L. Joseph Hebert, Jr.  More Than Kings and Less Than Men: Tocqueville on the Promise and Perils of Democratic Individualism (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010)  

Excerpt:

According to a tradition of classical writing, the key to any great work is in its beginning.  Tocqueville, whose college years were steeped in the study and imitation of Cicero and Demosthenes, illustrates this maxim well.  He tells us that the key to almost his whole work is in the second chapter, and account of the founding of America.  The roots of that chapter, however, lie in the preceding chapter and the Introduction he affixed to the first volume of Democracy.  This study of Tocqueville will not be able to maintain a line-by-line analysis of his great work, but it will begin by following Tocqueville’s beginning as closely as possible.  This will allow us to grasp the main concepts and modes of thinking that will undergird subsequent discussions.  The present chapter will unpack Tocqueville’s Introduction, wherein he introduces the concepts of democracy, which he says is conquering “the Christian universe”; of a “new political science” whose teachings ought to guide the leaders of democracy if the latter is to benefit humankind; and of human nature, whose capacity for moral greatness, need for liberty, and dependence upon moral order define the standards by which political science can contribute to democratic governance.  Our next chapter will examine the additional concepts, lessons, and model Tocqueville presents in the first and second chapters of Democracy.  Together these reflections will prepare us to understand the cause and character of the threat of individualism as Tocqueville sees it, the means by which he seeks to combat it in his writings, and the relevance of those writings to our own time.

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