{"id":1879,"date":"2025-10-03T14:53:33","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T14:53:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/academics\/tocqueville-program\/?post_type=furman-update&p=1879"},"modified":"2025-10-22T15:39:48","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T15:39:48","slug":"lecture-summary-alexis-de-tocqueville-and-america-two-days-on-tocqueville-conservatism-and-civic-friendship","status":"publish","type":"furman-update","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/academics\/tocqueville-program\/lectures\/lecture-summary-alexis-de-tocqueville-and-america-two-days-on-tocqueville-conservatism-and-civic-friendship\/","title":{"rendered":"Lecture Summary, Alexis de Tocqueville and America: Two Days on Tocqueville, Conservatism, and Civic Friendship"},"content":{"rendered":"

In September 2025, the Tocqueville Center at Furman University launched its new academic year with a two-day program featuring Mark Lilla<\/strong>, Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and one of America\u2019s leading public intellectuals.<\/p>\n

Over the course of two evenings, Lilla delivered the Walters Memorial Lecture<\/strong> on Tocqueville, equality of conditions, and civic friendship, and then led the year\u2019s first On Discourse<\/strong><\/a> seminar, exploring the contested meanings of \u201cliberal,\u201d \u201cconservative,\u201d \u201cprogressive,\u201d and \u201creactionary.\u201d Together, the events offered a chance for the Furman community and Greenville public to engage in searching conversation about the challenges of democracy in our time.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n

Day One: Tocqueville and America<\/h2>\n

The program opened with the Walters Memorial Lecture. Brent Nelsen<\/strong>, Director of the Tocqueville Center, welcomed the audience and introduced Mark Lilla, highlighting his influential books The Once and Future Liberal<\/em><\/a>, The Shipwrecked Mind<\/em><\/a>, The Stillborn God<\/em><\/a>, and Ignorance and Bliss: On Wanting Not to Know<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lilla\u2019s Lecture: Equality of Conditions as a \u201cBrute Fact\u201d<\/h3>\n

Lilla began with the explosive first sentence of Tocqueville\u2019s Democracy in America<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cOf all the novel things which attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, none struck me more forcibly than the equality of conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

For Tocqueville, this \u201cequality of conditions\u201d<\/strong> was not an idea or a principle, but a \u201cbrute, generating fact\u201d<\/strong>\u2014a material reality that created principles, opinions, and even sentiments. Lilla stressed how radical this was:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cHe casually asserts as if it were the most obvious thing in the world that material facts can create non-material facts.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

From this foundation, Tocqueville saw democracy\u2019s distinctive \u201cemotional weather.\u201d Even when institutions and principles faltered, the lived experience of equality shaped how Americans thought, felt, and related to one another.<\/p>\n

Lilla described how shared experience\u2014hardship, cultural homogeneity, and even diet\u2014once helped bind Americans across class lines. In the mid-20th century, he noted, a worker\u2019s dinner plate looked little different from Dwight Eisenhower\u2019s. Today, by contrast, education-based class divisions<\/strong> increasingly sort Americans into divergent worlds:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cEven the typical bodies of our two large educational classes are notably different today\u2026 Our universities are machines of conformity into this particular class. And if you haven\u2019t been through that training, you\u2019re just very different.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The crisis of democracy, Lilla suggested, is not only institutional but cultural:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWe are in a very, very bad place\u2026 a new brute generating fact is producing feelings of distrust, contempt, shame, defensiveness, resentment, antipathy, and withdrawal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/h3>\n

Panel Responses<\/h3>\n

The lecture was followed by a panel moderated by Brent Nelsen<\/strong>, with Elizabeth L\u2019Arriv\u00e9e<\/strong> (Rosary College), John Barrington<\/strong> (Furman, History), and Rob L\u2019Arriv\u00e9e<\/strong> (Furman, Politics & International Affairs).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Elizabeth L\u2019Arriv\u00e9e<\/strong> pressed Lilla on republican scale<\/strong> and whether education access strengthens or weakens civic friendship:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cHigher education in Tocqueville\u2019s time would have been much lower than 30 percent. Today we have unprecedented access\u2014how important is that for inclusion?\u201d
Lilla responded that universities now function less as gateways to inclusion and more as engines of class-formation.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

John Barrington<\/strong> emphasized Tocqueville\u2019s use of a mythic New England origin story<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cIf he fell short as a historian, he succeeded in recording a myth of origins that offered Americans a sense of belonging amid industrial upheaval.\u201d
Lilla noted that Tocqueville\u2019s real purpose was to illuminate French debates through America as a case study.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Rob L\u2019Arriv\u00e9e<\/strong> listed Tocqueville\u2019s five mechanisms of fellow feeling<\/strong>\u2014associations, local politics, newspapers, religion, and rough equality\u2014and asked whether they can still hold:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cWhat happens when these break down? Doesn\u2019t it push us toward a friend\/enemy politics?\u201d
Lilla agreed, underscoring Tocqueville\u2019s conviction that civic friendship<\/strong> was indispensable for justice.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A student asked how Tocqueville could claim equality of conditions amid slavery and women\u2019s disenfranchisement. Lilla answered:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThat initial challenge of settling\u2014families facing the wilderness\u2014represented an equality of condition that produced an ideology of equality\u2026 But it blinded us to actual inequalities of the sort you just mentioned.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

\"\"<\/h2>\n

Day Two: Conservatives Versus Reactionaries<\/h2>\n

The following evening featured an On Discourse seminar<\/strong>. Nelsen opened with the Center\u2019s community agreements\u2014listening attentively, extending grace, and arguing well\u2014before introducing Lilla once again.<\/p>\n

Lilla\u2019s Framework: Four Political Boxes<\/h3>\n

Lilla began with a parable about moving apartments and the arbitrariness of \u201cboxes\u201d and labels<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cImagine I take a watch that doesn\u2019t work, two dried apricots, a belt, a stapler, and a Sony Walkman and hand it to my wife. To me it\u2019s obvious\u2014it\u2019s my dorm room desk in 1978. To her it\u2019s nonsense. Any grouping is pure convention. The same is true of political terms.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

He then proposed distinguishing four familiar labels into two pairs:<\/p>\n