A review of Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America” (audiobook)

I had heard only a little about Alexis de Tocqueville before I listened to this audiobook. I knew that he was from France, and that he had written a famous book about America. I knew a few other things about him. But for all intents and purposes, I consider this audiobook to be my introduction to Tocqueville’s ideas. Since I first listened to this, I undertook to read the book itself in its original French. The book’s title is “De la démocratie en Amérique” (“Democracy in America”), and it took me over three years to finish. Specifically, I read it from March 2019 to July 2022.

Alexis de Tocqueville often cited Judge Joseph Story

Joseph Story was a U. S. Supreme Court justice, appointed by President James Madison

In 1812, President James Madison appointed a new justice to the United States Supreme Court. That justice was Joseph Story. At the time that I write this, he is the youngest person ever to be nominated (let alone appointed) as a Supreme Court justice. He would influence a young lawyer named Abraham Lincoln, as I show in another post. But he would also influence a young Frenchman who once visited the United States in the 1830’s. That Frenchman was Alexis de Tocqueville, who would later become famous for a work entitled “De la démocratie en Amérique” (“Democracy in America”). The book contains many citations to Judge Joseph Story.

Joseph Story, a United States Supreme Court justice (appointed by James Madison)

A review of Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America” (book)

“Amongst the novel objects that attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, nothing struck me more forcibly than the general equality of conditions. I readily discovered the prodigious influence which this primary fact exercises on the whole course of society … I speedily perceived that the influence of this fact extends far beyond the political character and the laws of the country, and that it has no less empire over civil society than over the Government; it creates opinions, engenders sentiments, suggests the ordinary practices of life, and modifies whatever it does not produce. The more I advanced in the study of American society, the more I perceived that the equality of conditions is the fundamental fact from which all others seem to be derived, and the central point at which all my observations constantly terminated.”

– Opening lines of Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America” (1835), Book 1, Introductory Chapter

I recently finished reading this work in its original French …

I recently finished reading Alexis de Tocqueville’s “De la démocratie en Amérique” (“Democracy in America”) in the original French. The work took me over three years to finish. Specifically, I read the work from March 2019 to July 2022. I would first read a paragraph out loud in French, then out loud in English, and then out loud in French again before moving on to the next paragraph. In this way, I got through the entire work one paragraph at a time. After doing so, I have much to say about it – some of it positive, and some of it negative. But first, let me give some comments on how (and why) the book was written, and how it was informed by Tocqueville’s travels to the United States.

Alexis de Tocqueville