Article
Tocqueville and the American Amalgam
11 Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy 103-124
(2013)
Abstract
Any serious attempt to understand the original meaning of the Constitution
requires an inquiry into what was, if any, the dominant political theory that
guided the founding of the American regime. Recent decades have witnessed a
lively scholarly debate between the partisans of the liberal interpretation of the
Founding, which posits that liberal political theory is the intellectual foundation
of our regime, and those of classical republicanism. The classical republicans
argue that the influence of liberal theory on the Founding has been
exaggerated and that the Founders cared more about securing the authority to
govern their communities in the name of the common good.
In response to this challenge, and the appearance of other intellectual
schools with a plausible claim to influence on the Founding, leaders of the
liberal school have argued that the best way to understand American political
thought is the idea of the "amalgam." The amalgam approach argues that while
sources of thought such as English common law or Protestant theology undoubtedly
influenced the Founding, these ideas were assimilated into, and in some
cases transformed by, the liberal intellectual framework that truly guided the
Founding generation.
In this article, I ask whether Alexis de Tocqueville, in his study of America,
revealed whether he shares the liberalism he attributes to the Americans. If
Tocqueville is a liberal, it must be of the amalgam variety, because his work
articulates a radical and often devastating critique of liberalism. If not moderated,
liberalism leads to the disease of "individualism," which manifests itself
in excessive concern for one's material well-being and neglect of one's duties as
a citizen. Unchecked individualism will most probably lead to a soft, but real,
despotism.
Tocqueville, I conclude, is a genuine liberal, but of a new kind. While he
attributes the liberalism of the Americans more to their social circumstances
than to any deliberate political choice, his account of the origins of the
American belief in equality is not, at bottom, inconsistent with the American
understanding of these principles. Furthermore, I show that a close reading of
his work demonstrates that Tocqueville and the Americans agree on the foundation
of a principled and just order In fact, Tocqueville demonstrates that the
dangers to a good society posed by liberalism are best averted by both
expanding the scope of popular sovereignty and by relying on institutions, such
as religion, that moderate liberalism but have also been transformed by it.
Disciplines
Publication Date
2013
Citation Information
Andrew C. Spiropoulos. "Tocqueville and the American Amalgam" 11 Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy 103-124 (2013) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/andrew_spiropoulos/25/