Commentary

• Tocqueville and the Problem of Democracy

  - Marvin Zetterbaum.  Tocqueville and the Problem of Democracy.  (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967)
  Excerpt: It is not uncommon for a major writer to be seen by his critics in widely divergent, even contradictory terms; Alexis de Tocqueville shares this fate.  To the familiar causes of critical disagreement, Tocqueville added his own—a veil of neutrality… 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

• 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 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