Twelve Alexis de Tocqueville and the Legacy of the French Revolution
1. Alexis de Tocqueville, De la démocratie en Amérique (Paris, 1951), 1, pt. 1: 13-14/ pt. 1: 17; citations henceforth will appear as DA . The numbers following the slash indicate references to the translation, Democracy in America , 2 vols. (New York: Vintage, 1945). Whenever I believed my translations gave a more accurate rendering of the original text, I have used them. The reference is to the full edition, Oeuvres complètes , J. P. Mayer, ed., Oeuvres, papiers et correspondance d'Alexis de Tocqueville (Paris: Gallimard, 1951-), hereafter OC .
2. Alexis de Tocqueville, "Réflexions diverses," in L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution (Paris: Gallimard, 1952-1953), 2, pt. 1: 343. Citations henceforth will appear as AR . References to the page numbers in The Old Regime and the French Revolution (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1955), trans. Stuart Gilbert, will appear following the slash in the parentheses. I have again altered the translations where I saw fit. Translations from the second volume are my own.
3. Tocqueville to Kergorlay, 15 December 1850, OC: Correspondance d'Alexis de Tocqueville et de Louis de Kergorlay (Paris: Gallimard, 1977), 13, pt. 2: 229-234.
4. Ibid.
3. Tocqueville to Kergorlay, 15 December 1850, OC: Correspondance d'Alexis de Tocqueville et de Louis de Kergorlay (Paris: Gallimard, 1977), 13, pt. 2: 229-234.
4. Ibid.
5. Kergorlay to Tocqueville, 6 January 1838, 13, pt. 1: 119-124; Tocqueville to Royer-Collard, 6 April 1838, 15 September 1843, OC: Correspondance d'Alexis de Tocqueville et de Pierre-Paul Royer-Collard (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), 11: 59, 114-116.
6. Tocqueville to Corcelle, 1 August 1850, OC: Correspondance d'Alexis de Tocqueville et de Francisque de Corcelle (Paris: Gallimard, 1983), 15, pt. 2: 227-230.
7. Tocqueville to Royer-Collard, 15 September 1843, OC: Correspondance d'Alexis de Tocqueville et de Pierre-Paul Royer-Collard (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), 11: 114-116.
8. Tocqueville to Henry Reeve, 6 February 1856, OC: Correspondance d'Alexis de Tocqueville et de Henry Reeve (Paris, 1954), 6, pt. 1: 160-61.
9. DA , 1, pt. 2: 90-92/90-93.
10. DA , 1, pt. 1: 289, 300/301, 310.
11. AR , 2, pt 1: 199/146. See H. Mitchell, "Political Mirage or Reality? Political Freedom from Old Regime to Revolution," Journal of Modern History 60 (1988): 28-54. Gustave de Beaumont, Tocqueville's friend who was reading the proofs of L'Ancien Régime , pressed him for a fuller explanation, since in all countries, he wrote, writers are often far removed from practical affairs. Tocqueville replied that in France they not only had no practical involvement but had no idea of what actually went on in government. Their ignorance was due to the absence of political liberty; in free countries, by contrast, they somehow have an instinct for it without taking part in it. See Tocqueville to Beaumont, 24 April 1856, OC: Correspondance d'Alexis de Tocqueville et de Gustave de Beaumont (Paris: Gallimard, 1967), 8, pt. 3: 395.
12. S , 57/34-35. OC: Souvenirs (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), 12, 57/34-35. Citations henceforth will appear as S . Page references following the slash are to The Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville , trans. A. T. de Mattos (New York: Meridian Books, 1959).
13. Tocqueville to Ampère, 21 October 1856, OC: Correspondance d'Alexis de Tocqueville et de Jean-Jacques Ampère (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), 11: 351.
14. S , 84/64.
15. S , 2/87.
16. AR , 1, pt. 1: 74/xii.
17. S , 47/21.
18. DA , 1, pt. 1: 250-251/256-257.
19. S , 104/90.
20. Cf. G. A. Kelly, "Parnassian Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century France: Tocqueville, Renan, Flaubert," History of Political Thought 8 (1987): esp. 479-486.
21. S , 29, 102/1, 87.
22. S , 30/2.
23. S , 74/54.
24. Cf. the richly suggestive essay by I. M. Lotman, "The Decembrist in Daily Life (Everyday Behaviour as a Historical—Psychological Category)," The Semiotics of Russian Cultural History: Essays by I. M. Lotman, L. Ia. Ginsburg and B. A. Uspenskii , eds. A. D. Nahkimovsky and A. S. Nahkimovsky (New York: Cornell University Press, 1985), pp. 95-149. "The contemporary observer would see the everyday behavior of the Decembrists as theatrical, that is to say, directed toward a spectator . But to say that
behavior is theatrical does not imply that it is insincere or reprehensible in any way" (p. 105).
25. S , 107/87.
26. DA , 1, pt. 1: 90/pt. 2:91.
27. S , 59/37.
28. S , 87/68.
29. Tocqueville to Nassau William Senior, 13 November 1852, Correspondence and Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859 , ed. M. C. M. Simpson, 2 vols. (London, 1872), 2: 31-32.
30. S , 74/54.
31. S , 50/26.
32. AR , 2, pt. 1: 69/vii.
33. AR , 1 (2): 338-342. Tocqueville was reading Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) with marked attention.
34. J. de Maistre's two major works are Considérations sur la France (1797) and Essai sur le principe générateur des constitutions politiques et des autres institutions humaines (1809).
35. L. de Bonald's early work (1796) was his Théorie du pouvoir politique et religieux . He also wrote Législation primitive (1802), and his Démonstration philosophique du principe constitutif de la société was published in 1830.
36. See Mallet du Pan, Mémoires et correspondance pour servir à l'histoire de la Révolution française , ed. A. Sayous (Paris, 1851).
37. Tocqueville to Kergorlay, 16 May 1858, OC: Correspondance d'Alexis de Tocqueville et de Louis de Kergorlay (Paris: Gallimard, 1977), 13, pt. 2: 337-338.
38. AR , 2, pt. 1: 247/208.
39. DA , 1, pt. 2: 266, n. 1/274, n. 1.
40. AR , 2, pt. 1: 76/xv.
41. AR , 2, pt. 1: 73/xii.
42. État in AR , 2, pt. 1: 65; cf. AR , 2, pt. 1: 72/10.
43. Tocqueville to Henry Reeve, 5 February 1856, OC: Correspondance d'Alexis de Tocqueville et de Henry Reeve (Paris: Gallimard, 1954), 6: 161.
44. AR , 2, pt. 1: 73/xii.
45. Tocqueville to Freslon, 20 September 1856, cited in A. Jardin, Alexis de Tocqueville 1805-1859 (Paris: Hachette, 1984), p. 486.
46. M. M. Bakhtin, Speech Genres and Other Late Essays , trans. V. W. McGee (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), p. 126.
47. S , 84/64.
48. S , 85-86/66-67.
49. L. Shiner argues that Tocqueville's carnavelesque treatment of the 1848 revolutionaries and politicians undermines any serious intent he might have had. I would claim that Tocqueville's growing pessimism and relentless attempt to extract answers from a recalcitrant past could be relieved only by the use of irony and of the comic, but he meant those devices to put his serious intentions into bold relief. See Shiner's "Writing and Political Carnival in Tocqueville's Recollections," History and Theory 25 (1986): 17-32.
50. Tocqueville to Kergorlay, December 15, 1850, OC: Correspondance d'Alexis de Tocqueville et de Louis de Kergorlay (Paris, 1977), 13, pt. 2: 229.
51. AR , 2, pt. 2: 175-176, 192-193.
52. AR , 2, pt. 1: 73/xii.
53. AR , 2, pt. 2:368-369.
54. For a discussion of some of these problems, see G. Canguilhem, On the Normal and the Pathological , trans. C. R. Fawcett (Dordrecht, Boston, and London: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1978), pp. 171-175. Another perspective is to be found in J. Elster's theory that illusions (or imaginaries) occur when "both the external situation and the internal processing . . . come into play . . . . [O]ne could also speculate, though I would be more sceptical as to the value of the outcome, that differences in social origin generate differences in the internal apparatus and thus in the liability to illusions (keeping the external situation constant)." See J. Elster, "Belief, Bias and Ideology," in Relativity and Relativism , eds. M. Hollis and S. Lukes (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1982), p. 137.
55. AR , 2, pt. 2: 139-147.
56. I am following the editors of L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution in the OC in the citation of Mounier's work consulted by Tocqueville: M: Mounier, Nouvelles observations sur les Etats généraux de France (1789). This will also be the case for succeeding citations.
57. The editors do not provide a reference to Barnave's brochure. Tocqueville's own notes refer to its title as Contre les édits du 8 mai et le rétablissement des parlements (1788).
58. J.-P. Brissot de Warville, Plan de conduite pour les députés du peuple aux Etats généraux de 1789 (1789).
59. Rabaud-Saint-Etienne, Considération sur les intérêts du tiers état par un propriétaire foncier (1788).
60. Pétion, Avis aux Français sur le salut de la patrie (1788). I have retained the original Orthography for Pétion.
61. AR , 2, pt. 2:75-78, 145.
62. AR , 2, pt. 2: 150-151.
63. AR , 2, pt. 2: 148.
64. AR , 2, pt. 2: 153-154.
65. AR , 2, pt. 2: 155-157; and DA , 1, pt. 1: 208-209/214.
66. AR , 2, pt. 2: 160.
67. AR , 2, pt. 2: 158-163.
68. AR , 2, pt. 2: 168-169.
69. AR , 2, pt. 1: 208/157.
70. AR , 2, pt. 1: 246/206.
71. For a corrective, see K. M. Baker, "On the Problem of the Ideological Origins of the French Revolution," in Modern European Intellectual History , eds. D. LaCapra and S. L. Kaplan (Ithaca, N. Y., and London: Cornell University Press, 1982), pp. 197-219.
72. AR , 2, pt. 1: 246/207.
73. DA , 1, pt. 2: 18/11.
74. AR , 2, pt. 1: 246/207.
75. AR , 2, pt. 1: 196/142. If Tocqueville could not formulate the means of tracing the unexpected expressions of revolutionary ideas and practices from their presumed
theoretical foundations expounded by the writers who evoked "uns société imaginaire," Augustin Cochin simply gave body to Tocqueville's general observations but eschewed altogether any consideration of the theory/practice problematic. Cf. F. Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution , trans. E. Forster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 164-204, esp. 203-204. Also note P. Ricoeur's rejection of Furet's idea that we may be led back from Cochin to Tocqueville. Ricoeur writes, "No conceptual reconstruction will ever be able to make the continuity with the ancien régime pass by way of the rise to power of an imaginary order experienced as a break and as an origin." See P. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative , trans. K. McLaughlin and D. Pellauer (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 1: 221-224. On the generation of an expanded public opinion looking for a wider public space before the Revolution, see K. M. Baker, "Politics and Public Opinion Under the Old Regime: Some Reflections," in Press and Politics in Pre-Revolutionary France , eds. J. R. Censer and J. D. Popkin (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1987), pp. 204-246.
76. AR , 2, pt. 2: 188.
77. DA , 1, pt. 2: 338/352.
78. DA , 1, pt. 2: 347/386-387.
79. Tocqueville to Gobineau, 20 December 1853, OC: Correspondance d'Alexis de Tocqueville et d'Arthut de Gobineau (Paris: Gallimard, 1959), 9: 201-204.
80. Tocqueville to Henry Reeve, 9 January 1852, OC: Correspondance d'Alexis de Tocqueville et de Henry Reeve (Paris: Gallimard, 1954), 6: 132.
81. AR , 2, pt. 2: 270.
82. AR , 2, pt. 2: 227-228.
83. DA , 1, pt. 1: 89/92.
84. Montesquieu, De l'Esprit des Lois , in Oeuvres complètes , ed. R. Calllois (Paris: Gallimard, 1951), 1: 396-407.
85. AR , 2, pt. 2: 320-322.
86. See A. Kahan, "Tocqueville's Two Revolutions," Journal of the History of Ideas 46 (1985): 585-596 for a consideration of Tocqueville's treatment of the bourgeoisie in his volume of notes.
87. S , 39/13.
88. S , 63, 94/41, 77.
89. S , 36-37/10-11.
90. AR , 2, pt. 1: 213-214/164; pt. 2: 128-129.
91. DA , 1, pt. 2: 268/261.
92. Alexis de Tocqueville, Voyages en Angleterre, Irlande, Suisse et Algérie (Paris: Gallimard, 1958), OC , 5, pt. 2: 90-92.
93. AR , 2, pt. 1: 75/xv.
94. S , 86/88.
95. AR , 2, pt. 2: 132.
96. C. Lefort, "Reversibility," Telos 63 (1985): 116.