Commentary

• An Intellectual History of Liberalism

  - Pierre Manent. An Intellectual History of Liberalism, trans. Rebecca Balinski (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994)
  Excerpt: Is it possible to “end,” to “settle” the Revolution?  How can political institutions appropriate for the new society be constructed?  Tocqueville, like Constant and Guizot, had these questions thrust upon him.  However, they now presented… More

• Self-Interest Rightly Understood

  - Harvey C. Mansfield, "Self-Interest Rightly Understood," Political Theory, vol. 23 (1995), No. 1, pp. 48-66.
  Excerpt: The collapse of communism is an occasion to rethink our bourgeois liberalism, which has surprised everyone, favorable or not, with its success. In particular it is time to have another look at self-interest. For communism is said to have collapsed… More

• The Fragility of Freedom: Tocqueville on Religion, Democracy, and the American Future

  - Joshua Mitchell.  The Fragility of Freedom: Tocqueville on Religion, Democracy, and the American Future. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999)
  Excerpt: The Delphic injunction, “Know thyself,” seems nowhere to have been more happily violated than in the American context. It was, after all, Tocqueville the Frenchman, the stranger in America, who was able to grasp the multiple valences of the… More

• Liberalism and Big Government: Tocqueville’s Analysis

  - Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop, “Liberalism and Big Government: Tocqueville’s Analysis,”  in Politics at the End of the Century, ed. Arthur M. Melzer, Jerry Weinberger, M. Richard Zinman (London: Institute of United States Studies, 1999) 1-31

• Nature and Fact in Tocqueville’s Democracy in America

  - Harvey C. Mansfield, “Nature and Fact in Tocqueville’s Democracy in America,” Nature in American Philosophy, Jean De Groot, ed., Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America, 2004, 109-128.
  Excerpt: Today political science speaks of facts but studiously avoids speaking of nature or natural or what happens naturally.  Classical political science, however, rests on nature and never speaks of facts.  “Fact” is a modern term that seems… More

• Tocqueville’s New Political Science

  - Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop, "Tocqueville's New Political Science" in The Cambridge Companion to Tocqueville, ed. Cheryl B. Welch.  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
  Excerpt: “A new political science is needed for a world altogether new.” (DAI Intro., 7) Here is a striking statement, given a paragraph to itself, from the Introduction to Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.  Although it could hardly be… More

• Alexis de Tocqueville and the Two-Founding Thesis

  - James W. Ceaser. "Alexis de Tocqueville and the Two-Founding Thesis." APSA 2010 Annual Meeting Paper.
  Excerpt: Alexis de Tocqueville was one of the first thinkers in the nineteenth century to challenge the prevailing historical account of the American founding. According to that account, which was well on the way to becoming solidified when Tocqueville… 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

• Tocqueville and Liberalism

  - "Tocqueville and Liberalism," C-SPAN Discussion, September 12, 1997
  Tocqueville and Liberalism Professors from the United States and western Europe discussed the impact of the writings of Alexis de Tocqueville as they relate to liberalism. They debated whether Tocqueville was a liberal and whether the definition and scope… More