Commentary

• Alexis de Tocqueville

  - Marvin Zetterbaum, "Alexis de Tocqueville," History of Political Philosophy, ed. Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, University of Chicago Press, 1987 (Third Edition).
  Excerpt: The publication in 1835 of the first part of Democracy in America established Alexis de Tocqueville as one of the foremost analysts of the problem of democracy.  Tocqueville was the first writer of modern times to undertake a comprehensive… More

• Tocqueville’s Defense of Human Liberty

  - Tocqueville’s Defense of Human Liberty, ed. Peter Lawler and Joseph Alulis (New York: Garland Publishing, 1993)
  Excerpt: Tocqueville seems to be the authority in our time for those who see the inadequacy of both bourgeois and socialist life for human beings.  Hence he inspires those who oppose the misanthropic reductionism of apolitical theory of every sort.  Each of… More

• Liberty, Equality, Nobility: Kolnai, Tocqueville, and the Moral Foundations of Democracy

  - Daniel J. Mahoney, "Liberty, Equality, Nobility: Kolnai, Tocqueville, and the Moral Foundations of Democracy" in Democracy and Its Friendly Critics: Tocqueville and Political Life Today, ed. Peter Augustine Lawler.  (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004)
  Excerpt: “If society exists for the sake of anything at all, it exists for the sake of itself and thus for the sake of its ruling, leading and tone-giving members, and for the sake of the distinctively valuable, eminent, virtuous, ingenious and creative… More

• Tocqueville: A Very Short Introduction by Harvey Mansfield

  - Mansfield, Harvey C. Tocqueville: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
  Excerpt: “What sort of man was Alexis de Tocqueville? A writer, certainly, and with great style, but a writer of nonfiction conveying fact and truth in compelling terms with brilliant formulations. A social scientist, but without the cumbersome… More

• Alexis de Tocqueville and the Art of Democratic Statesmanship

  - Alexis de Tocqueville and the Art of Democratic Statesmanship, ed. Brian Danhoff and L. Joseph Hebert, Jr. (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2011).
  Excerpt: Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop have written that “Democracy in America is at once the best book ever written on democracy and the best book ever written on America.”  The editors of this volume concur with this assessment, and aim to… More

Multimedia

• Democratic Greatness in the American Founding

  - Harvey C. Mansfield, "Democratic Greatness in the American Founding," lecture, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, October 1, 2004.
  Democratic Greatness in the American Founding ISI Lecture by Harvey Mansfield

• Harvey Mansfield: In-Depth on Tocqueville

  - "In-Depth with Harvey Mansfield," interview, C-SPAN, September 4 2005.
  In Depth with Harvey Mansfield

• Democratic Statecraft: Tocqueville, Democracy in America

  - Steven B. Smith, Yale University Course Lectures on Alexis de Tocqueville in "PLSC 114: Introduction to Political Philosophy"  
  Democratic Statecraft: Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Lecture I With the emergence of democracies in Europe and the New World at the beginning of the nineteenth century, political philosophers began to re-evaluate the relationship between freedom and… More