Tocqueville between two worlds : the making of a political and theoretical life
"Alexis de Tocqueville may be the most influential political thinker in American history. He also led an unusually active and ambitious career in French politics. In this book, one of America's most important contemporary theorists draws on decades of research and thought to present the first work that fully connects to Tocqueville's political and theoretical lives. In doing so, Sheldon Wolin presents sweeping new interpretations of Tocqueville's major works and of his place in intellectual history. As he traces the origins and impact of Tocqueville's ideas, Wolin also offers a profound commentary on the general trajectory of Western political life over the past two hundred years."--Jacket
Print Book, English, ©2001
Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., ©2001
viii, 650 pages ; 24 cm
9780691074368, 9780691114545, 0691074364, 0691114544
45320759
pt. 1. The abundance of power. Modern theory and modern power ; Theoria: the theoretical journey
pt. 2. Encountering the amazing. Discovering democracy ; Self and structure ; Doubt and disconnection ; " ... The theory of what is great" ; Myth and political impressionism ; The spectacle of America
pt. 3. The theoretical encapsulation of America. Social contract versus political culture ; The culture of the political: "the rituals of practice" ; Feudal America ; Majority rule or majority politics ; Centralization and dissolution ; The image of democracy
pt. 4. Persona and the politics of theory. Tragic hero, popular mask ; The democratization of culture ; Despotism and utopia ; Old new world, new old world ; Tocquevillean democracy ; The penitentiary temptation
pt. 5. Second journey to America. The political education of the bourgeoisie ; Souvenirs: recollections of in/tranquility ; Souvenirs: socialism and the crisis of the political ; The old regime and the revolution: mythistoricus et theoreticus ; The old regime: modernization and the politics of loss ; Postdemocracy