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Tiêu đề
CAN THE GREAT BOOKS SERVE THE COMMON GOOD? TOCQUEVILLE ON ARISTOCRATIC EDUCATION IN A DEMOCRATIC AGE
Tác giả
Foster L.J.
Năm xuất bản
2022
Source title
Tocqueville Review
Số trích dẫn
2
DOI
10.3138/ttr.43.1.181
Liên kết
Tóm tắt
This article engages two established modes of analyzing Tocqueville’s theory in Democracy in America—the institutionalism of Volume 1 and the “art of association” of Volume 2—to argue for the importance of a Platonic theme in Tocqueville, that of education for leadership. After establishing why Tocqueville argues that democracy struggles to cultivate quality leadership, the article turns to examining one proposed solution: education in the classical humanities. Tocqueville’s argument for this pedagogy is overtly aristocratic, in contrast to many contemporary arguments for liberal education. Following this logic carefully permits us to understand another aspect of Tocqueville’s characteristic effort to incorporate aristocratic elements into democratic society and challenges us to reconsider our own role as educators. © 2022, University of Toronto. All rights reserved.
Từ khóa
Tài liệu tham khảo
Boettke Peter, This essay builds upon the ideas developed in my article “Tocqueville on the Mixed Blessing of Liberal Learning: Higher Education as Subversive Antidote, Exploring the Social and Political Economy of Alexis de Tocqueville, pp. 63-82, (2020); de Tocqueville Alexis, Democracy in America, (2010); Introduction, Democracy in America; Gustafson Sarah, Tocqueville believes [with Plato and Rousseau] that what democratic man contemplates will shapes his mind, his soul, and his politics; he asks those in authority to keep minds within salutary boundaries such that man and the political community live in spiritual and political liberty, and not material despotism,” p. 127, in “A Tocquevillian Marketplace of Ideas? Spiritualism and Materialism in Tocqueville’s Liberalism,” pp. 101-130; Jech For Alexander, Tocqueville discerns a Platonist irony in the fact that “Our self-interest naturally subverts itself, and its true achievement require considerable enlightenment and virtue,” p. 86 in “‘Man Simply,’: Excavating Tocqueville’s Conception of Human Nature, Perspectives on Political Science, 42, 2, pp. 84-93, (2013); Plato Republic, (2016); Rodriguez Raul, Tocqueville’s State of Nature Foundation, American Journal of Political Science; Jech, Tocqueville assigns the unifying role that Plato and Aristotle gave to the regime to social state instead; The observation that two states give rise to three types I owe to Jech; Lawler Peter, The Restless Mind: Alexis de Tocqueville on the Origin and Perpetuation of Human Liberty, (1993); Educating Democracy: Alexis de Tocqueville and Leadership in America, (2010); Intellectual inequality comes directly from God, and man cannot prevent it from always reappearing; 572 P., The Silence of Tocqueville on Education, Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques, Summer-Fall, Été-Automne 1980, 7, 2/3, pp. 565-575; Republic, pp. 555b-562a; Bacon Francis, The Advancement of Learning, (2001); Kahan Alan, Tocqueville, Democracy, and Religion: Checks and Balances for Democratic Souls, (2015); de Secondat Charles, de Montesquieu baron, The Spirit of the Laws, (1989); Spector Celine, Honor, Interest, Virtue: The Affective Foundations of the Political in the Spirit of the Laws, pp. 49-79, (2009); Honor continues to play a role in democracy through its continuance in the military, though, as Tocqueville discusses in II.3.18 and II.3.22-26; de Tocqueville Alexis, The Ancien Régime and the French Revolution, (2011); Kahan reads Tocqueville as holding that freedom potentially belongs to all, but will only be actualized by some: “Since the desire for freedom is universal, and greatness is born of freedom, the road to greatness is open to all… Unfortunately, those sublime pleasures may be fully felt only by a few; If these lines ever reach America, I am sure of two things: first, that readers will all raise their voices to condemn me; second, that many among them will absolve me deep down in their conscience; This famous description appears in II.IV.6. Cf. Françoise Melonio’s study of the concept in “Tocqueville et le Despotisme Moderne, Revue Française d’Histoire des Idées Politiques, 6, pp. 339-354, (1997); Vincent Ostrom focuses on association to make a connection to the public choice literature in The Meaning of Democracy and the Vulnerability of Democracies: A Response to Tocqueville’s Challenge, (1997); Mitchell Joshua, whose The Fragility of Freedom: Tocqueville on Religion, Democracy, and the American Future, (1995); I believe firmly that you cannot establish an aristocracy again in the world; but I think simple citizens by associating together can constitute very wealthy, very influential, very strong beings, in a word aristocratic persons; his Teachers of the People: Political Education in Rousseau, Hegel, Tocqueville, and Mill, (2017); Ewa Atanassow celebrates this utilitarian attraction of democracy to education in “Beyond utility?: Tocqueville on liberal eduation, and education for liberty, The Tocquevillle Review/La revue Tocqueville, 24, 2, pp. 169-177, (2013); Avramenko Richard, The Grammar of Indifference: Tocqueville and the Language of Democracy, Political Theory, 45, 4, pp. 495-523, (2017); Kahan For Alan, Tocqueville and liberal education, The Tocqueville Review/La revue Tocqueville, 34, 2, pp. 159-168, (2013); Tocqueville’s characterization of ancient historiography surely relies more on Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, and Plutarch than it does on St. Augustine. But he would likely regard City of God from the near side of the decisive break with antiquity, which he takes to be the Incarnation; pp. 64-85; said Tocqueville, a new political science is needed for a world entire new,” but not that the science needed was the one democratic people would naturally discover for themselves (I.I, “Introduction”). Cf. Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop, “Tocqueville’s New Political Science, pp. 81-107; The New Atlantis, 40, pp. 48-71, (2013); Melonio Francoise, De la démocratie en Europe: les voyages d’Alexis de Tocqueville en Rhénanie, Der Rhein-Le Rhin im deutsch-französischen Perspektivenwechsel-Regards croisés franco-allemands, pp. 79-93, (2019); Selected Letters; Johnson Laurie, Honor in America? Tocqueville on American Enlightenment, (2017); Manent notes that, for Tocqueville, even “in a complete democracy [like the United States], where the seeds of aristocracy have never been sown, the aristocracy/democracy distinction remains the key to political life. Despite the unopposed dominance of the democratic social state, aristocratic and democratic individuals are still identifiable; By placing certain men in a sublime social position, the aristocrats set forth a sublime idea of man, and stimulate in some men (who are not necessarily the same as the first) sublime efforts towards the truth. Aristocracy favors intellectual eros. Nothing of the kind takes place in democracies, where nature is left to itself, and where it therefore runs the risk of falling short of its potential; The Fragility of Freedom, Mitchell compares the value of the mediating loci of authority that even associations provide to the appeal of veneration of the saints in Catholic devotion: “It is not, then, simply that mediating bodies (which stand between the many and the sovereign) are necessary in all societies, democratic ones or otherwise; more precisely than this, what is necessary is that there be sites of authority toward which the many—themselves without the authority of station that the aristocrat possesses—may be drawn. Mediating bodies provide this; Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students, pp. 276-277, (1987); Tocqueville on Liberal Education and American Democracy, America, The West, and Liberal Education, pp. 55-68, (1999); Rawls John, Interpreting Berlin’s Liberalism, American Political Science Review, 95, 2, pp. 283-295, (2005); concludes Manent, Democracy, from the point of view of political art, thus has the task of fabricating what was given in aristocratic societies, 26
Nơi xuất bản
University of Toronto
Hình thức xuất bản
Article
Open Access
Nguồn
Scopus