An Anguished Life

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859) was born into an aristocratic family with strong political connections. He served as a representative in the French Chamber of Deputies starting in 1839 and was briefly Minister of Foreign of Affairs in 1849. As an author, he attained instant fame after publishing the first part of Democracy in America in 1835 (the second part appeared in 1840). In 1838, he was elected to the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences and, in 1841, to the even more prestigious French Academy whose 40 members were, in principle, the greatest living writers in the French language, known as “the immortals.” In spite of these achievements, his was an anguished life. He was tormented by the depressing fluctuations of his country between revolution and Bonapartism, and by his own political ineffectiveness. Yet, it was not a failed life. Although he was unable to modify the course of history, he succeeded in articulating a new set of terms for the comprehension of political regimes and how they change.

The existential problem at the heart of Tocqueville's identity was that he was a democratically inclined aristocrat in an era of revolutionary hatred for aristocracy. He would embrace equality but would never disown aristocracy. He would support democratic causes, but he would also worry about the disappearance of noble persons like himself, persons with a sense of historical pride and a desire to rise above the level of the common culture. In our current ideological climate, we tend to divide the world into the haves and the havenots based on privileges associated with class and race. It is not easy to comprehend how a white European nobleman, born with wealth and easy access to positions of authority, could suffer from the anxiety of oppression. But Tocqueville's aristocratic family was devastated during the French Revolution. Painful memories of injustice, committed in the name of equality, colored his entire life. The threat of becoming extinct inside the democratic society whose emergence he accepted was forever on his mind.