The Fragility of Freedom: Tocqueville on Religion, Democracy, and the American Future - Hardcover

Joshua Mitchell offers an interpretation of Toqueville as a moral historian, concerned less with history as an objective record of the past than as a disclosure of the trajectory of the human spirit. Though Tocqueville is the dominating figure, Mitchell also examines Augustine, Hobbes, Rousseau, Hegel and Nietzsche. Mitchell argues that Tocqueville's analysis of democracy is ultimately founded in an Augustinian idea of human psychology in which the soul or self alternately seeks withdrawal from the world or restive immersion in it. For a democracy to survive, Tocqueville recognized that its citizens had to navigate successfully between these two extremes of isolation and commitment. Democracy also paradoxically seemed to foster the very qualities - including ambition and envy - that threaten to undermine that fragile freedom which democracy affords. It is only such mediating institutions as the family and religion that can safeguard the continued vitality of democratic life and the health of the "democratic soul". Mitchell examines these institutions within the larger context of Tocqueville's thought, identifying them as a particularly American embodiment of the Christian tradition which continues to both protect the inherent instabilities of democracy and invigorate the conditions of equality.

Focusing on Democracy in America, Mitchell examines Tocqueville's key works and argues that Tocqueville's analysis of democracy is ultimately rooted in an Augustinian view of human psychology. Rather than being moderate by nature, human beings are generally drawn in one of two possible directions: either into themselves in brooding withdrawal or into the restive activity of commercial life. For democracy to survive, Tocqueville recognized that its citizens had to navigate successfully between these two extremes of isolation and restiveness. Paradoxically, democracy and its equalizing tendencies seem to foster the very qualities - including ambition and envy - that threaten to undermine the fragile freedom that democracy affords. Mitchell examines Tocqueville's theory that moderation can only be achieved with the help of certain institutional supports. Without them there is neither moderation nor rationality. Tocqueville's crucial insight, Mitchell argues, was that commerce alone cannot hold society together. Our freedom is held together by the mediating institutions of family, religion, and associational life. Analyzing these institutions within the larger contours of Tocqueville's thought, Mitchell shows them to be a particularly American embodiment of the Christian tradition which continues to protect against the inherent instabilities of democracy and invigorate the conditions of equality. He argues that they are as critical now as in Tocqueville's time in safeguarding the continued vitality of democratic life.