6/13/2023 0 Comments Between two worlds![]() Wolin here develops with enormous intellectual energy and flair through several hundred pages of a book which is clearly intended to be definitive."-Biancamaria Fontana, The Times Literary Supplement " demonstrate that what produced was a 'coherent theoretical and political project'-and one still relevant not just to American political debate, but to our understanding of democratic systems on both sides of the Atlantic. In Wolin's hands an appreciation of the power of Tocqueville's contributions to Western political thought is enhanced by pegging his work to his often fretful life story."-Jean Bethke Elshtain, Washington Post Book World ![]() Tocqueville Between Two Worlds is as much an intellectual biography as it is a work of more abstract political thought. "Wolin offers a Tocqueville who is extraordinarily complex, deeply conflicted and by no means the uncritical booster of democratic possibility he is sometimes made out to be. A monumental new study of Tocqueville, this is also a rich and provocative work about the past, the present, and the future of democratic life in America and abroad. ![]() He concludes that Tocqueville’s insights and anxieties about the impotence of politics in a ”postaristocratic” era speak directly to the challenges of our own ”postdemocratic” age. In the course of the book, Wolin also shows that Tocqueville struggled with many of the forces that constrain politics today, including the relentless advance of capitalism, of science and technology, and of state bureaucracy. Throughout, Wolin highlights the tensions between Tocqueville’s ideas and his activities as a politician, arguing that - despite his limited political success - Tocqueville was ”perhaps the last influential theorist who can be said to have truly cared about political life.” He portrays The Old Regime and the French Revolution as a work of theoretical history designed to throw light on the Bonapartist despotism he saw around him. He shows us how Tocqueville used Recollections to reexamine his political commitments in light of the revolutions of 1848 and the threat of socialism. He portrays Democracy in America, for example, as a theory of discovery that emerged from Tocqueville’s contrasting experiences of America and of France’s constitutional monarchy. Wolin proceeds by examining Tocqueville’s key writings in light of his experiences in the troubled world of French politics. 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. In doing so, Sheldon Wolin presents sweeping new interpretations of Tocqueville’s major works and of his place in intellectual history. In this magisterial book, one of America’s most important contemporary theorists draws on decades of research and thought to present the first work that fully connects Tocqueville’s political and theoretical lives. He also led an unusually active and ambitious career in French politics. It is based on French journalist Florence Aubenas's bestselling non-fiction work Le Quai de Ouistreham, investigating rising precarity in French society through her experiences in the northern port city of Caen.Alexis de Tocqueville may be the most influential political thinker in American history.
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