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Review Essays of Academic, Professional & Technical Books in the Humanities & Sciences
Tocqueville, Covenant, and the Democratic Revolution: Harmonizing Earth with Heaven by Barbara Allen (Lexington Books) When I first read Tocqueville's Democracy in America back in college, it was taught to me, unfortunately, as it has usually been taught in twentieth-century America: volume 2 of the book is interesting, while volume 1 is not. Volume 2, the part that a contemporary American so much likes to read, supports a kind of semi-intellectual parlor game—did Tocqueville get a particular prediction right or not? Whatever the answer, volume 2 has been much preferred to the dry, dusty, unerringly accurate institutional analysis of the first half of the book.
However, as I have had time to think about these matters (while writing my own books on the American founding, American politics, and the evolution of American political theory), I have come to prefer the earlier portions of Tocqueville's book where he lays out with such relentless accuracy the design and operation of American political institutions and their underpinnings. In the end, I have now concluded that Alexis de Tocqueville was a pretty good sociologist, but a great political theorist.
One of the many virtues that can be attributed to Barbara Allen's book is that it zeroes in on Tocqueville as political theorist, recapturing the power, depth, and nuance of his political theory.
Tocqueville's theory aimed at explaining not one political system but an entire class of political systems—those attempting to operationalize the egalitarian principle in democratic institutions. A second virtue of the present volume, then, is its recovery of Tocqueville for a broader democratic theory. With luck my grandchildren will, while in college later in this century, read Barbara Allen's Tocqueville and not the one originally taught to me.
Professor Allen's Tocqueville understood the centrality of federalism for our political culture as well as the covenant ideas from which federalism arose. He also recognized the importance of local government, political associations, and civic culture, which covenant theology entailed. Among other things, such an accurate rendition of Tocqueville as done so nicely here leads one to respect all the more Tocqueville's acuity of mind and intellectual honesty. Here was a man coming from an aristocratic family in Catholic, highly centralized France rendering precisely a federal political system heavily conditioned by a Protestant theology that replaced hierarchy with equality.
I have approached this puzzle by returning to Tocqueville's methodological starting point—the intellectual origins of American political culture, and the Reformed Protestant traditions of foederal or covenant theology. As Tocqueville presented this "point of departure" for the American case, the particularities of foederal theology and specific institutions that these beliefs inspired convey general principles of self-government; the exceptional case, paradoxically, offers broader insights into democratic political practices. Recovering the links between foederal theology and federalism, showing how these ideas and institutions influence democracy in the United States, and exploring the broader implications of such principles and practices are the main—and, to my mind, the Tocquevillian—aims of my work.
As I researched the connections between covenantal thinking and democratic practice through documentary sources that enabled contextual as well as textual analysis, federalism emerged as a way of life transcending our usual view of institutional arrangements as simply defining intergovernmental relations. Retrieving the foederal context of the object of Tocqueville's case study—American democracy—necessitated some rethinking about many of the basic constructs of modern liberal theory; for instance, the covenant idea in politics opposes any notion of absolute authority, thus challenging contemporary views of sovereignty and dominion associated with conventional theories of the state. The seventeenth- and eighteenth-century perspectives on covenant that I encountered not only add greater diversity to our thinking about authority, nation, and state but also enlarge the meaning of the "political" to include the self-organized and self-governed associations of a voluntary society. Indeed, restoring Tocqueville's "science of association" (which he observed throughout the United States) to its original foederal context clarifies his generally favorable assessment of local liberty and praise of institutions such as the jury and justice of the peace, which may appear to contradict his equally clear misgivings about petty local tyrannies, the lackluster performance of state governments, and the dangerous potential for assemblies and associations to transform themselves into mobs or private militias. A better understanding of the covenant idea also illuminates one of Tocqueville's main hypotheses—that political liberty requires religious faith or, as he put it in Democracy, that to be free, a people must believe.
In Tocqueville's view, religious beliefs profoundly influence social structures—our ideas about political authority as well as our expectations about obligation and rightful claims in the ordinary relations of daily life.
Moreover, our beliefs about creation and Creator(s) establish the basis for our perceptions of the duties owed neighbor and stranger. Every political ideal is shaped by transcendent belief, thought Tocqueville; in turn, social and political (broadly conceived) experiences refined these presuppositions. Every people sought to "harmonize earth with heaven"; the democratic social condition brought experiences that elevated private reason above all manner of authority. The long-term prognosis for religious authority and belief emerged as a primary concern in Tocqueville's writing. As I show in later chapters, Tocqueville insisted that democratic self-government, no less than any other form of authority, reflected a people's moral orientation—views that Tocqueville thought inseparable from religious faith. His thesis went further still: democracy, he said, depended on a belief in the moral equality of persons, rights of conscience, and the inclusiveness of a universal call to salvation.
The particular beliefs that were conducive to self-government thus did not seem universal, raising questions about the universality of democratic political capacities and suggesting that a transformation in cultural presuppositions must precede a democratic transition. Tocqueville's conjectures about faith and freedom raise other puzzles: If we reject the putative link between religious belief and political liberty, what presuppositions do suffice for self-governing societies? How do the cultural presuppositions of a secular society gain ascendance—by debate and conscious choice as in voluntaristic religions, or in some other way? Answers were imperative for Tocqueville because the democratic revolution, which he defined as the unstoppable long-term trend toward greater equality of social status, opportunity, and material estates, did not necessarily portend greater individual liberty. The democratic social condition could bring servitude or freedom, according to Tocqueville; moral and ethical presuppositions were crucial to the development of political right. As globalization and democratic transitions proceed in the twenty-first century, critical questions remain about how belief (including secular dogma as well as religious doctrine) shapes politics, limiting or expanding the possible types of authority and institutions as well as conceptions of citizen and person. Tocqueville contended that Christian expressions of monotheism and moral equality, along with the manner in which that religion raises human purposes beyond transitory existence, best fit democracy's essential moral foundation. Although my study of covenant traditions concurs that fundamental political consequences flow from the conception of a single source of creation (and a universe, with all that term implies about a shared physical reality and the scientific pursuit to understand it), the moral standing of created human beings, and ritual contemplation and veneration of metaphysical possibility, these aspects of faith (and, as Tocqueville might say more broadly, expressions of hope and attempts to find meaning) neither seem sufficient to an ethic of self-government nor uniquely Christian.
As the reader will soon see, I have in mind several concerns as I sug gest this corrective to Tocqueville's stand. First, I take my heading fro Tocqueville; it was he who pointed out that the alterity among basic soci beliefs could bring significant social innovation, advancing enlightenment and civilization. He also demonstrated the difficulty of drawing with certainty the ethical principles from the apparent moral doctrines variably derived from common scriptural sources. As he indicated, moreover, ideas that furthered social equality—the democratic revolution—might fail tc advance self-government in democratic transformations. Second, with the exception of discussing some of the "milder virtues," as Tocqueville callec compassion, mercy, forgiveness, and forbearance, Tocqueville in fact hac very little to say about the Christology of various sects. Indeed, he often noted that the moral teachings conducive to democratic ideation and institutions were present in most religions. Finally, Tocqueville's exemplar for some of these conjectures, New England Puritans, advanced ideas and practice of shared authority and disputation along with their general conception o humanity's moral equality. Apostasy—for Puritans, the regrettable cause necessitating limitations on fallible human authority—made disputation a fact of existence. For covenanters in New England, this reality called for shared authority and a modality of deliberation and choice—"curious inquiry"—joining faith and reason. American Puritans, furthermore conceived their relationship with God as a partnership in which an omnipotent power foreswore absolute dominion (and abandoned caprice for reason to share understanding with the human partners), carving out a sphere of human capacity and thus showing how parties of vastly different statues might refuse asymmetrical powers to create relations of equality. The point of considering such instances of belief is not, as Tocqueville often said, t examine their truthfulness (as if this could be done) but to consider thei influence on human institutions. The facets of belief necessitating commune inquiry, disputation, limited and shared authority, as well as the institution of collective choice that followed from this orientation to the negotiation c difference suggested to Tocqueville political principles that could be generalize beyond the American case. It is my hope to stimulate further inquiry into covenantal ideation, practices such as curious inquiry, and their relationship to self-government.
When I first read Tocqueville's Democracy in America back in college, it was taught to me, unfortunately, as it has usually been taught in twentieth-century America: volume 2 of the book is interesting, while volume 1 is not. Volume 2, the part that a contemporary American so much likes to read, supports a kind of semi-intellectual parlor game—did Tocqueville get a particular prediction right or not? Whatever the answer, volume 2 has been much preferred to the dry, dusty, unerringly accurate institutional analysis of the first half of the book.
However, as I have had time to think about these matters (while writing my own books on the American founding, American politics, and the evolution of American political theory), I have come to prefer the earlier portions of Tocqueville's book where he lays out with such relentless accuracy the design and operation of American political institutions and their underpinnings. In the end, I have now concluded that Alexis de Tocqueville was a pretty good sociologist, but a great political theorist.
One of the many virtues that can be attributed to Barbara Allen's book is that it zeroes in on Tocqueville as political theorist, recapturing the power, depth, and nuance of his political theory.
Tocqueville's theory aimed at explaining not one political system but an entire class of political systems—those attempting to operationalize the egalitarian principle in democratic institutions. A second virtue of the present volume, then, is its recovery of Tocqueville for a broader democratic theory. With luck my grandchildren will, while in college later in this century, read Barbara Allen's Tocqueville and not the one originally taught to me.
Professor Allen's Tocqueville understood the centrality of federalism for our political culture as well as the covenant ideas from which federalism arose. He also recognized the importance of local government, political associations, and civic culture, which covenant theology entailed. Among other things, such an accurate rendition of Tocqueville as done so nicely here leads one to respect all the more Tocqueville's acuity of mind and intellectual honesty. Here was a man coming from an aristocratic family in Catholic, highly centralized France rendering precisely a federal political system heavily conditioned by a Protestant theology that replaced hierarchy with equality.
I have approached this puzzle by returning to Tocqueville's methodological starting point—the intellectual origins of American political culture, and the Reformed Protestant traditions of foederal or covenant theology. As Tocqueville presented this "point of departure" for the American case, the particularities of foederal theology and specific institutions that these beliefs inspired convey general principles of self-government; the exceptional case, paradoxically, offers broader insights into democratic political practices. Recovering the links between foederal theology and federalism, showing how these ideas and institutions influence democracy in the United States, and exploring the broader implications of such principles and practices are the main—and, to my mind, the Tocquevillian—aims of my work.
As I researched the connections between covenantal thinking and democratic practice through documentary sources that enabled contextual as well as textual analysis, federalism emerged as a way of life transcending our usual view of institutional arrangements as simply defining intergovernmental relations. Retrieving the foederal context of the object of Tocqueville's case study—American democracy—necessitated some rethinking about many of the basic constructs of modern liberal theory; for instance, the covenant idea in politics opposes any notion of absolute authority, thus challenging contemporary views of sovereignty and dominion associated with conventional theories of the state. The seventeenth- and eighteenth-century perspectives on covenant that I encountered not only add greater diversity to our thinking about authority, nation, and state but also enlarge the meaning of the "political" to include the self-organized and self-governed associations of a voluntary society. Indeed, restoring Tocqueville's "science of association" (which he observed throughout the United States) to its original foederal context clarifies his generally favorable assessment of local liberty and praise of institutions such as the jury and justice of the peace, which may appear to contradict his equally clear misgivings about petty local tyrannies, the lackluster performance of state governments, and the dangerous potential for assemblies and associations to transform themselves into mobs or private militias. A better understanding of the covenant idea also illuminates one of Tocqueville's main hypotheses—that political liberty requires religious faith or, as he put it in Democracy, that to be free, a people must believe.
In Tocqueville's view, religious beliefs profoundly influence social structures—our ideas about political authority as well as our expectations about obligation and rightful claims in the ordinary relations of daily life.
Moreover, our beliefs about creation and Creator(s) establish the basis for our perceptions of the duties owed neighbor and stranger. Every political ideal is shaped by transcendent belief, thought Tocqueville; in turn, social and political (broadly conceived) experiences refined these presuppositions. Every people sought to "harmonize earth with heaven"; the democratic social condition brought experiences that elevated private reason above all manner of authority. The long-term prognosis for religious authority and belief emerged as a primary concern in Tocqueville's writing. As I show in later chapters, Tocqueville insisted that democratic self-government, no less than any other form of authority, reflected a people's moral orientation—views that Tocqueville thought inseparable from religious faith. His thesis went further still: democracy, he said, depended on a belief in the moral equality of persons, rights of conscience, and the inclusiveness of a universal call to salvation.
The particular beliefs that were conducive to self-government thus did not seem universal, raising questions about the universality of democratic political capacities and suggesting that a transformation in cultural presuppositions must precede a democratic transition. Tocqueville's conjectures about faith and freedom raise other puzzles: If we reject the putative link between religious belief and political liberty, what presuppositions do suffice for self-governing societies? How do the cultural presuppositions of a secular society gain ascendance—by debate and conscious choice as in voluntaristic religions, or in some other way? Answers were imperative for Tocqueville because the democratic revolution, which he defined as the unstoppable long-term trend toward greater equality of social status, opportunity, and material estates, did not necessarily portend greater individual liberty. The democratic social condition could bring servitude or freedom, according to Tocqueville; moral and ethical presuppositions were crucial to the development of political right. As globalization and democratic transitions proceed in the twenty-first century, critical questions remain about how belief (including secular dogma as well as religious doctrine) shapes politics, limiting or expanding the possible types of authority and institutions as well as conceptions of citizen and person. Tocqueville contended that Christian expressions of monotheism and moral equality, along with the manner in which that religion raises human purposes beyond transitory existence, best fit democracy's essential moral foundation. Although my study of covenant traditions concurs that fundamental political consequences flow from the conception of a single source of creation (and a universe, with all that term implies about a shared physical reality and the scientific pursuit to understand it), the moral standing of created human beings, and ritual contemplation and veneration of metaphysical possibility, these aspects of faith (and, as Tocqueville might say more broadly, expressions of hope and attempts to find meaning) neither seem sufficient to an ethic of self-government nor uniquely Christian.
As the reader will soon see, I have in mind several concerns as I sug gest this corrective to Tocqueville's stand. First, I take my heading fro Tocqueville; it was he who pointed out that the alterity among basic soci beliefs could bring significant social innovation, advancing enlightenment and civilization. He also demonstrated the difficulty of drawing with certainty the ethical principles from the apparent moral doctrines variably derived from common scriptural sources. As he indicated, moreover, ideas that furthered social equality—the democratic revolution—might fail tc advance self-government in democratic transformations. Second, with the exception of discussing some of the "milder virtues," as Tocqueville callec compassion, mercy, forgiveness, and forbearance, Tocqueville in fact hac very little to say about the Christology of various sects. Indeed, he often noted that the moral teachings conducive to democratic ideation and institutions were present in most religions. Finally, Tocqueville's exemplar for some of these conjectures, New England Puritans, advanced ideas and practice of shared authority and disputation along with their general conception o humanity's moral equality. Apostasy—for Puritans, the regrettable cause necessitating limitations on fallible human authority—made disputa tion a fact of existence. For covenanters in New England, this realit called for shared authority and a modality of deliberation and choice—"curious inquiry"—joining faith and reason. American Puritans, furthermore conceived their relationship with God as a partnership in which an omnipotent power foreswore absolute dominion (and abandoned caprice fo reason to share understanding with the human partners), carving out a sphere of human capacity and thus showing how parties of vastly different statues might refuse asymmetrical powers to create relations of equality. The point of considering such instances of belief is not, as Tocqueville often said, to examine their truthfulness (as if this could be done) but to consider their influence on human institutions. The facets of belief necessitating commune inquiry, disputation, limited and shared authority, as well as the institution of collective choice that followed from this orientation to the negotiation c difference suggested to Tocqueville political principles that could be generalize beyond the American case. It is my hope to stimulate further inquiry into covenantal ideation, practices such as curious inquiry, and their relationship to self-government.
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