influence laws and mores exert upon each other, for in a fragment that was not included in Tocqueville’s final text, he observes, “Laws, however, work toward producing the spirit, the mores and the character of the people,” then musing, “But in what proportion? There is the great problem that we cannot think too much about.”11 Working within this context of reciprocity between laws and mores, Aguilar considers whether Argentina’s present disorders are primarily due to national mores, or to political leaders’ abuses. He argues that the more political signs of disorder, such as the corruption of governmental officials, are but one manifestation of widespread societal movements. Moreover, he notes parallels between Tocqueville’s soft despotism and the tutelary state that has arisen in contemporary Argentina, and he suggests that any reforms that hope to find success in Argentina must engage on both legal and extra-legal levels, and that they must seek above all to generate “consensus and habits related to free institutions.”12
Craiutu’s chapter also emphasizes the importance of mores for a postcommunist Eastern Europe, because, as he observes, Tocqueville invites us to explore whether democracy can first be implanted into the political sphere, then “transplanted” into society’s mores. He finds Tocqueville a particularly apt guide for understanding contemporary Eastern Europe, because of the similarities between that region’s present and those faced by Tocqueville’s France after the end of the Old Regime: in particular, both the France about which Tocqueville wrote and the countries of present-day Eastern Europe are societies struggling with the legacy of an “old regime” as they transition to democracy and attempt to create and strengthen institutions and culture supportive of a free society. In addition to offering Tocquevillian warnings about possible dangers—including soft despotism springing from citizens’ senses of isolation and atomization—Craiutu offers a range of prescriptions for that region’s countries, stressing particularly Tocquevillian concepts such as civil society, social capital, the art of association, local government, and intermediary bodies.
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Like the explorations of Tocquevillian ideas and methods in nineteenth-century and contemporary Italy we find in Sabetti’s chapter, Matsumoto’s contribution to this volume focuses on Toqueville’s relevance to Japan (a country he neither visited nor wrote about), during the period of the Meiji Revolution (1867–1868) and today. Matsumoto traces the manner in which some of Democracy in America’s key ideas, such as freedom of the press, individual rights, administrative decentralization, and voluntary associations, entered into the debates about political life in Japan as that country began to transition from a closed society to an open one and as an egalitarian era dawned. Matsumoto’s discussion particularly emphasizes Tocquevillian elements in the thought of one of the period’s key liberals, Fukuzawa Yukichi. The affinities between Fukuzawa’s writings and Tocquevillian themes such as the role of local government to promote a spirit of independence and the dangers of democratic despotism remind us of Tocqueville’s portability beyond a transatlantic context; similarly, Matsumoto’s analysis of contemporary Japan reminds us of these ideas’ continued application beyond their nineteenth-century articulation.
The ideas expressed by Tocqueville in Democracy in America have continued to move beyond their immediate contexts of time and place. Similarly, Tocqueville’s own literal and figurative journeys continued beyond his time in the United States and the writing of Democracy in America. Although Tocqueville did not cross the Atlantic again, the remaining years of his life witnessed him traveling to England, Switzerland, Germany, France, and Algeria. When health or other reasons made travel impossible, he read travel literature, one of his favorite genres, and allowed his imagination to transport him. His intellectual interests and output continued beyond Democracy in America as well, and his post–Democracy in America writings reflect his interest in France, Algeria, and England, as well as his continued engagement with America and his desire to know more about other countries to which he would not journey, like China.
Yet the voyage to the United States remained with Tocqueville always, for it had marked him deeply. On a personal level, he continued to find it a touchstone, returning frequently to his memories of his time in America and its lessons, corresponding with his American friends
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until the end of his life, and calling himself “half Yankee” or “half an American citizen.”13 Intellectually, he also continued to draw upon the approach he had developed there, particularly the paired comparisons and contrasts characteristic of his analytic method, and the essential categories and conceptual framework of his philosophic mode.
This volume invites the reader to continue Tocqueville’s journeys, considering not only what he discovered in the United States and how he developed his ideas during the process of composing Democracy in America but also how the lessons of America have been and might be carried beyond their immediate contexts of time and place.
If travel is—as Michel de Montaigne suggests and as Tocqueville certainly found his American voyage to be—a means of honing our judgment and of clarifying our vision of ourselves and the world, let our journeys begin.
Christine Dunn Henderson
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Symbols Used in the Liberty Fund Edition of Democracy in America1
| […] | Text not crossed out in the manuscript. |
| <…> | Text circled or surrounded in pen (this generally concerns fragments that Tocqueville wanted to delete, but the presence of a circle around a word sometimes served solely to draw the author’s attention: Is the use pertinent? Does the word conflict phonetically with the one following?). |
| ≠…≠ | Word or text crossed out by one or several vertical or diagonal lines. |
| {…} | Word or text crossed out horizontally. |
| / | Sign placed at the end of the sentence to indicate that a horizontal line separates it in the manuscript from the one that follows. |
| […(ed.)] | Information given by the editor. |
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Hidden from View: Tocqueville’s Secrets
EDUARDO NOLLA
And now I will unclasp a secret book, And to your quick-conceiving discontents I’ll read you matter deep and dangerous.
—William Shakespeare, Henry IV, part 1, act 1.
Much is hidden in Tocqueville’s Democracy1 in the surface and under the printed text, both literally and figuratively, so much in fact that the book sometimes resembles more a mystery or a cryptographic novel than a political treatise.
The tone of the text itself and the relation that it establishes between author and reader are also closer to what can be found in literature than in political theory.
The drafts, notes, and manuscripts of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America2 form a unique palimpsest that allows researchers to discover the buried structure of the book.3 They offer a different, and often surprising, vision of his thought.
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The so-called working manuscript of Democracy in America is kept at Yale University, inside four boxes, under the call number C.VI. My guess is that it comprises around 1400 quarto sheets: about 650 for the 1835 volumes and 750 for the 1840 part. The large majority of them are written on both sides.
This estimate does not include his notes, drafts, correspondence, or the famous Rubish. The Rubish is kept in two boxes, under the call number C.V.g., and is by itself about 1000 pages long.