Adult Education Fall 2012 –
Tocqueville: Christianity and Culture in America
CLASS 9 – NOVEMBER 11: BEYOND OPTIMISM V. PESSIMISM
I.
Pessimism: Decline Narratives
a. Jean-Jacques Rousseau sees the modern age leading to equality in slavery: “Here is the
last stage of inequality, and the ultimate point that closes the Circle and meets the point from
which we set out: Here all private individuals again become equal because they are nothing
and, since the Subjects have no Law left than the will of the Master, and the Master no other
rule than his passions, the notions of the good and the principles of justice again vanish. Here
everything reverts […] to a new State of Nature […] the fruit of an excess of corruption.”1
II.
Optimism: Progress Narratives
a. Immanuel Kant sees the modern age bringing progress through the development of
human reason. History is “nothing less than progress toward perfection.”2 Human reason will
eventually enable the development of a truly cosmopolitan society that will guarantee
worldwide perpetual peace by “break[ing] [man’s] will and force[ing] him to obey a will that
is universally valid, under which he can be free.”3
b. Karl Marx sees the modern age bringing progress through the development of the means
of material production. “Every succeeding generation finds itself in possession of the
productive forces acquired by the previous generation, which serve it as the raw material for
new production.”4 Capitalism overcomes scarcity, and Communism shares the fruits of
production equally so that exploitation and suffering end, and “the free development of each
[is] the condition for the free development of all.”5
III.
Tocqueville sees the modern age as a strange mixture of progress and decline.
a. Volume 1 and Volume 2 together analyze a tension in American culture. Volume 1 is
about path dependency, both for good (religion, family, localism) and ill (slavery). Volume 2
is about the disquieting American tendency to destroy everything that has come before: “To
escape from imposed systems, the yoke of habit, family maxims, class prejudices, and to a
certain extent national prejudices as well; to treat tradition as valuable for information only and
to accept existing facts as no more than a useful sketch to show how things could be done
differently and better; to seek by themselves and in themselves […] such are the principal
characteristics of what I could call the American philosophical method” (2.1.1, 429).6
b. Tocqueville emphasizes our responsibility to navigate this tension, and to preserve liberty
as equality grows: “Providence did not make mankind entirely free or completely enslaved.
Providence has, in truth, drawn a predestined circle around each man beyond which he cannot
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men or Second Discourse,” in Rousseau: The
Discourses and Other Early Political Writings, ed. Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2008), pp. 185-186.
2 Immanuel Kant, “Conjectural Beginning of Human History,” in Kant on History, ed. Lewis White Beck (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall,
2001), p. 60.
3 Immanuel Kant, “Perpetual Peace,” in Kant on History, ed. Lewis White Beck (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2001), p. 17.
4 Karl Marx, “Society and Economy in History,” in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York: Norton, 1978), p. 136.
5 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, “Manifesto of the Communist Party,” in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York:
Norton, 1978), p. 491.
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6
All citations from Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. J.P. Mayer, trans. George Lawrence (New York: Harper
and Row, 1968) are listed in the text in the format volume.part.chapter, page.
pass; but within those vast limits man is strong and free, and so are peoples. The nations of our
day cannot prevent conditions of equality from spreading in their midst. But it depends upon
themselves whether equality is to lead to servitude or freedom, knowledge or barbarism,
prosperity or wretchedness” (2.4.8, 705).
IV.
The Eschatological View of History: Realist Hope
a. We have realist hope in our Savior. “In short, if Christ’s fulfillment of creation does involve
something new to creation, then human fulfillment is not dependent on anything immanent
within creation; instead, we can seek, by faith, and empowered by the Spirit, to anticipate and
participate in the new future already established by Christ—the ground and pattern of which
already exists in the Triune God.”7
i. Although sin precludes optimism about progress, God’s future is guaranteed and
already breaking in, so nothing can quench hope. “The kingdom of heaven is like a
grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all
seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree,
so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches” (Matthew 13:31-32).
b. Both decline and progress narratives are incompatible with Christianity. “Augustinian
Christians […] look with sympathetic understanding and even pity upon such secularist
animosities at the saeculum […] They understand why public life might make secularists so
disturbed at its revolutions. They appreciate the concerns such secularists have about how its
vicissitudes can manhandle our plans and break apart our best hopes. They too see how
dangerous can be the power of the crowd. But they see these tendencies as dangers and
temptations, not inevitabilities […] Behind and beyond these temptations they see engagement
in public life as a refining fire whereby our lives and our communities are hammered into
something greater than they would otherwise become.”8
i. “I see great dangers which may be warded of and mighty evils which may be avoided
or kept in check; and I am ever increasingly confirmed in my belief that for democratic
nations to be virtuous and prosperous, it is enough if they will to be so” (2.4.8, 705).
c. From an eschatological perspective, every event in secular history is both corrupted by
sin and capable of being caught up in redemption. “[N]arratives of progress or decline […]
do not recognize the indirect, ironic relationships between human projects and the saving work
of God.”9 To grasp this ironic relationship, think of Joseph, of the scattering of the Jerusalem
church, and of Christ’s death.
i. To Tocqueville, law is less powerful than mores, which are less powerful than
religion. Therefore if there is hope for our society, it will come from austere religion
purifying mores. “America is still the place where the Christian religion has kept the
greatest real power over men’s souls […] I do not doubt for an instant that the great
severity of mores which one notices in the United States has its primary origin in
beliefs. There religion is often powerless to restrain men in the midst of innumerable
temptations which fortune offers […] but it reigns supreme in the souls of women, and
it is women who shape mores” (1.2.9, 291).
Politics can, for a time, win victories for liberty. But the only thing that will succeed in the long term is
religion that creates austere mores.
7
Luke Bretherton, Hospitality as Holiness: Christian Witness Amid Moral Diversity (Burlington: Ashgate, 2006), p. 84.
Charles Mathewes, A Theology of Public Life, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 311.
9
Ted A. Smith, The New Measures: A Theological History of Democratic Practice (New York: Cambridge University, 2007).
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