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Tocqueville, Democracy, and Religion: Checks and Balances for Democratic Souls, by Alan S. Kahan
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The relationship between democracy and religion is as important today as it was in Alexis de Tocqueville's time. Tocqueville, Democracy, and Religion is a ground-breaking study of the views of the greatest theorist of democracy writing about one of today's most crucial problems. Alan S. Kahan, one of today's foremost Tocqueville scholars, shows how Tocqueville's analysis of religion is simultaneously deeply rooted in his thoughts on nineteenth-century France and America and pertinent to us today.
Tocqueville thought that the role of religion was to provide checks and balances for democracy in the spiritual realm, just as secular forces should provide them in the political realm. He believed that in the long run secular checks and balances were dependent on the success of spiritual ones. Kahan examines how Tocqueville thought religion had succeeded in checking and balancing democracy in America, and failed in France, as well as observing Tocqueville's less well-known analyses of religion in Ireland and England, and his perspective on Islam and Hinduism. He shows how Tocqueville's 'post-secular' account of religion can help us come to terms with religion today.
More than a study of Tocqueville on religion in democratic society, this volume offers us a re-interpretation of Tocqueville as a moralist and a student of human nature in democratic society; a thinker whose new political science was in the service of a new moral science aimed at encouraging democratic people to attain greatness as human beings. Tocqueville, Democracy, and Religion gives us a new Tocqueville for the twenty-first century.
- Sales Rank: #441506 in Books
- Published on: 2015-10-06
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 6.40" h x .90" w x 9.30" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 256 pages
Review
[a] thought-provoking examination of Tocqueville and religion ... Kahan provides and intriguing account of Tocqueville's comparative religious studies. Lucian Robinson, Times Literary Supplement
About the Author
Alan S. Kahan received his PhD in History from The University of Chicago in 1987, and is currently Professor of British Civilization at the Universite de Versailles/St. Quentin. He is the author of Aristocratic Liberalism: The Social and Political Thought of Jacob Burckhardt, John Stuart Mill, and Alexis de Tocqueville (1992); Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe: the Political Culture of Limited Suffrage (2003); Alexis de Tocqueville (2010); and Mind vs. Money: The War Between Intellectuals and Capitalism (2010).
Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Tocqueville's Prescription for "Make America Great"
By GDP
'Tocqueville, Democracy, and Religion' (TDR) is a valuable book, as it helps the lay reader better appreciate Tocqueville's masterpiece, 'Democracy in America' (DA) by focusing intensely on Tocqueville's views on religion, particularly his view that religion is an important element in American democracy's potential to foster "human greatness." In fact, it is fair to say that Tocqueville was a moralist chiefly concerned with "human greatness" made possible via the potentially complimentary influences of religion and democracy.
To achieve his insightful commentary, Prof. Kahan culls and reweaves Tocqueville's references on religion from DA and other works, including correspondence. Commentary on religion appears throughout DA, sometimes in chapters with headings that specifically reference religion, but many that are found sprinkled about in chapters that don't and, therefore, are not obvious places to turn for related content (granted, there are indices available).
Tocqueville wrote extensive observations about what he saw in America (c. 1830), but perhaps his most important observation was that the future of democracy in America offered "alternative moral outcomes" (p. 13); that is, it could become a democracy that fostered 'human greatness' or a democracy that encouraged human degradation. In the tradition of Pascal, Tocqueville believed that man consisted of two parts, angel and beast, or idealism and material desires (p. 27), and that "human greatness" required a balance between the angel and the beast.
The book pretty thoroughly explores the topic while remaining objective … it is not an apologia or a tract by any means. This posture is entirely appropriate since Tocqueville's own posture on religion was that of an instrument, or an institution that had a tendency to benefit human beings in the here and now (by imposing ethical duties) without regard for the ultimate truth of faith. In addition to commentary on religion in America, it covers a comparison with religion in France (where religion's benefits had been more complicated because it had been so intertwined with economic and political power), as well as discussion of what Tocqueville considered secular alternatives to religion that could also foster "human greatness."
One mild criticism: for all of Tocqueville's (and Kahan's) fixation upon "human greatness" (or "human grandeur") there never is a satisfactory definition of what Tocqueville exactly meant by the term provided in TDR. It is hinted at … freedom, the exercise of free will, moral excellence, virtue, "old ideas of heroism and bravado, of magnanimity, of devotion and of ideal love" (p. 21), justice, "real virtue" (p. 60), "the great and the beautiful" (p. 62), "moderation" (p. 68), et cetera. We could easily add to the list prudence, discipline, faith, hope, and charity. So it is easy to conjure an idea of what Tocqueville might have meant, but it would be helpful to have a more precise definition for Tocqueville's use of the term based upon scholarly understanding.
This is an edifying and worthwhile read both for historical understanding and the present.
A complimentary book is Joshua Mitchell's The Fragility of Freedom: Tocqueville on Religion, Democracy, and the American Future that covers much of the same ground but uses many different DA citations and provides some additional context for Tocqueville's moral philosophy (also four stars).
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