. by Henry Reeve. New York: Bantam, [1838-1840] 2000. Democracy in America: Historical-Critical Edition of ‘De la démocratie en Amérique,’ ed. by Eduardo Nolla, trans. by James T. Schleifer. 2 vols. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2012. De la démocratie en Amérique. Collection folio histoire. 2 vols. Paris: Gallimard, (1961) 1986. Lettres choisies, souvenirs: 1814-1859, ed. by Françoise Mélonio and Laurence Guellec. Paris: Gallimard, 2003. Journey to America, ed. by JP Mayer, trans. by George Lawrence. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960. Memoirs, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville. 2 vols. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1862. œuvres complètes, ed. by Gustave de Beaumont. 9 vols. Paris: Michel Levy, 1864-1867. œuvres complètes, ed. by André Jardin. 18 vols. Paris: Gallimard, 1951-. Papiers Alexis de Tocqueville, 1805-1859. Paris: Archives nationales. The Old Regime and the Revolution, ed. by François Furet and Françoise Mélonio, trans. by Alan S. Kahan. 2 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998-2001. Selected Letters on Politics and Society, ed. by Roger Boesche, trans. by James Toupin. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. Writings on Empire and Slavery, ed. and trans. Jennifer Pitts. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Yale Tocqueville Manuscripts, ca. 1802-1840. New Haven: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

General Primary Sources [Aiguebelle], le Chevalier de [Lasne d’].. Essai sur l’éducation de la noblesse. 2 vols. Paris: [n. pub.], 1748. [Aiguebelle], le Chevalier de [Lasne d’]. La religion du cœur: exposée dans les sentimens qu’une tendre piété inspire. Paris: [n. pub.], 1768. L’Ami de la religion et du Roi: journal ecclésiastique, politique et littéraire, vol. 14. Paris: Librarie Ecclésiastique d’Adrien le Clere, 1817. L’Ami de la religion et du Roi: journal ecclésiastique, politique et littéraire, vol. 60. Paris: Librarie Ecclésiastique d’Adrien le Clere, 1829. L’Ami de la religion et du Roi: journal ecclésiastique, politique et littéraire, vol. 65. Paris: Librarie Ecclésiastique d’Adrien le Clere, 1830. L’Ami de la religion et du Roi: journal ecclésiastique, politique et littéraire, vol. 74. Paris: Librarie Ecclésiastique d’Adrien le Clere, 1832. L’Ami de la religion et du Roi: journal ecclésiastique, politique et littéraire, vol. 128. Paris: Librarie Ecclésiastique d’Adrien le Clere. 1846. Abrégé de l’histoire ecclésiastique contenant les événemens considérables de chaque siècle, ed. by Racine Bonaventure. Nouv éd. Cologne: [n. pub.], 1762-1767.

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Index Aguesseau, Henri François d’ 52, 55, 65-68, 75-76, 82-83, 93-94, 96, 101, 145, 148-149, 237 Aiguebelle, Lasne d’, le Chevalier de 65 Arnauld, Antoine 26-27, 43-44, 64, 66, 85, 114 Barante, Prosper de 66, 89 Barral, Pierre fn. 31, 35-36 Beaumont, Gustave de 61, 69-70, 116, 122, 176-177, 223, 252 Bell, David A. 34 Bellah, Robert 195, 203, 211-216 Bellamy, Richard 255-257 Benoît, Jean-Louis 9, 16, 80 Berlin, Isaiah 233, 238-239, 258 Boesche, Rodger 13 Boileau, Nicolas 67 Bonaparte, Napoleon 87-88, 112, 189 Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne 37, 55, 63, 65-66, 76, 79-81, 85-88, 97-100 Bouchitté, Louis Firmin Hervé 69-70, 74, 101 Bourdaloue, Louis 63 Brogan, Hugh 16 Broglie, Albert de 97-98 Carné, Louis de 72 Chantal, Mme 63 Chardon, Gervais 63 Charles X 60, 87-88, 103, 116-117, fn 179 Chateaubriand, François-René de 59-60, 117, 119 Colbert, Charles Joachim 63-64 Constant, Benjamin 17, 112, 130-138, 162-165 Corcelle, Francisque de 72, 179 Cousin, Victor 108, 119 Coutant, Arnand, 14 Dahl, Robert fn 168, 255, 257 Descartes, René fn 26, 81, 105 Dijn, Annelien de 237 Domat, Jean 26, 40, 52, 67-68, 73 Dupanloup, Mgr 190 Drolet, Michel 13 Duguet, Jacques-Joseph 35-37, 52 Elster, Jon 195, 203 Etzioni, Amitai 213 Falloux, Alfred de 190 Fénelon, François de 30, 63, 66 Fontaine, Jean de la 26, fn 105 Genlis, Stéphanie Félicité comtesse de 35-36 Gobineau, Arthur 72, 203 Goldmann, Lucien 20, 31-32, 38-41, 44, 67, 83 Grégoire, abbé Henri 29, 50, 52-53, 71, 75, 109, 112-113, 115-116, 125 Gregory XI 113 Guizot, François 53, 89, 109, 116, 118-121, 127, 183, 196, 233, 237-238 Habermas, Jürgen 233-234 Hartz, Louis 224-225 Helvétius, Claude Adrien 129-130

Henry IV 37, 98 Hersan, Marc Antoine 64 Jansen, Cornelius 24-26 Jansenism 11, 14-20, 23-24, 24-29, 31-48, 51-53, 82-84, 109-13, 122, 124-125, 128, 168, 171, 231-232 Jardin, André 16 Jaume, Lucien 13, 16, 77, 80, 237 Kelly, George Armstrong 13 Kergolay, Louis de 12, 15, 57, 61-62, 92, 101, fn 116, 123, 125, 197 King, Martin Luther 257 La Fayette 69, 119, 157, 162 Lammenais, Hugues-Félicité Robert de 63, 171 Lancelot, Claud, 27 Lanjuinais, Jean-Denis 53, 71, 112 Lanjuinais, Victor-Ambroise 71 Le Sage, Alain-René 63 Lesueur, Christian 55, 59, 63-65 Lhomond, Charles-François 64 Levasseur, August 157 Longueville, Duchesse de 64 Louis XIV 24, 26, 37, 47, 55, 75, 80, fn 85, 87, 98, 114, 116-117 Louis XVI 71, 87 Louis XVIII fn 71 Machiavelli, Niccolò 16, 18-19, 30, 129, 132, 143-144, 162, 164, 232-234, 241, 243-250 Maire, Catherine 27, 47-48 Maistre, Antoine le 44 Maistre, Joseph de 29, 63, 75, 79-81, 86-88, 93-94, 99, 103-105, 108-116, 125-126, 200 Malebranche, Nicolas 80 Malesherbes, Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de 24, 47-55, 59-60, 66-67, 129 Massillon, Jean-Baptiste 55, 65, 76, 80 McCormick, John P. 197 Mélonio, Françoise 13 Mesanguy, François Philippe 66 Montalembert, Charles Forbes, comte de 75, 171, 175-176, 181-183, 190 Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de 12-15, 23, 53, 59, 61, 68, 150, 173, 196, 232, 237-238, 243-244, 250-252 Napoleon III 171, 189 Nicole, Pierre 26-27, 43, 45-46, 52, 66, 114, 145-147 Noailles, Louis-Antoine cardinal de 63 Nussbaum, Martha 260 Paige, Adrien le 48 Pardessus, M. 66-69 Pascal, Blaise 11-13, 15, 26, 38-41, 43-47, 50, 52, 56, 59, 61-62, 66-68, 72-73, 77-78, 80-84, 88-89, 98, 101, 103-116, 119, 123, 126-127, 138, 141-142, 145-148, 152-153, 156, 161, 173, 211, 219, 238

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Pettit, Philip 233, 240-243, 252, 254-260 Pius IX 73 Pocock, J.G.A. 18-19, 23, 233, 241 Orléans, Louis Philippe d’ 116-118 Quesnel, Pasquier 25 Racine, Jean 26, 66-67, 114 Rawls, John 238, 240, 258 Reeve, Henry 87 Rémusat, Charles de 119-121 Rendu, Abroise 29 Retz, Cardinal de 63 Rollin, Charles 66 Rosanbo, Louis de 60 Rosanbo, Louise le Peletier de 59 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 12-15, 20, 52-53, 59, 61, 87, 115, 127-128, 136, 138-139, 145, fn. 148, 150, 161, 173, 192, 196, 233, 238, 244 Royer-Collard 29, 66, 69, 72, 112, 117, 119, 143-144, 182 Sacy, Antoine-Isaac Silvestre de fn. 71 Sacy, Louis-Isaac Lemaistre 26, 104-105, 114 Sacy, Samuel Ustazade Silvestre de fn. 71, 107 Saint-Cyran 24-25, 27 Saint-Simon, duc de 66 Sales, François de 63 Sellier, Philippe 38, 41-42, 44, 83 Silvy, Louis de, 29 Skinner, Quentin 233, 241-243, 252, 258, 260 Sklar, Judith fn. 164, 233, 238-239, 258 St. Augustine 25, 42-44, 62-63, 72, 84, 174 St. Thomas Aquinas 35, 43, 81, 84 Stepan, Alfred 167-171, 182, 190, 256 Stöfffels, Charles 74

Stöfffels, Eugene 77, 237 Swetchine, Mme 74, 77, 171 Taveneaux, René 32, 42 Tocqueville, Alexis de antinomies 196-202 civic virtue 129-131, 138-145, 150-165, 248-255 comparison between France and America 216-230 family 59-65 in his time 11-12 intellectual biography 12-13 Jansenism 15-16, 55-59, 70-78, 231-233 legal studies 65-70 liberalism 13, 238-240 new political science 100 opinion of Charles X 117-118 opinion of the Doctrinaires 121 Providence 81-100 religion 202-216 republicanism 14, 128-130, 233-240, 256-261 sovereignty 122-128 twin tolerations 171-181, 186-194 Tocqueville, Edouard de 61 Tocqueville, Hervé de 59-61, 76, 117, fn. 127 Tocqueville, Hippoylte de 60-61 Van Kley, Dale 23, 32, 42, 51 Veuillot, Louis 176 Villemain, Abel-François 66, 108, 112-116, 119, 177, 186 Walzer, Michael 31-32 Weber, Max 20, 32-33 Wolin, Sheldon 14, 238