The Man Who Understood Democracy - Epub + Converted PDF
نویسندگان: Olivier Zunz
خلاصه: Go back in time. Examine the babe when still in its mother’s arms. See the external world reflected for the first time in the still-dark mirror of his intelligence. Contemplate the first models to make an impression on him. Listen to the words that first awaken his dormant powers of thought. Take note, finally, of the first battles he is obliged to fight. Only then will you understand where the prejudices, habits, and passions that will dominate his life come from. In a manner of speaking, the whole man already lies swaddled in his cradle.1 Alexis de Tocqueville made these observations in Democracy in America to explain his rationale for studying America’s “point of departure.” Of course, the beginning is also where the biographer must start. For the young Tocqueville, that external world was dominated by figures from the highest military and administrative nobility of the Ancien Régime, survivors of the Revolutionary Terror, loyal to the exiled Bourbons, and dead set against the liberal views Tocqueville himself would eventually embrace. Presaging this divergence, Tocqueville displayed considerable independence of mind at an early age, and he repeatedly flouted expectations. At the same time, he developed the habit of casting doubt on much of what he did and saw