Individual Choice and the Structures of History
Alexis de Tocqueville as Historian Reappraised

A perceptive study of de Tocqueville's works, revealing his deep involvement with the philosophy of history.

Harvey Mitchell (Author)

9780521024150, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 13 February 2006

308 pages
23 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.471 kg

"This is an important contribution to the expanding universe of Tocqueville scholarship. Harvey Mitchell has seized upon a major dilemma in the study of Tocqueville...Mitchell is at his very best." American Historical Review

Alexis de Tocqueville is recognized as one of the most important nineteenth-century historians. In this perceptive study, Harvey Mitchell examines Tocqueville's works, in particular Souvenirs of 1848 and his voluminous correspondence, to shed new light on Tocqueville's philosophy of history. Professor Mitchell exposes the tensions which Tocqueville perceived between determined actions and choice, continuity and change, asking what happens to individual liberty if it is impossible to make a clean break with the past, and if past developments continue to influence the future. Professor Mitchell draws on the full range of Tocqueville's writings to find in them a unity of thought and a deep involvement with the philosophical questions raised by historical continuity and change.

Acknowledgments
Part I. Introduction: 1. Frameworks
Part II. Paradoxes in Tocqueville's Idea of History: 2. Towards a theory of history
3. Tocqueville's conceptualisation of moral choice and the particular
Part III. Plotting Crisis and Change: 4. Tocqueville's uses of intentionality and necessity in the 'Souvenirs'
5. Towards the history of 'L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution'
6. Three faces of history in democracy in America
Part IV. Historian of the Breakdown of the Old Society: 7. Tocqueville on the general laws of revolution
8. The aristocratic ethos on the defensive
9. Ideas and public opinion
Part V. Epilogue: 10. Further reflections
Select bibliography, Index.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX]