Major Works

• Democracy In America

  - Recommended translation: Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. Edited and translated by Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Volume I originally published in 1835. Volume II originally published in 1840.
  Excerpt: "Among the novel objects that attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, nothing struck me more forcibly than the general equality of condition among the people. I readily discovered the prodigious influence that this primary fact… More

• The Old Regime and the Revolution

  - Recommended Translations: Tocqueville, Alexis de. The Old Regime and the Revolution. Vol. 1. Edited by François Furet and Françoise Mélonio. Translated by Alan S. Kahan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Tocqueville, Alexis de. The Old Regime and the Revolution. Vol. 2. Edited by François Furet and Françoise Mélonio. Translated by Alan S. Kahan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.  
  Excerpt: The book I now publish is not a history of the Revolution. That history has been too brilliantly written for me to think of writing it afresh. This is a mere essay on the Revolution. The French made, in 1789, the greatest effort that has ever been… More

Commentary

• Leo Strauss on Alexis de Tocqueville

  - Leo Strauss on Alexis de Tocqueville.  Transcript from class session.
  Excerpt: Tocqueville, living two generations after Burke, accepted modern democracy on a Burkian basis, without accepting all the [?] of natural religion.  That is the starting point of Tocqueville.  Tocqueville was here for a very short time, making some… More

• The Restless Mind: Alexis de Tocqueville on the Origin and Perpetuation of Human Liberty

  - Peter Augustine Lawler, "The Restless Mind: Alexis de Tocqueville on the Origin and Perpetuation of Human Liberty."  (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1993)
  Excerpt: I begin with socialism for a number of reasons.  Tocqueville saw the socialists as the most extreme and dangerous opponents to human liberty in his time.  His most pressing task as a political actor was to oppose socialist revolution.  He also… More

• Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy

  - Pierre Manent.  Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy, trans. John Waggoner.  (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996)
  Excerpt: Tocqueville distills his discovery of the essence of modern society, of democracy, in this way. The equality of conditions is not a single characteristic among others, however important they may be; it is the “generative fact” from which… More

• Tocqueville, Political Philosopher

  - Pierre Manent, "Tocqueville, Political Philosopher," trans. Arthur Goldhammer in The Cambridge Companion to Tocqueville,  ed. Cheryl B. Welch.  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)
  Excerpt: Since 2002,texts by Tocqueville have been included in the syllabus  for the French Agrégation de Philosophie. What are we to think of this belated promotion of Tocqueville to the rank of  philosopher? Did the sages who draft the syllabi give into… More