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God, Woman, and Morality: The Democratic Family in the New Political Science of Alexis de Tocqueville

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

William Mathie
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Extract

Tocqueville says that the superiority of American women is the chief cause of the power and prosperity of American democracy. That superiority is the result of an education that treats women as capable of freedom, but the use of that freedom is to maintain the bonds that restrict women to the household. The present article examines the role of the family and women in the new political science Tocqueville thought necessary for the defence of democratic liberty. It is argued that as the primary influence of democracy upon the family for Tocqueville has been to eliminate the authority of fathers who were the “arbiters of mores” and thereby the defenders of liberty in aristocracy, so democratic liberty depends for him above all upon the new role of women as the makers of mores. Through the agency of women, otherwise fragile religion constitutes an effective limit to the authority of the majority, but what makes it possible for religion to operate through women is their exclusion from the world of commerce, and what maintains this exclusion is the strict conjugal morality that women themselves defend in America. How far the role of women as guardians of democratic liberty might be justified is shown to depend for Tocqueville upon arguments for it that are other than those commonly accepted by American men.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 57 , Issue 1 , Winter 1995 , pp. 7 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1995

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References

1. De la Démocratic en Amérique, Souvenirs, L'Ancien Régime el la Révolution, ed. Mélonio, Franchise and Lamberti, Jean-claude (Paris: Éditions Robert Laffont, 1986).Google Scholar Citations of this text will appear in parentheses with parallel citations to Democracy in America, trans. Lawrence, George, ed. Mayer, J. P. and Lerne, Max (New York: Harper and Row, 1966)Google Scholar given in square parentheses thus: (574 [579]).

2. Okin, Susan Moller, “The Making of the Sentimental Family,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 11 (Winter 1982): 65–88.Google Scholar Okin's analysis of the ideological development of the “sentimental family” is chiefly directed against Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel and makes no mention of Tocqueville. In Justice, Gender, and the Family (New York: Basic Books, 1989), p. 19Google Scholar, Okin treats Tocqueville along with Rousseau and Hegel as philosophers who “bifurcated public from private life to such an extent that they had no trouble reconciling inegalitarian, sometimes admittedly unjust, relations founded upon sentiment within the family with a more just... social structure outside the family” (emphasis added).

3. Okin, , “Making of the Sentimental Family,” p. 72.Google Scholar

4. Ibid., p. 74.

5. In the first volume of Democracy in America when Tocqueville analyzes the causes that maintain the democratic republic in America and argues that les moeurs are more important than accidental circumstance or laws, he distinguishes mores [les moeurs] in a wider sense that includes “the different notions men possess, the various opinions current among them, and the whole set of ideas that shape les habitudes de I'ésprit” from “les moeurs properly spoken of which one could call habits of the heart [les habitudes du coeur]” (Démocratie, 272 [264]).

6. Community and Character (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982), pp. 165–66,171–74.Google Scholar

7. The relaxation of the link that unites the generations is at least part of the explanation Tocqueville gives for the denial of all intellectual authority and the implicit acceptance of the method of Descartes among the Americans. “To escape from... family maxims... to treat tradition only as information... to seek by themselves and in themselves for the only reason for things... such are the principal traits that characterize what I would call the philosophic method of the Americans” (Democratie, 429 [393]).

8. Pierre Manent has argued that the denial of intellectual authority to other individuals extends also and especially to oneself. Tocqueville et la Nature de la Démocratie (Paris: Julliard, 1982), pp. 81–96Google Scholar. Also useful is Delba Winthrop's suggestion that the “sole consolation to their vanity” for those who end up having to rely not upon their own reason but upon public opinion “is that this public opinion has no identifiable source” (“Tocqueville's American Woman and “The True Conception of Democratic Progress,” Political Theory 14, (05 1986): 243Google Scholar).

9. Allan Bloom has said that both Rousseau and Tocqueville tried but failed to shield the democratic family as invented by John Locke from the full application of the egalitarian principle as developed by Locke. Whatever one thinks of Bloom's suggestion that Hobbes and Locke “counted on the family, as an intermediate between individual and the state… to replace what was being lost in passionate attachment to the polity, the existence of a family that can perform this role belongs to aristocracy not democracy according to Tocqueville (The Closing of the American Mind [New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987], pp. 112,116Google Scholar). Nor can the family as such be described in the way F. L. Morton has described it—as the “third tier”—along with self-interest and religion—in Tocqueville's prescription to avert the tendency of democracy to sacrifice liberty for equality (“Sexual Equality and the Family in Tocqueville's Democracy in America,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 17 (06 1984): 310Google Scholar). John Koritansky's claim that “democracy poses no threat to the survival or well-being of the family, although it does change the terms of familial relations” is similarly misleading. The family that survives, unlike the aristocratic family, is no longer a political institution (Alexis de Tocqueville and the New Science of Politics: An Interpretation of Democracy in America [Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1986], p. 127Google Scholar). Tocqueville's analysis, on my interpretation, must also constitute a grave difficulty for those like Michael Novak who would both defend the “bourgeois” family as a source of the virtues upon which liberal capitalism depends and accept the critique of the feudal or aristocratic family by Adam Smith and others as a source of “unearned” and so irrational advantages owed to birth (The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism [New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982], chap. 8Google Scholar).

10. Tocqueville suggests that fathers accept the new filial relationship less cheerfully in France where the civil code removes this power from them and demands an equal division of estates. Although intended to forestall the application of democracy to the political organization of society, Tocqueville notes that this feature of the civil code is far more democratic than American law. Any final assessment of Tocqueville's account of the democratic family per se will depend upon whether the difference between filial relations in France and in America is attributed to the revolutionary character of French democracy, or the special physical circumstances of America (Démocratic, 559–60 [561]).

11. As Pierre Manent observes: “The family is the privileged place where the general truth of democracy reveals itself” (Tocqueville et la Nature de la Démocratie, p. 102).

12. Tocqueville distinguishes individualism from egoism, “a vice as old as the world” that consists in “a passionate and exaggerated love of oneself which brings man to relate everything to himself and to prefer himself to everything.” Although individualism ultimately gives rise to egoism, it is rather a “reflected and peaceable sentiment which disposes each citizen to isolate himself from those like himself (les semblables) and retire into the circle of family and friends.” Individualism “is of democratic origin and threatens to grow as conditions become more equal.” In fact, its primary cause is the collapse of the aristocratic family precisely as it links a man to his ancestors and his posterity. It is the fact that new families appear and old ones disappear constantly that causes the democrat to forget his predecessors and ignore his successors (Democratie, 496–97 [477–78]).

13. Tocqueville compares the American system with contemporary European practice that furnishes a cloistered education for young girls who will then have to find their way in a democratic society. Tocqueville does not consider whether a cloistered education would be mistaken for young women in an aristocratic society.

14. Sanford Kessler argues that Tocqueville knew how ardent the passion for equality is but wrongly supposed that the social and political inequality of women could be defended against it, knew that democracy favored technological science but failed to anticipate its consequences for the relations between the sexes, wrongly relied upon “self-interest properly understood” to uphold chastity which it no longer does when sex and eros are severed, and continued to count upon a strong and morally conservative public opinion (“Tocqueville on Sexual Morality,” Interpretation 16, no.3 [1989]: 476–477Google Scholar). If the exclusion of women as wives from the world of commerce, and the chastity associated with that exclusion, are as important for Tocqueville as we suppose, it is not clear that theoretical or practical considerations would permit their neglect; indeed, Tocqueville's failure to predict the sexual revolution that has swept these things aside might be attributed to the “tact and prudence” for which Kessler rightly commends him. And, even if, as we shall argue, American women may have good reasons for accepting these arrangements, or may be persuaded by Tocqueville that they do, the very complexity of those reasons as identified by Tocqueville undermines any easy confidence that they will persist.

15. Les Américains whose understanding of the equality of the sexes Tocqueville examines here could be, and ordinarily would be, taken to include both sexes and is treated thus by Lawrence and Reeve in translating the fifth paragraph of this chapter, where Tocqueville speaks of the opinion that the natural difference between the sexes and the principle of the division of labor justify distinct roles for the sexes, and the ninth paragraph, where he writes of the natural authority of the husband in the family. In the immediate sequel, however, Tocqueville examines the qualified acceptance of these claims that is explicitly that of “les Américaines, and subsequently he speaks of “les Américains” in a way that seems clearly to refer to American men.

16. Delba Winthrop notes that Tocqueville “does not explicitly endorse all aspects” of the Americans' view of “the equality of the sexes” and that he neglects considerations one might have expected him (or them?) to mention such as the natural difference constituted by the fact that women bear children (“Tocqueville's American Woman,” p. 241).

17. “It can readily be seen that in thus forcing one sex to be equal to the other, one degrades them both; and that what can come out of this crude mixing of the works of nature will never be anything but weak men and disorderly women (des hommes faibles et des femmes déshonnête)” (Démocratie, 572 [576]).

18. F. L. Morton takes Tocqueville to argue that the “different but equal regime” can be justified and maintained by an appeal to the “natural differences between the sexes” though he acknowledges that Tocqueville does not elaborate upon how these differences arise so that his case for the different roles of men and women “remains at the level of unsupported assertion” (see “Sexual Equality and the Family in Tocqueville's Democracy in America,” pp. 322–23). Morton regrets that Tocqueville does not elaborate on the natural differences between the sexes but speculates that he may have agreed with Rousseau's teaching in the Émile. The view he attributes to Rousseau does not quite supply the argument missing in Tocqueville's account, however: Rousseau argued, Morton says, ?“that the physical differences of sex give rise to moral differences; that the most important of these differences is that women are the moral arbiters of society.” If, as we suppose, the differences referred to in the latter clause are moral differences we are left in the dark about how physical differences give rise to these or to this one in particular. For a careful discussion of how, and how far, Rousseau takes nature to oppose the transformation of gender relations which concludes that Rousseau is consciously ambiguous about nature in his Émile, see Bloom, Allan, Love and Friendship (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993), p. 99.Google Scholar Morton does not distinguish—as I do here—between the understanding of “les Americains” and that of their wives or of Tocqueville. See also Kristol, William, “Women's Liberation: the Relevance of Tocqueville, in Interpreting Tocqueville's Democracy in America, ed. Masugi, Ken (Savage, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1991), pp. 483–84.Google Scholar Kristol observes that “Tocqueville's own view of nature may be more problematic” than the view he attributes to the Americans but concludes that Tocqueville “accepts and defends the American view for the benefit of his readers.”

19. One could ask—as Catherine Zuckert takes Henry James's Bostonians to ask—whether the experience of the young woman limited as it is by the nature of American society—or, more exactly by the lack of any true society in America— suffices to prepare her to make a wise choice (“American Women and Democratic Morals: The Bostonians,” Feminist Studies 3 [Spring-Summer 1976]: 47–48).Google Scholar On the other hand, James's leading characters, according to Zuckert, fail to make wise choices because “they suffer from the wrong kind of education” which results not from reading books rather than people but from reading the “wrong kind of books.” The only book any of these characters is mentioned reading is Tocqueville (39). Zuckert also attributes the deficiency exhibited by James's young heroine, Verena Tarrant, in choosing a husband to a kind of innocence that results from the absence of passion. Tocqueville's young woman seems to turn away from passion, but Tocqueville does not describe her as innocent or ignorant. The inadequacy of Verena's morality is seen in the fact that she “promises easily and just… as easily breaks those promises” (33). Tocqueville's young woman is remarkable for the gravity she attaches to the promises she makes.

20. Kessler, , “Tocqueville on Sexual Morality,” p. 471.Google Scholar

21. “[C]'est lafemme qui fait les moeurs” (563 [565]).

22. To be sure, the contribution of American women to the mores that maintain democratic liberty extends beyond the fact that they uphold the conjugal bond. As Zuckert has observed, political freedom depends upon self-restraint and it is in women alone that Tocqueville perceives an example of self-restraint motivated by more than the calculation of future gain (“American Women and Democratic Morals,” pp. 44–45). Indeed, Morton has correctly contrasted the evident moral inferiority of Tocqueville's democratic man to “his aristocratic forefathers” with the implicit superiority of the American woman to her aristocratic counterpart (“Sexual Equality and the Family in Tocqueville's Democracy in America, pp. 318–19). At the same time, Tocqueville does not seem to suggest that the moral example of women serves to ameliorate the mediocrity of democratic men and he devotes remarkably little attention to the role of women as the nurturers of their children. If men are affected by the moral superiority of democratic women, we see this chiefly in the respect they show for women in their education and in the severity with which they punish rape.

23. Manent, , Tocqueville et la Nature de la Démocratie, pp. 129–30.Google Scholar

24. Kessler speaks of their “greater natural piety” but identifies no text that supports this suggestion” (“Tocqueville on Sexual Morality,” p. 474).

25. Morton seems to assume that they are. He supposes that what distinguishes relations within the family from those outside the family in democracy is that the democratic virtue of fellow-feeling or compassion engendered among people who are alike enough to identify with each other's suffering and needs cannot be practiced outside the family because men in democratic society are not only semblable—they are also commonly rivals. “While the new equality of men in democracy gives rise to a sense of fraternal compassion unparalleled in previous societies, the competitive character of this equality renders the actual practice of compassion a liability unless one is ‘hors concours'” (“Sexual Equality and the Family,” p. 321). The argument supposes that one could have equality without rivalry. The words I have emphasized suggest otherwise. Morton has rightly drawn attention to the importance of Rousseau's sexual teachings for Tocqueville in the article cited and, in a comment on my essay, has argued that my objection to his argument makes it important to see why Tocqueville comes to disagree with Rousseau as to the role of le douceur in the relation between husband and wife. John Koritansky has seen the disagreement between Tocqueville and Rousseau but wondered whether the charms of private life might not be regained in a “mature” rather than American democracy through wives more like Rousseau's “Sophy.” What distinguishes “mature” from American democracy for Koritansky, however, is chiefly the relaxing of “the bonds of Christianity.” On our account those bonds are necessary to the preservation of liberty in democracy. The question is whether “mature democracy” as understood by Koritansky will mean women who are “virtuous and pleasing” or the collapse of marriage at least as linked to a differentiation between the sexes. Koritansky himself doubts whether “charm and convenience” will be enough to motivate men and women to “live up to the requirements of marriage and family” (Tocqueville and the New Science of Politics, pp. 129-34).

26. Democratie, 594 [602]. In a statement that would seem to apply to the “different but equal regime” of men and women in America as much as it does to duelling in feudal aristocracy, Tocqueville concludes that “it is the dissimilarities [les dissemblances] and the inequalities among men that have created [the notion of] honor; that notion is weakened as those differences are obliterated, and it would disappear with them.”

27. On the nature of this good see Lawler, Peter A., “Was Tocqueville a Philosopher?” Interpretation 17, no.3 (1990): 401–414.Google Scholar

28. As Delba Winthrop points out. Winthrop argues persuasively that when Tocqueville speaks of the “True Conception of Democratic Progress” he is deeply ironic; what justifies the social inequality of the sexes is the inadequacy of democracy as a regime (“Tocqueville's American Woman,” pp. 240, 249–52).