Tocqueville's Analysis of Belief in a Transcendent Order, Enlightened Interest and Democracy

Abstract

Popular and scholarly appraisals of recently `emerging' democracies often equate privatization and a market economy with self-government. Yet an analysis made 150 years ago by Alexis de Tocqueville of another `new world' - the American democratic experiment - suggests a much deeper foundation of mores, institutions and consciousness must inform self-governing societies. His analysis shows that the individualism and materialism of the current democratic scene may even undermine the foundations of self-government. In contrast to our contemporary understanding of interest calculations as the basis for democracy, Tocqueville finds that religion is chief among American political institutions that maintain liberal democracy. He examines the foundations on which democratic theory and practice depend by studying the `simple ideas' taken from America's religious traditions and their role in public life. He examines the relationship between the teachings of revealed religion - the first law of Torah to love God and to love one's neighbor as oneself, and the Christian belief in an immortal soul - and the consciousness and institutional framework required to avoid `democratic despotism'. This illuminates the ideas that could serve as an ontology for self-governing societies.