The course begins with a brief overview of Tocqueville's masterwork. Written to educate the French about democracy, it was originally published as two separate volumes, released five years apart.
Professor William R. Cook introduces the young French nobleman, trained as a lawyer, whose most famous book was only one achievement in a life marked by several, including service as France's foreign minister and a history of the French Revolution still regarded as a classic.
Though Tocqueville rarely describes specific events or conversations, his letters and journals allow us to follow him on his trip and get an excellent feel for the experiences he and his colleague, Gustave de Beaumont, have in America.
This lecture considers the meaning and implications of what Tocqueville introduces in Democracy in America's first paragraph as the foundation of the democratic enterprise: the concept he calls "equality of conditions."
Although democracy transcends any particular manifestation of it, Tocqueville stresses specific elements of the American experience that lead to its particular expression of democratic principles, including its roots in England, its form of Protestant Christianity, and its geography.
Americans are often taught that we have a classical republic, consisting of elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. However, Tocqueville challenges this idea by arguing that there is only one overarching principle at work in America: democracy.
This lecture examines Tocqueville's admiration of—and concern over—the American Constitution, with special focus on the role of the federal judiciary, especially the Supreme Court, and the eligibility of a president for re-election.
We shift to other levels of the judiciary to see what Tocqueville has to say about justices of the peace, lawyers, and the vital role of juries as schools of democracy.
For Tocqueville, democracy to a large extent trickles up rather than down, with local elections and offices providing both efficiency and a democratic laboratory, both of which are dangerously subject to damage by the centralization of administration.
This lecture examines Tocqueville's views on the necessity and danger of freedom of speech, including his discussion on the limitations placed on speech not by law, but by custom.
We see how Tocqueville's views on freedom of the press clearly evolved between his work's two volumes and also enjoy the opportunity of using his own journal's word-by-word record of a conversation he had on this subject as a case study of his interviewing method.
Political parties as we understand them were only in their infancy when Tocqueville arrived in America. We examine his definition of "great" and "small" parties in explaining why the new realities of his time demand a new political science.
For Tocqueville, the danger of the tyranny of the majority is one of the most serious facing a democratic society. With even institutional safeguards offering insufficient protection, he looks to political associations as an essential barrier against that tyranny.
Tocqueville defines political associations as groups of people united for a particular political purpose. He examines how they function and how they act effectively to advocate for the particular issue they agree about.
The great complements to political associations in a democracy are civil associations, those private organizations without a political focus. Tocqueville argues that they not only help bind Americans together, but also are important to the functioning of democracy.
Tocqueville cannot paint a picture of America without dealing with race, especially black slavery and the "Indian problem." Although some of his predictions have not proved accurate, his perspective can be helpful in understanding contemporary American society.
This lecture examines what Tocqueville calls the mores of democracy—its "habits of the heart"—including the possible implications as we seek to help nations without a tradition of democracy quickly create egalitarian and free societies.
Democracies are prone to changing values because of their majoritarian nature. Hence, an important question is: Where is the anchor of democracy to be found? For Tocqueville, that answer is in religion generally and Christianity specifically.
This lecture examines Tocqueville's belief that education in America is broad but shallow, with the average person knowing more than his or her counterpart in Europe, but with America lacking great scientists, writers, philosophers, and artists.
Tocqueville's different take on the trait he called "individualism" creates a useful prism through which to examine this quintessentially American phenomenon and what he saw as its dangerous tendency to cause Americans to withdraw from the public sphere.
Tocqueville is disturbed by the materialism he sees in America, with people so caught up in pursuing riches that they ignore other important aspects of what it means to be human, and even fears a long-range threat to equality of conditions.
women, both in the daily life of America and in its success.
From the time of the ancient Greeks, people have debated whether democracy destroys excellence or encourages it. This lecture examines the question of excellence or mediocrity as it is raised in a variety of contexts throughout Democracy in America.
The course concludes by reviewing Tocqueville's most important insights and applying them to the next 175 years of American history. Of course, our nation's story is still developing, but we can ask which possibilities that Tocqueville outlines are at present those in the ascent.