Tocqueville, Alexis de

Born July 29, 1805 in an aristocratic family. His great-grandfather, the well-known French statesman Chretien de Malbourg , defending his king Louis XVI before the Convention , paid for it with his life, accused of conspiracy against the republic. His father, according to his convictions, was also an ardent monarchist, and only the Thermidorian coup saved him from the block.

However, Tocqueville himself did not fully share the socio-political views of his ancestors. Possessing a living mind from childhood, the future French thinker very early showed an interest in the knowledge of the world around him. He received a good liberal arts education and worked as a lawyer for some time. In his letters, however, he repeatedly expressed concern that prolonged theoretical studies of law could kill his soul and turn him into a soulless performer who could only follow the letter of the law thoughtlessly. Therefore, Tocqueville soon moved away from this kind of activity and turned his attention to questions of the socio-political structure.

The focus of his attention was primarily France - his native country, torn by contradictions and in its history managed to go through both a monarchical and a republican form of government . Based on a retrospective analysis of the political development of society, Tocqueville came to the conclusion that the onset of democracy around the world is inevitable. It is interesting what content the concept of the state receives in the works of the French thinker. For him, this is primarily the social structure of society, the nature of public relations, over which an adequate form of political structure is built up for them. The first state to fully embody the principles of a democratic society was, according to Tocqueville, the United States . And since the onset of democracy on a global scale was inevitable, familiarization with the positive and negative features of a democratic system became an extremely urgent and urgent problem.

Trip to America

Under the pretext of studying the penitentiary system of the United States, Tocqueville in 1831 (together with his friend Gustave de Beaumont ) goes on an overseas trip ^[5] . Interestingly, he had no idea of ​​an ideal democratic system. The French thinker is not talking about how it should be , but about how it was . Thus, the United States itself becomes the standard of a democratically organized society at the level of development at which it was at the time Tocqueville arrived there. The journey lasted about a year, and upon his return, Tocqueville published a book entitled Democracy in America .

This work, along with the "Old Order in France", became one of the main works of the French thinker. "Democracy in America" ​​has survived several editions and has been translated into almost all European languages. Traveling around the United States and collecting material for his future book, Tocqueville used the so-called interviewing method, widely practiced in modern sociological science. Another characteristic feature of his historical method was that he always tried to go from facts to theoretical generalizations, so we can say that he was at the origins of positivism . Tocqueville was one of the first to develop the idea of American exclusivity . This so-called perspicacious aristocrat put forward the idea of ​​a bipolar world. He wrote that the peoples of the United States and Russia are moving in different ways, “ however, each of them is apparently intended to secretly control the fate of half the world in their hands someday ” ( FR. “... neanmoins, chacun d'eux semble appelepar un dessein secret de la Providence a tenir unjour dans ses mains les destinees de la moitie du monde " ). In other words, more than 180 years ago, this visionary was the first to write that the future of the planet would someday be determined by the confrontation between Russia and the North American States.

Tocqueville of the Great French Revolution

As Wallerstein writes , Immanuel : “As far back as the 1850s, Tocqueville considered the French Revolution a necessary and compelled to dramatic continuation of the reforms of Colbert , the famous financial minister of King Louis XIV. The modernization launched by Colbert in 1660-1680 caused such resistance from the elites of the old regime that it took another century to complete the work and a powerful revolution that swept away the old regime corruption regimes ” ^[6] .

Tocqueville generally focused on finding the foundations of the revolution in the days long before, even when the state seems powerful and prosperous. So, Tocqueville made a reference to the depletion of France (which entailed the Great French Revolution, in his opinion) under Louis XIV, "when this sovereign still triumphed over all of Europe." ^[7]

Alexis de Tocqueville in his book “The Old Order and the Revolution” considers the question of why, around the middle of the 18th century, writers became the country's main political figures, and what consequences this led to. ^[eight]

To the remark of Francis Bacon that oppression suppresses the will of the people and therefore rebellion is not possible with strong oppression, Alexis Tocqueville put forward the thesis that revolutions occur when the living conditions of the population become better and go away from strong need and the most difficult oppression. This position has become one of the most popular in the XX and XXI centuries. in explaining the causes and circumstances of revolutions. ^[9]

A number of scientific and public awards are named after Tocqueville, including the Alexis de Tocqueville Prize for Humanism (France) and the Alexis de Tocqueville Prize in Public Administration ( Netherlands ). See the list of premiums .

• Butenko V.A. Tocqueville, Alexis-Charles-Henri-Clarel // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron : 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
• "Democracy in America"
• “Old Order and Revolution”
• “Old Order and Revolution”