BF190 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Alexis De Tocqueville
Document Summary
Intro: alexis de tocqueville (19th century: (e"s a nobleman (cid:498)ancien regime(cid:499) (cid:523)monarchic france(cid:524) e. g. : traditional despotism > french: even within europe there was a tendency for countries to become more and. Revolution > democratic france (new democratic despotism) more democratized. It is an observation of early american democracy from the standpoint of a. French man of noble class: he defends small local organizations, equality without liberty: despotism, he was well ahead of his time. Burke is against the idea of sharing political power amongst everyone: tocqueville believes it is dangerous to treat everyone equally when it comes to sharing resources. People disagree about what should be done, which leads to conflict: equality gives birth to general difference. This seems to be more attractive to us. Because of this we tend to create arrangements where equality is fairly well achieved.
