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Democracy in America by [Alexis de Tocqueville, Harvey C. Mansfield, Delba Winthrop]

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Alexis de Tocqueville

Harvey C. Mansfield

Democracy in America Kindle Edition

by Alexis de Tocqueville (Author), Harvey C. Mansfield (Translator), Delba Winthrop (Translator) Format: Kindle Edition

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818 pages
Language

English
Publisher

University of Chicago Press
Publication date

October 18, 2012
File size

4915 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"The editors have written more than a mere introduction; they have written in fact a small book, a remarkably comprehensive and yet succinct study of Tocqueville's political thought. . . . Mansfield and Winthrop have made a remarkably comprehensive and tightly argued case for Tocqueville as the greatest political theorist of democracy, a theorist who is just as relevant today as he was in the nineteenth century." -- Gordon S. Wood ― New York Review of Books

"It would be difficult to think of a greater service to the study of Tocqueville than the one performed by Mansfield and Winthrop in their impeccable new edition and translation of Democracy in America. . . . The publisher is justified in claiming that this version will henceforth be seen as the 'authoritative' edition in English." ― Choice

"The Mansfield-Winthrop work will henceforth be the preferred English version of Democracy in America not only because of the superior translation and critical apparatus, but also because of its long and masterly introductory essay, itself an important contribution to the literature on Tocqueville." -- Roger Kimball ― The New Criterion

"If Tocqueville is an indispensable guide to understanding the American experience, Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop are indispensable guides to Tocqueville himself. In the introduction to their fresh and limpid translation of Democracy in America—what will surely be the definitive translation for some time to come—they offer a helpful summary of Tocqueville's philosophical and political thought." -- Thomas Pavel ― Wall Street Journal

"Democracy in America will continue to be read with profit as long as the United States survives as a republic and, indeed, as long as democracy endures. It deserves faithful translators, careful expositors and insightful commentators. In Mansfield and Winthrop it has found them." -- Robert P. George ― Times Literary Supplement

"[A] major new translation. . . . Tocqueville's insights confirm his brilliance and remind us that many features of national character are virtually indestructible." -- Robert J. Samuelson ― Newsweek

"This will be the English translation of Tocqueville for a long time, and it has the additional bonus that the introduction is as succinct an introduction to Tocqueville, or at least to the conservative view of him and his achievement, as one can find." -- Adam Gopnik ― The New Yorker --This text refers to the paperback edition.

About the Author

Harvey C. Mansfield is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Government at Harvard University. He is the author of Machiavelli’s Virtue and has translated The Prince, Discourses on Livy (with Nathan Tarcov), and Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (with Delba Winthrop), all published by the University of Chicago Press. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

From the Back Cover

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59) came to America in 1831 to see what a great republic was like. What struck him most was the country's equality of conditions, its democracy. The book he wrote on his return to France, Democracy in America, is both the best ever written on democracy and the best ever written on America. It remains the most often quoted book about the United States, not only because it has something to interest and please everyone, but also because it has something to teach everyone.

Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop's new translation of Democracy in America is only the third since the original two-volume work was published in 1835 and 1840. It is a spectacular achievement, capturing the elegance, subtlety, and profundity of Tocqueville's original. Mansfield and Winthrop have restored the nuances of his language, with the expressed goal "to convey Tocqueville's thought as he held it rather than to restate it in comparable terms of today." The result is a translation with minimal interpretation, avoiding the problem that Tocqueville himself read in the first translation of Democracy in America.

The strength of the translation is only one reason that Mansfield and Winthrop's Democracy in America will become the authoritative edition of the text. Also included is a superb and substantial introduction placing the work and its author in the broader context of the traditions of political philosophy and statesmanship. Together in one volume, the new translation, the introduction, and the translators' annotations of references no longer familiar to us combine to offer the most readable and faithful version of Tocqueville's masterpiece.

As we approach the 160th anniversary of the publication of Democracy in
America, Mansfield and Winthrop have provided an additional reason to celebrate.
Lavishly prepared and produced, this long-awaited new translation will surely become the authoritative edition of Tocqueville's profound and prescient masterwork. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

From the Inside Flap

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B008H4LC6W
Publisher ‏ : ‎ University of Chicago Press; 1st edition (October 18, 2012)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 18, 2012
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 4915 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 818 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Enabled

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Alexis de Tocqueville

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Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville (French: [alɛksi ʃaʁl ɑ̃ʁi kleʁɛl də tɔkvil]; 29 July 1805 – 16 April 1859) was a French political thinker and historian best known for his works Democracy in America (appearing in two volumes: 1835 and 1840) and The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856). In both of these, he analyzed the improved living standards and social conditions of individuals, as well as their relationship to the market and state in Western societies. Democracy in America was published after Tocqueville's travels in the United States, and is today considered an early work of sociology and political science.

Tocqueville was active in French politics, first under the July Monarchy (1830–48) and then during the Second Republic (1849–51) which succeeded the February 1848 Revolution. He retired from political life after Louis Napoléon Bonaparte's 2 December 1851 coup, and thereafter began work on The Old Regime and the Revolution.

He argued that the importance of the French Revolution was to continue the process of modernizing and centralizing the French state which had begun under King Louis XIV. The failure of the Revolution came from the inexperience of the deputies who were too wedded to abstract Enlightenment ideals. Tocqueville was a classical liberal who advocated parliamentary government, but was skeptical of the extremes of democracy.

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Théodore Chassériau [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

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Fearless

Reactionary, Neo"conservative" spin to Tocqueville’s work

Reviewed in the United States on July 5, 2020

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This translation has a neoconservative spin.
The translators are well know for their reactionary, so called now "conservative" views, writings and teachings.
It's also translated and written in a way that is confusing and not easy to understand.
George Lawrence’s translation is still the most accurate, clear and most importantly honest translation to date.

Here are some comparisons:

Tocqueville criticizes Connecticut lawgivers for copying from the Bible to establish laws.

On page 41 Lawrence's translation says: If an man after legal conviction shall have or worship any other God but the Lord God, he shall be put to death.
There follow ten or twelve provisions of the same sort taken word for word from Deuteronomy, Exodus, or Leviticus.

Mansfield translation says on page 38: If any man (after legal conviction), shall have or worship any other God but the Lord God,” they say to begin with, “ he shall be put to death”
There follow ten or twelve provisions of the same nature, borrowed from the texts of Deutoronomy, Exodus, and Leviticus.

Lawrence used "taken word for word" Mansfield used "borrowed"
Tocqueville used the French word “textuellement”.
The font is even sideways to emphasize the fact the the lawgivers were copying word for word from the Bible to come up with their laws.

By using the word “borrowed” Mansfield distorts what Tocqueville clearly wrote, that the lawgivers where copying textually from the Bible to make their laws.
Borrowed is not the same as textually, word for word or copying.
Borrowing means that you are going to use some or part of an ideas or words but not the whole text.

Mansfield distorts Tocqueville's words and meaning.
Was he trying to hide or dismiss Tocqueville’s criticism of lawgivers making laws by textually copying word from word from the Bible?

On page 10 Lawrence correctly translates: Even more often we find kings giving the lower classes in the state a share in government in order to humble the aristocracy.

Mansfield translates on page 4: Even more often one saw the kings have the lower classes of the state participate in the government in order to bring down the aristocracy.

The original french says: afin d'abaisser, (with the purpose of lowering) which in this context doesn’t mean that kings wanted to bring down aristocracy. That would mean that they wanted the aristocracies destroyed, as when you say: I’m going to bring you down.
Once again Lawrence correctly uses the word humble which communicates that the kings wanted to diminish aristocracy’s power, not to bring them down.

Was Mansfield trying to scare or warn current aristocracies about their destruction by using the words bring down instead of humbling?

Mansfield translation could easily be included in Tocqueville’s admonition to Reeve’s on his first translation into English on a letter he wrote from France:

Your translation must maintain my attitude; this I demand not only from the translator, but from the man. It has seemed to me that in the translation of the last book you have, without wanting it, following the instinct of your opinions, very lively colored what was contrary to democracy and rather appeased what could do wrong to aristocracy.

62 people found this helpful

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Judy

A Book Every American Needs to Read

Reviewed in the United States on April 2, 2018

Verified Purchase

I’ve always been fascinated by America, the American experiment, the American experience. In college, I found my place in the sociology, anthropology, political science and literature of the American people, values and ideals. My novels are born of the culture of merging, conflicting cultures we, as Americans, were born into, from my conviction that dealing with that experience is the challenge of being American. Only once before, in 1968, have I had the horrifying sense that the country was coming apart under the strain, a sense of the great experiment disintegrating.
What has happened to us? Where did this disintegration into hate and violence, this contempt for our institutions begin and where is it taking us? From all of my early studies, the work that keeps coming to mind, as I look for answers is Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. De Tocqueville was a French aristocrat who hated tyranny and feared that democracy would disintegrate into tyranny of the majority. He understood, however that democracy was the future, so in 1831 he came to America in order to see it in action. To my mind, no student should graduate from high school in the United States without reading his observations and reflections on the American people, for we desperately need to renew our sense of not only the hope but the challenges of being an American and a commitment to support its survival as a democracy.
De Tocqueville feared individualism and the abolition of the class system that, he believed, gave order and stability to the European nations. He believed that without that order, people would be forever anxious about where they belonged and would end up forever comparing themselves to each other. Forever insecure, their individualism would devolve into selfishness and each would end up alone. We should take a good look at ourselves in light of this fear. Has our insecurity, our need to know where we belong splintered us into rival groups where each gains stature by debunking the other?
However, De Tocqueville also found in the Americans, an equality unknown in Europe and with a deep sense of community and civil order. He found a people committed to building a new world, to resolving together the problems that confronted them. He believed that the multitude of civic organizations would counter the dangers of individualism. The men, he thought, would forever strive to power and acquisition of wealth, but the mores, the “habits of the heart” carried by the women, would provide the civilizing force.
He has a great deal to say about the role of religion in the New World and many other subjects, but this gives a taste of a perspective different enough to shake up the all-to-stale ideologies that have broken us into enemy camps. We have indeed joined civil action groups, but we have, since Trump’s election, discovered the importance of unwritten mores, that undergird our common culture. That gives us the opportunity to regain our sense of belonging to a whole.
His views on the role of women should spark lively conversations on individualism versus commitment for both genders as well as on the effect of the rampant greed of the eighties and nineties. De Tocqueville believed it is the “habits of the heart” that give the Americans strength. We need to rediscover those together.

94 people found this helpful

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Deborah Gallo Leister

The best interpretation of Tocqueville’s seminal writings on American democracy.

Reviewed in the United States on June 15, 2020

Verified Purchase

I am a Tocqueville fan so this is my third reading and version of “Democracy In America” and by far my favorite. I am still amazed at the relevancy of this Frenchman’s ability in 1838-40 to visit America during Andrew Jackson’s Presidency and see our country so clearly that this work remains as relevant now as it was then,180+ years ago but now projected into our country's future. The difference in this edition is that these two scholars did an extremely solid job of translating Tocqueville’s original meaning into the most readable and understandable format thus far. The footnotes are equally as elucidating. It is nice that the two volumes have been placed together as one book — but clearly indicate where the first one ends the second one begins. This way you are able to move between the two volumes without losing the essence of his commentary. Also, it is easier to catch the two year pause in Tocqueville's writing that he, personally, took to complete them.
Nevertheless, this has always been “THE” seminal piece on American Democracy and remains even more so thanks to these talented interpreters. This is the piece worth reading and grappling with it’s pertinence today. To translate Tocqueville's words, "America is great because America is good. America will cease to be great when it is no longer good." These two sentences are the reason these two volumes remain as the singular, most important analysis of America, even today.
Debbie Leister
Delray Beach, FL

25 people found this helpful

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