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

• 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

• 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

• Alexis de Tocqueville on the Natural State of Religion in the Age of Democracy

  -
  Aristide Tessitore.  "Alexis de Tocqueville on the Natural State of Religion in the Age of Democracy" in The Journal of Politics , Vol. 64, No. 4 (Nov., 2002)
  Excerpt: Shortly after arriving in the new world, Tocqueville wrote to one of his oldest friends about the flurry of conflicting impressions that greeted him in New York. He was struck by “a mixture of vices and virtues that is rather difficult to… More

• Citizenship as a Vocation

  - Patrick J. Deneen, "Citizenship as a Vocation" in Democracy and Its Friendly Critics: Tocqueville and Political Life Today, ed. Peter Augustine Lawler.  (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004)
  Excerpt: I. The Restless American Tocqueville was among the first commentators on the American scene to speak of the :restlessness,” or “restiveness” of democratic man.  Tormented by the openness of democratic society born of the universal… More

• Tocqueville on Religion and Liberty

  - Mansfield, Harvey. "Tocqueville on Religion and Liberty." American Political Thought, Spring: 2016.
  Excerpt: I stop the first American I meet … and I ask him if he believes religion to be useful to the stability of laws and to the good order of society; without hesitation he answers that a civilized society, but above all a free society, cannot subsist… More

Multimedia

• On Religion and Rational Control

  - Harvey Mansfield, "On Religion and Rational Control," Bradley Lecture at AEI, November 3, 2008
  Lecture: On Religion and Rational Control “Rational control” is the subjection of society to reason as opposed to superstition, prejudice, or tradition, with the aim of getting us to behave better. Alexis de Tocqueville says this idea or practice began… More

• Tocqueville’s Alliance of Religion and Liberty

  - Harvey C. Mansfield, "Tocqueville's Alliance of Religion and Liberty," Lecture at Catholic University, October 8, 2010