Alexis de Tocqueville travelled across the United States in 1831 and 1832, and spent years afterwards working out what he had seen. The second volume of Democracy in America, published in 1840, turns from institutions to habits of mind. How do equality and freedom shape the way people think, feel and live together? He opens with the philosophical method of the Americans and the principal source of their beliefs, and asks why they show such readiness for general ideas. His observations on a society of equals, its virtues and its dangers, have been quoted ever since. Read in Henry Reeve’s English translation by seven LibriVox volunteers, the thirty-nine parts last about twelve hours. A challenging and rewarding classic of political thought for anyone who wonders what democracy does to those who live in it.
Introduction
Alexis de Tocqueville, who lived from 1805 to 1859, was a French aristocrat, political thinker and historian. Democracy in America was published in two volumes, the first in 1835 and the second in 1840, and it is regarded as one of the most influential studies of democratic society ever written.
This recording presents the second volume, in the English translation by Henry Reeve, which appeared in 1840, the year the French original was published, and became the standard version for English readers. Where the first volume describes American political institutions, the second takes a wider view and considers the effects of equality on thought, feeling and manners. Its chapters begin with the philosophical method of the Americans and with the sources of their belief, and they ask why Americans show more readiness and more taste for general ideas than the English, from whom their forefathers came.
The book belongs to non-fiction and political science. Tocqueville writes as an observer from outside, and his conclusions are subtle, balancing admiration with warnings about conformity and a mild, all-embracing kind of despotism. Readers will find that some of his generalisations are products of his time, and that his picture of America is selective, since his journey was short and his contacts limited.
The recording has thirty-nine parts, beginning with Tocqueville’s preface to the second volume, shared among seven LibriVox volunteers, and lasts about twelve hours. Today it is worth hearing for the insight of its author and for the continuing relevance of his questions about equality, liberty and the shape of public life.
Public domain
Alexis de Tocqueville died in 1859: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
