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from Part I - Sources and Contexts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2022
In this chapter, Ryan Patrick Hanley surveys some of the best-known Enlightenment sources of Alexis de Tocqueville’s political philosophy. He considers in particular the respective influences of René Descartes, Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Blaise Pascal on the arguments and methodology of Democracy in America. Rather than conceiving of Tocqueville as either pro- or anti-Enlightenment, Hanley argues that we should instead understand Tocqueville as an example of a “Moderate Enlightenment” that eschews the rationalism and materialism of the “Radical Enlightenment.” By way of illustration, Hanley identifies specific affinities between Tocqueville and the moderate Scottish Enlightenment thinker Adam Smith.
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