{"id":1046,"date":"2024-09-23T21:21:18","date_gmt":"2024-09-23T21:21:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/academics\/tocqueville-program\/?post_type=furman-update&p=1046"},"modified":"2025-07-29T19:47:29","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T19:47:29","slug":"lecture-summary-olivier-zunz-and-sarah-gustafson-at-alexis-de-tocqueville-in-america-sept-10-11-2024","status":"publish","type":"furman-update","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/academics\/tocqueville-program\/lectures\/lecture-summary-olivier-zunz-and-sarah-gustafson-at-alexis-de-tocqueville-in-america-sept-10-11-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Lecture Summary: Olivier Zunz and Sarah Gustafson at “Alexis de Tocqueville in America”, Sept. 10-11, 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"

Olivier Zunz On \u201cThe Great Debate between Alexis de Tocqueville and Astolphe de Custine on the Political Fortunes of America and Russia\u201d: Tocqueville Biographer and Sarah Gustafson Headline \u201cAlexis de Tocqueville in America\u201d Event at Furman’s Tocqueville Center<\/span><\/h2>\n
\"Olivier

Olivier Zunz speaking on Alexis de Tocqueville for the Tocqueville Center<\/p><\/div>\n

Olivier Zunz, James Madison Professor of History at the University of Virginia and an internationally recognized expert on the life and work of Alexis de Tocqueville, and Sarah Gustafson, Assistant Professor of Politics at The Catholic University of America, were featured speakers at this year\u2019s installment of the Tocqueville Center\u2019s Walters Memorial Lecture Series. The series honors Professor Ernest J. Walters, who joined Furman\u2019s Political Science Department in 1962, and served as the department\u2019s chair from 1979 to 1984. His daughter Amy attended the event.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Tocqueville Center program was designed to showcase the center\u2019s namesake, Alexis de Tocqueville, a 19th-century French author, statesman, and traveler who developed a \u201cnew science of politics\u201d focused on the study of the modern democratic soul. Zunz and Gustafson presented original research that was equally theoretical and historical, exploring different but related concepts in American democracy as expressed in Tocqueville\u2019s body of writings on American democracy and his political activities in France, as well as his account of the democratic welfare state (Gustafson) and his influence on French aristocrat and travel memoir author Astolphe de Custine (Zunz).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The result was an illuminating and expansive dialogue between the speakers, panelists, and audience that exposed and clarified aspects of Tocqueville\u2019s life and thought not frequently discussed, and highlighted his continuing relevance to contemporary politics. Gustafson and Zunz exemplify a refreshingly Tocquevillian approach to political theory in their scholarship, where political theory consists of careful analysis of historical facts from which generalizations are induced, rather than a series of deductions derived from conditional, presupposed, and general hypotheses.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What did Alexis De Tocqueville say about American democracy and the welfare state? Sarah Gustafson\u2019s response<\/span><\/h2>\n
\"Sarah

Sarah Gustafson speaking on Alexis de Tocqueville and the democratic welfare state<\/p><\/div>\n

Sarah Gustafson kicked off the Tocqueville Center’s two-day event with a talk on \u201cDemocratic Well-being and Democratic Welfare: Tocqueville\u2019s Complex Account of the Welfare State\u201d. <\/span>A Harvard PhD, Gustafson is a specialist in Alexis de Tocqueville and nineteenth-century political thought, with additional interests in Ancient and Medieval Political Philosophy, contemporary and normative political theory, virtue ethics, Catholic Social and Political Thought, and Ethics and Business. Her research examines Tocqueville\u2019s concept of charity, especially its relationship to his accounts of self-interest rightly understood, associations, and welfare. Panel commentary was provided by Olivier Zunz, Robert L\u2019Arrivee (Politics and International Affairs, Furman University), and Elizabeth L\u2019Arrivee (Rosary College<\/a>).\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Gustafson began by identifying a puzzling aspect of Tocqueville\u2019s thought. Tocqueville the<\/span> political theorist<\/span><\/i> had famously warned about the potential for American democracy to develop into a soft despotism, a kind of government where Americans willingly gave up their rights in exchange for benefits granted by an increasingly powerful state. At the same time, the historical record indicates that Tocqueville the<\/span> politician<\/span><\/i> advocated for aspects of what would become the European\u2014and later the American\u2014welfare state. Gustafson asked whether Tocqueville\u2019s political <\/span>theory<\/span><\/i> contradicted his political <\/span>action<\/span><\/i>, by advocating in practice for the very thing that threatened his democratic ideals.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Attendees<\/p>\n

Fundamentally, Gustafson\u2019s questions concerned Tocqueville\u2019s accounts of soft despotism, the welfare state, human liberty, and the relations between them: \u201cIs soft despotism the same as the welfare state? Is soft despotism inevitable? Is it possible to devise and structure a welfare state in such a way that upholds human liberty while also attending to the most vulnerable among us? Lastly, how do Tocqueville\u2019s practical political writings on the social question — the question of mass poverty caused by industrialization \u2013 and the welfare state compare with his theoretical writings?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Her answer illuminated an important feature of Tocqueville\u2019s approach to political science, which Zunz picked up on in the panel commentary (and which the Tocqueville Center seeks to preserve). Rather than setting up an abstract theory of democratic welfare and then attempting to impose it on an imperfect reality that falls far short of the hypothesized ideal, Tocqueville began from real-world observations, which set the conditions within which he attempted to \u201cinstruct\u201d and \u201cguide\u201d democracy. Tocqueville, Gustafson emphasized, is thus \u201cnot a perfectionist, and awareness of human imperfection set him against the radical idealism \u2018characteristic\u2019 of Tocqueville\u2019s era \u2013 characteristic of Marx, Comte, and many others \u2013 that would \u2018reduce\u2019 the complexity and messiness of human life to \u2018systematic theory\u2019 and by so doing, try to perfect it.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Olivier<\/p>\n

What did Alexis de Tocqueville observe on his visit to the United States?<\/span><\/h3>\n

Cautioning the Tocqueville Center audience against relying on a \u201cbumper-sticker\u201d account of familiar Tocaquevillian themes to solve the puzzle, Gustafson\u2019s argument began with modified or novel interpretations of his key concepts of associations, self-interest rightly understood, and despotism. Tocqueville\u2019s account of associations, she argued, despite having an echo in the works of Robert Putnam and others, is incompletely understood in the absence of Tocqueville\u2019s historical context, namely, as his protest against the French government\u2019s hostility towards associations. Self-interest rightly understood, better left in her view as the untranslated <\/span>int\u00e9r\u00eat bien entendu<\/span><\/i>, is \u201csomething like the animating spirit and virtue of association. It both is a product of and encourages a spirit of cooperation and mutual help towards shared ends, towards shared goods, in the realm of civil society\u201d.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This moral though not completely other-regarding virtue, which has Christian characteristics, \u201ceducates and elevates one\u2019s individual self-interest through active communion and participation with others in the open and free spaces of civil society and voluntary association.\u201d The variety of associations Tocqueville saw arising naturally in American democracy indicated a distinctive diversity, where meaningful distinctions arranged various aspects of civil society, such as \u2018charity\u2019, \u2018church\u2019, \u2018family\u2019, etc., into hierarchies according to their varied importance. At the same time, the Americans\u2019 love of equality predisposed them to have compassion for all those who were vulnerable to and impoverished by democracy\u2019s constantly changing social conditions. Citizens in democracies will tend to approve, Gustafson observed, of the state taking over the care of the poor and vulnerable from private associations because of their compassionate feelings.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Brent

Tocqueville Center Director, Brent Nelsen (Politics and International Affairs, Furman)<\/p><\/div>\n

What danger did Tocqueville see in the majority rule in the United States?<\/span><\/h3>\n

The state takeover of private welfare through associations brought on by democratic compassion is exacerbated, Gustafson continued, by the individualism democrats are susceptible to on account of their equality. If all are equal, the kinds of attachments that elevate someone or something over another are weakened. Moreover, the collective action problem, where potentially beneficial cooperation is undermined by competing self-interests, encourages the state to step in where others have not. The administrative state, so remarkably decentralized in American townships and associations, becomes centralized, thus replacing local politics and voluntary associations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The resulting centralization of power in the hands of the government is antithetical to democracy, Gustafson pointed out, since it is an essential feature of exactly the soft despotism Tocqueville warned about. But unlike Marx, Tocqueville, while recognizing the problems of American democracy, never conceived of an endpoint to history, where the inequalities that lead to some having while others have-not are eradicated through a massive redistribution of wealth. Does that mean Tocqueville adopted a laissez-faire attitude or lacked compassion? Gustafson turned to Tocqueville\u2019s life in France and his sojourn as a statesman to find out.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Audience

The panel takes questions from the audience for “Alexis de Tocqueville in America”<\/p><\/div>\n

Through a historical analysis of pauperism in Europe during the time of the Industrial Revolution, Gustafson detailed an insightful account of Tocqueville\u2019s statesmanship that bears important lessons for today. Tocqueville’s observation\u2014likely enhanced by the fact that he was Catholic\u2014from Europe\u2019s experience of having replaced the private Catholic charities which had cared for society\u2019s most vulnerable with state redistributionism via the \u201cpoor laws\u201d was that well-intentioned and compassionate public policy had set up some perverse incentive frameworks and <\/span>mores<\/span><\/i>. The poor often became \u201cpath dependent\u201d through government assistance, in that they were reduced to merely satisfying their most pressing, material needs, resulting in a \u201cbrutalization\u201d of their humanity into the political category, \u201cthe poor\u201d.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Gustafson\u2019s takeaway was that amid the soft despotism of the welfare state today, we need to recognize the limits of public policy and acknowledge key distinctions between public and private charity. While some form of public charity is necessary, as it is more regular than spontaneous private charity, unmediated, face-to-face interactions through private associations providing help to society\u2019s vulnerable are more humanizing and thus preserving of human liberty. She called for a renewal of that ambiguous yet important concept, self-interest rightly understood, or <\/span>int\u00e9r\u00eat bien entendu<\/span><\/i>, to cultivate habits that link self-interest to shared ends in civil society and resurrect the animating spirit of associations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Is democracy dead? Should aristocracy prevail? Olivier Zunz on how a French aristocrat\u2019s Russian travels brought him into agreement with Tocqueville on democracy\u2019s superiority<\/span><\/h2>\n
\"Olivier

Olivier Zunz speaking on Custine’s debate with Tocqueville over the political fortunes of Russia versus America<\/p><\/div>\n

Olivier Zunz continued the Tocqueville Center’s deep-dive into Tocqueville\u2019s thought, life, and influence on the second day with his talk, \u201cThe Great Debate between Alexis de Tocqueville and Astolphe de Custine on the Political Fortunes of America and Russia\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Zunz, who is the James Madison Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Virginia, has authored or edited 12 books, including <\/span>The Changing Face of Inequality<\/span><\/i> (1982); <\/span>Making America Corporate, 1870-1920<\/span><\/i> (1990); and <\/span>Why the American Century?<\/span><\/i> (1998). His most recent book is <\/span>The Man Who Understood Democracy: The Life of Alexis de Tocqueville<\/span><\/i><\/a> (2022), but despite the book\u2019s significance as a biography of Tocqueville that balances meticulous historical research with a sensitivity to Tocqueville’s ideas as he himself understood them, Zunz\u2019s choice of topic for the day was purely a result of accident. A family member, Zunz recounted, had by chance offered a book by Marquis de Custine from his collection to Zunz. When Zunz read what turned out to be a 900-page record of Custine’s trip to Russia in 1839, he saw that Custine was carrying out a (mostly implicit) argument with Tocqueville over the relative merits of democracy and aristocracy. He thought his account of the Americans and the Russians, whom Tocqueville had called \u201ctwo great peoples\u201d, deserved greater attention.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Zunz recounts Custine\u2019s travels in Russia<\/span><\/h3>\n

Custine was an anti-American, anti-democratic French aristocrat who went to Russia to find evidence that would vindicate aristocracy and affirm despotism over and against representative governments. His travels, which occurred under Nicholas I\u2014who was infamous for fiercely oppressing all dissent\u2014changed his mind. The resulting book, written under the guise of a series of letters, became a bestseller in 1843, much to the chagrin of Nicholas, who banned the book in Russia. Tocqueville\u2019s pro-democracy, anti-aristocratic, and anti-despotic ideas thus became indirectly albeit immensely influential, as Custine\u2019s account of the Russians and the perils of despotism influenced Western public policy in the 19th and 20th centuries.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Zunz began by identifying the similarities between Tocqueville and Custine. Both were French aristocrats by birth, whose families became victims of the Revolutionary Terror. Both had been mentored by Chateaubriand. And both had personal battles with their fellow aristocrats\u2014Tocqueville over his pro-democratic views, and Custine over his choice to live as an openly gay man after his sexual orientation was made public through no choice of his own.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Olivier<\/p>\n

Despite their similarities, Custine, Zunz detailed, saw American democracy as an abstraction that had been improvised in a land without a memory. The Enlightenment philosophy of the 18th century was an encroachment on religion, and Custine was certain he could find his vindication of aristocracy and despotism in Russia, which was in many ways the antithesis of America. So, like Tocqueville, Custine embarked on a journey of observation. But what he found ended up convincing him that his debate with Tocqueville was without merit.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Seeking vindication, Custine finds defeat: Zunz illuminates the 19th c. debate over America’s and Russia’s political fortunes<\/span><\/h3>\n

In Russia, Zunz recounted, Custine found that the majority of the Russian princes and aristocracy were mediocre. Despite having contempt for the humorless Puritanism of the few Americans he had encountered in his travels, Zunz told the Tocqueville Center audience, Custine did not recognize human agency in the Russians. Instead, he saw a \u201cnation of slaves\u201d, whose human dignity had been destroyed under the atmosphere of fear that resulted from Nicholas\u2019 intolerance of all dissenting opinions. Tyranny and despotism had the appearance of civilization, but it disguised a fundamental barbarism. Custine concluded that Russia was a \u201ckingdom of fear and silence with no regard for human dignity\u201d, where self-interest rightly understood was impossible. All were equally slaves in Russia, whereas in America, equality, far from excluding liberty, actually helped promote it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Mike

Mike Bressler (Politics and International Affairs) joins the panel on Alexis de Tocqueville<\/p><\/div>\n

Zunz completed his talk at the Tocqueville Center by recounting the extraordinary influence of Custine\u2019s book, and the question of whether America is or can still be the guarantor of liberty. Sarah Gustafson and Mike Bressler (Politics and International Affairs, Furman) provided helpful commentary. Bressler, a scholar of Russia, pointed out that Custine got certain aspects of Nicholas wrong. Nicholas, for example, enacted progressive policies that decentralized some of the czar\u2019s powers. His repression of dissent was a somewhat justifiable reaction to his attempted overthrow. And Custine\u2019s inability to find any voices of dissent in Russia was an oversight, as the first half of the 19th century, which has been called the Golden Age of Russian Poetry, included dissenters such as Pushkin. Zunz gratefully acknowledged Bressler\u2019s points, but reiterated that Custine\u2019s account, though incomplete and even inaccurate in places, nonetheless had remained extremely influential for over a century.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What is Tocqueville\u2019s Polical Science? Olivier Zunz and Sarah Gustafson Exemplify a Tocquevillian Approach<\/span><\/h3>\n

Overall, the Tocqueville Center\u2019s first lecture series of the year provided an opportunity to reflect on Tocqueville\u2019s thought, life, and influence in light of detailed historical analysis. But perhaps more importantly, Zunz and Gustafson exemplify what it means to practice Tocquevillian political science, where \u201cthought takes as given the imperfections of the world, the chasm between ideal theory and the study of politics, on the one hand, and the urgent necessity to implement and practice the best possible political science and public policy on the other\u201d (Gustafson). The resulting moderation is surely one of Tocqueville\u2019s most valuable legacies.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Be sure to keep an eye out for upcoming events<\/a>, as the Tocqueville Center continues to explore the spirit of democracy in America!<\/p>\n

\"Rob

Rob L’Arrivee (Politics and International Affairs, Furman) asks a question at the “Alexis de Tocqueville in America” event<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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