Alexis de Tocqueville

Alexis de Tocqueville, an influential French philosopher added many new important ideas to the field of political science. The content of this paper will discuss his main ideas and arguments, as well as the significance of each in modern political philosophy. Tocqueville’s book, Democracy in America, deals with issues such as class structure, racism, religion, and role of government. These issues were not only relevant during his era, but today as well. Historians consider Democracy in America to be “one of the most comprehensive and insightful books ever written about the United States” (King 1).

Born into an aristocratic French family on July 29, 1805, Tocqueville developed an interest in understanding the human family through the study of history (King 2). His career at school was noted to be a brilliant one. At sixteen years old he was reading books hardly available to regular boys of his age. It was at this time that he lost faith in religion, which did not return to him until the last months of his life. His mind was to focus on concrete matters and to conceive their laws with devoted precision (Mayer 7). When he was twenty, the writers “eye for detail, his analytical dissection, and his abstraction of the structural political law” came through in his work and reflections. His parents and grandparents were involved with the revolutionary events that took place in France. After he studied law, Tocqueville worked for King Louis-Philippe which caused tension in his family. The tension probably added to Tocqueville’s desire to leave France. His trip to America was described “as more than just an aid to detached observation.” He found the political order that had combined democracy and political freedom which France, currently destroyed by crisis, did not have. Tocqueville’s reflections of “French experience and insights on America” were contrasted in a “paradigm of rational democratic order that allows us to select those elements in his thinking...