Tocqueville & America

Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville is no doubt the greatest book ever written by a foreigner about this country. It may be one of the greatest books written about any country by someone outside of it. The volume shows the extent to which Tocqueville had separated himself from one version of the Enlightenment. The English Enlightenment, which occurred in the 18th century and lasted into the 19th, was one that promoted liberty and self-study, did not attack religion, valued common sense, and was tempered by the operations of a decentralized state. The French Enlightenment—of which Tocqueville was not a part, but which had produced the French Revolution—was a movement that promoted not only liberty, but equality, and fraternity (one might add adultery), attacked religion, valued ideology, and was made worse by a centralized state. Tocqueville was apart from his culture; John Stuart Mill, one of the great reviewers of Democracy in America, made these flattering remarks about what he said. Tocqueville was in many ways more English than French.