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“The Most Common Sickness of Our Time”: Tocqueville on Democratic Restlessness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 June 2018

Dana Jalbert Stauffer
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Abstract

In volume 1 of Democracy in America, Tocqueville argues that the energy unleashed by democracy is one of democracy's greatest benefits. In volume 2, his portrait of democracy turns darker, and he recasts the dynamism of American society as an expression of an underlying restlessness. In this paper, I argue that restlessness (inquiétude) is a key element of Tocqueville's mature view of democratic man. Whereas previous scholarship on Tocqueville's view of restlessness either treats the theme instrumentally, by subordinating it to other themes, or seeks to illuminate Tocqueville's debt to other thinkers, this paper examines Tocqueville's treatment of restlessness as an important theme in its own right. Treating this theme in full requires examining his discussions of materialism, envy, democratic morality, and democratic peoples’ experiences of literature and art. Through this examination we see how, in Tocqueville's view, democracy, for all its merits, obstructs the path to human happiness.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 80 , Issue 3 , Summer 2018 , pp. 439 - 461
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2018 

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References

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18 Another thinker who influenced Tocqueville's views on restlessness was Montesquieu. For an excellent exploration of the role of restlessness in Montesquieu's thought, and how it influenced Tocqueville, see Rahe, Paul A., Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), esp. 32–59Google Scholar and 156–85.

19 Manent, Pierre considers restlessness in the course of examining the relationship between nature and democracy in Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy, trans. Waggoner, John (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), 55–62Google Scholar. Lawler treats it in connection with a broader meditation on Tocqueville's relationship to Pascal (Restless Mind, 36–44); and Rahe considers Tocqueville's view of restlessness with a view to its political implications, especially the threat of soft despotism (Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift, 168–85). Herold and Kitch focus on its relation to religion; see Herold, “Tocqueville on Religion, Enlightenment, and the Democratic Soul,” 527–29; Kitch, “Immovable Foundations,” 951–52.

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21 DA, vol. 2, Preface, 479–80. See also Rahe, Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift, 153.

22 Schleifer, Making of “Democracy in America,” 37.

23 DA, vol. 2, Preface, 480.

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27 Schleifer, Making of “Democracy in America,” 56.

28 A visit to French Canada, where the physical landscape was so similar to America's, and yet the mores so different, disabused him of the theory that the physical landscape was the primary determinant of national character. See Siedentop, Larry, Tocqueville (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 54–55Google Scholar.

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30 Schleifer, Making of “Democracy in America, ” 52.

31 Ibid., 53.

32 DA, 1.2.6, 278.

33 Tocqueville, Alexis de, “Political Activity in America,” in Democracy in America: Historical-Critical Edition of “De la démocratie en Amérique,” ed. Nolla, Eduardo (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2010), 4:1367CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Hereafter DLDA.

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35 DA, 1.2.6, 277.

36 DA, 1.2.10, 466.

37 Lawler, Restless Mind, 40. See also the assessment of Mansfield and Winthrop: “Restiveness (inquiétude) is for [Tocqueville] the normal, and perhaps the highest, condition of the human soul” (de Tocqueville, Alexis, Democracy in America, ed. Mansfield, Harvey C. and Winthrop, Delba [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000], xxivCrossRefGoogle Scholar).

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39 Ibid., 524.

40 DA, 2.2.13, 625–26.

41 Cf. Deneen, Patrick J., Democratic Faith (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 222Google Scholar.

42 DA, 2.2.10, 617. On this point, see also Rahe, Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift, 142.

43 DA, 2.3.17, 722–23.

44 DA, 2.3.13, 626.

45 Ibid.; see also Herold, “Tocqueville on Religion, Enlightenment, and the Democratic Soul,” 528.

46 Lawler reads Tocqueville to be expressing a strong preference for “restless materialism” over “a kind of decent materialism” that he feared might arise (Restless Mind, 41). But Tocqueville himself never suggests that “restless” materialism is better than “decent” materialism. Indeed, he does not distinguish between the two. American materialism, according to Tocqueville, is both restless and decent.

47 DA, 2.2.11, 621.

48 DA, 2.2.15, 635.

49 Ibid.

50 DA, 2.1.5, 503.

51 Kitch, “Immovable Foundations,” 951. “If I had to class the human miseries, I should put them in this order: 1. Illnesses. 2. Death. 3. Doubt” (Tocqueville's notebooks, October 14th, 1831, in The Tocqueville Reader: A Life in Letters and Politics, ed. Olivier Zunz and Alan S. Kahan [Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002], 53).

52 Pascal, Pensées, 18.

53 DA, 2.2.12, 623.

54 DLDA, 3:935–36.

55 DA, 2.1.11, 530; DLDA, 3:935; Schleifer, Making of “Democracy in America,” 55.

56 DA, 2.4.3, 794.

57 DA, 2.3.15, 717.

58 DA, 2.2.18, 642–43.

59 DA, 1.2.9, 359.

60 DA, 2.2.13, 627.

61 “In an aristocratic society a kind of serenity and even gaiety can be traced to people knowing exactly who they are. They are not subject to the torments of unsatisfied ambition” (Siedentop, Tocqueville, 76).

62 Manent, Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy, 63.

63 DA, 2.2.13, 627.

64 DA, 2.2.20, 650–51.

65 DA, 2.2.13, 627.

66 DA, 2.3.16, 721.

67 Ibid., 720.

68 Œuvres complètes, 418.

69 de Tocqueville, Alexis, Memoir On Pauperism, trans. Drescher, Seymour (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1997), 45, 49Google Scholar.

70 Ibid., 45.

71 Ibid., 48.

72 DA, 2.2.4, 593.

73 DA, 1.2.6, 277. Peter Lawler reads Tocqueville's account as quite dark: “Human beings, as they progress, become more powerful and knowledgeable, more anxious and dissatisfied, and, on the whole, more miserable” (Lawler, Peter, “The Human Condition: Tocqueville's Debt to Rousseau and Pascal,” in Liberty, Equality, Democracy, ed. Nolla, Eduardo [New York: New York University Press, 1992], 11Google Scholar). Tocqueville himself does not use such a strong tone.

74 DA, 1.2.6, 279; 2.2.5, 595–96.

75 DLDA, 4:1367.

76 DA, 2.2.13, 626.

77 DA, 1.2.6, 279.

78 DA, 1.2.10, 453.

79 DA, 1.2.2, 201–3; 2.2.14, 630–32; 2.3.21, 749–51.

80 Tocqueville Reader, 51. See also Danoff, Brian, Educating Democracy: Alexis de Tocqueville and Leadership in America (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010), 17Google Scholar; Krause, Sharon R., Liberalism with Honor (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 78–82Google Scholar.

81 Kahan, “Democratic Grandeur,” 180.

82 Antoine, Agnès, “Democracy and Religion: Some Tocquevillian Perspectives,” in Reading Tocqueville: From Oracle to Actor, ed. Geenens, Raf and De Dijn, Annelien (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 137Google Scholar; Danoff, Educating Democracy, 16–18.

83 DA, 2.2.8, 611.

84 DA, 2.2.9, 614. Cf. McLendon, “Tocqueville, Jansenism, and the Psychology of Human Freedom,” 673: “Americans, [Tocqueville] thought, were at bottom creatures of vice.”

85 DA, 2.3.24, 775.

86 DA, 2.3.21, 750.

87 DA, 1.2.10, 464.

88 Wettergreen, John Adams, “Modern Commerce,” in Interpreting Tocqueville's “Democracy in America,” ed. Masugi, Ken (Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1991), 217Google Scholar.

89 Manent argues that the heroism of commerce stems principally from the experience of envy (Tocqueville and the Nature of Democracy, 61). But Tocqueville does not connect the two things. Rather, he argues that the American who shows heroism in commerce is “obeying the dictates of his nature” (DA 1.2.10, 465); cf. Avramenko, Richard, Courage: The Politics of Life and Limb (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011), 211–15Google Scholar.

90 DA, 2.3.8, 688–90.

91 DA, 1.2.9, 336–37.

92 DA, 2.3.10, 696.

93 Ibid., 697.

94 DA, 1.1.3, 59.

95 DA, 2.2.19, 645.

96 On the surprising affinity between Tocqueville and Marx on the modern democratic experience of leisure, see Pangle, Thomas L., “The Twofold Challenge for Democratic Culture in Our Time,” in Alexis de Tocqueville and the Art of Democratic Statesmanship, ed. Danoff, Brian and Hebert, L. Joseph Jr. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011), 331Google Scholar.

97 DA, 2.2.13, 626.

98 DA, 2.3.15, 718.

99 DA, 2.1.17, 557.

100 DA, 2.1.13, 542.

101 DA, 2.1.19, 566.

102 DA, 2.1.17, 558.

103 DA, 2.1.13, 542.

104 DA, 2.1.2, 490.

105 SL, 154.

106 DA, 1.2.9, 344.

107 de Tocqueville, Alexis, Souvenirs, in Œuvres complètes, vol. 12, ed. Monnier, Luc (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), 171Google Scholar.

108 DA, 2.2.13, 627.

109 DA, 1.2.9, 342.

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111 SL, 93.

112 de Tocqueville, Alexis, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont: Their Friendship and Their Travels, ed. Zunz, Olivier and Goldhammer, Arthur (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010), 603Google Scholar.

113 Ibid., 612.