Alexis de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, and the Modern Debate on the Enlightenment

Abstract

This article discusses Tocqueville’s and Mill’s views of the cultural progress of indigenous colonial societies in the context of the current debate about the Enlightenment. The analysis of their philosophical outlooks tends to support Jonathan Israel’s interpretation of the Enlightenment, yet with one important difference: while Israel emphasizes the Radical Enlightenment as the chief instigator of the movement towards modern democracy, Tocqueville’s and Mill’s views emphasize the preponderance of the Moderate Enlightenment, which, while sharing the radical advocacy for rationalism, broad education, religious toleration, the critique of despotism, and other enlightened ideals, nonetheless shunned support of full democracy or universal suffrage. Tocqueville’s and Mill’s Eurocentric views regarding the possible ameliorative influence of colonialism emphasize how the ideals of the Moderate Enlightenment had an overriding effect on the emergence of nineteenth-century liberalism. While this conclusion broadly accepts Israel’s outline of the intellectual history of the Enlightenment, it gives greater weight than he does to the Moderate Enlightenment.

Keywords:

• Enlightenment
• Liberalism
• Alexis de Tocqueville
• John Stuart Mill
• Jonathan Israel

Notes

1. For a few pertinent examples from a very extensive literature, see Robertson, Case for the Enlightenment; Oz-Salzberger, “New Approaches”; McMahon, “What are Enlightenments?”; O’Brien, “Return of the Enlightenment”; Edelstein, Enlightenment: A Genealogy.

2. Gay, Enlightenment; Cassirer, Philosophy of the Enlightenment; Porter and Teich, Enlightenment in National Context.

3. See Israel, Radical Enlightenment; Israel, Enlightenment Contested; Israel, Revolution of the Mind; Israel, Democratic Enlightenment; Israel, Revolutionary Ideas.

4. For an important study, see McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment.

5. See their respective contributions in “Symposium on J. G. A. Pocock’s Barbarism and Religion.” Even more recently, see Israel, “Rousseau, Diderot, and the ‘Radical Enlightenment.’”

6. See Pocock, Barbarism and Religion.

7. Pocock, “Historiography and Enlightenment,” 83–4, 91, 93–5. Also see Pocock, Religion: The First Triumph, 215–19, 313–14.

8. See Pocock, Enlightenments of Edward Gibbon; Pocock, “Clergy and Commerce”; Pocock, “Conservative Enlightenment and Democratic Revolutions.”

9. See Israel, Expanding Blaze, 15.

10. Pitts, Turn to Empire.

11. For Tocqueville’s historiographical methodology, see Gargan, “Tocqueville and the Problem of Historical Prognosis”; Schleifer, “Tocqueville as Historian”; Kloppenberg, “Canvas and the Color.”

12. See May, “Tocqueville and the Enlightenment Legacy”; Jardin, Alexis de Tocqueville, 62–63. For his ambivalence regarding the Enlightenment, see Mitchell, Individual Choice, 135–6, 161, 233–7, 267; Mitchell, America after Tocqueville, 31, 86–87, 154, 172. For the influence of Montesquieu on Tocqueville, and for points of difference between them, see Richter, “The Uses of Theory.” Montesquieu of course influenced many thinkers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but few followed (and also departed from) him in the field of historical sociology in more significant ways than Tocqueville.

13. See the letter to Arthur de Gobineau from December 20, 1853, in Tocqueville, Selected Letters, 302–5.

14. See Tocqueville, Old Regime and the Revolution, 2.342, 368.

15. Israel, Enlightenment Contested, 20–21.

16. Pocock, “Perceptions of Modernity,” 63.

17. On Tocqueville’s religiosity, see Jardin, Alexis de Tocqueville, 384–85, 528–32 and passim.

18. Israel, Democratic Enlightenment, 6–8; also 808–21, 924–33, 937–51 and passim.

19. Israel, Revolutionary Ideas, 695–708.

20. Israel, Democratic Enlightenment, 11–12, 16–17.

21. For discussions of this topic, see Richter, “Tocqueville’s Contributions”; Drescher, “‘Why Great Revolutions’”; Boesche, “Why Did Tocqueville Think.”

22. Tocqueville, Recollections, 66.

23. On this oft-discussed topic, see, for example, Maletz, “Tocqueville’s Tyranny of the Majority.”

24. On Tocqueville’s ambivalence regarding the influence of democracy on cultural and intellectual development, see Schleifer, Making of Tocqueville’s Democracy, 279–89.

25. Tocqueville, De la démocratie en Amérique, 2.89–92.

26. See Tocqueville to Gobineau, November 17, 1853, Selected Letters, 297–301. Also see Schleifer, Making of Tocqueville’s Democracy, 82–96; Janara, “Brothers and Others.”

27. There is a large literature on this topic. For a few examples, see Popkin, “Philosophical Basis of Eighteenth-Century Racism”; Hudson, “From ‘Nation’ to ‘Race’”; Gissis, “Visualizing ‘Race’”; Stock, “‘Almost a Separate Race.’” Also of interest is Nelson, “Making Men.”

28. Israel, Democratic Enlightenment, 591, 608, 737; and Israel, Enlightenment Contested, 590–614.

29. See Tocqueville, Writings on Empire and Slavery; and for his discussions of India, see Tocqueville, Écrits et discourse politiques, 441–553.

30. See Meek, Social Science and the Ignoble Savage; Pocock, Barbarians, Savages and Empires; Hont, Jealousy of Trade, 159–84, 364–66; Höpfl, “From Savage to Scotsman”; Berry, Social Theory of the Scottish Enlightenment, 61–71; Garrett, “Anthropology”; Emerson, “Conjectural History and Scottish Philosophers”; and for nineteenth-century influences, see Palmeri, “Conjectural History.”

31. See Mancini, “Political Economy and Cultural Theory”; and for a more guarded assessment, see Mitchell, America After Tocqueville, 79–85, 108–11, 153–54. A particularly systematic utilization of stadial theory appears in one of his minor works, “Mémoire sur le paupérisme,” esp. 296–313. See also Jardin, Alexis de Tocqueville, 242–46.

32. Tocqueville, De la démocratie en Amérique, 1.342–43: “La civilisation est le résultat d’un long travail social qui s’opère dans un même lieu, et que les différentes générations se lèguent les unes aux autres en se succédant. Les peuples chez lesquels la civilisation parvient le plus difficilement à fonder son empire sont les peuples chasseurs. Les tribus de pasteurs changent de lieux, mais elles suivent toujours dans leurs migrations un ordre régulier, et reviennent sans cesse sur leurs pas; la demeure des chasseurs varie comme celle des animaux mêmes qu’ils poursuivent.” My translation here and in the following quotation.

33. Ibid., 1.343–44: “[J]e ne saurais m’empêcher de penser que la même cause a produit, dans les deux hémisphères, les mêmes effets, et qu’au milieu de la diversité apparente des choses humaines, il n’est pas impossible de retrouver un petit nombre de faits générateurs dont tous les autres découlent. Dans tout ce que nous nommons les institutions germaines, je suis donc tenté de ne voir que des habitudes de barbares, et des opinions de sauvages dans ce que nous appelons les idées féodales.” See Wolloch, “Barbarian Tribes, American Indians.”

34. See Pitts, Turn to Empire, 19–21, 240–41 and passim.

35. See Mill, “Negro Question.”

36. See Mill, “Civilization.”

37. See Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 1.10–21 and passim.

38. Ibid., 2.594, and 2.686, 711.

39. Ibid., 2.710–11.

40. See Condorcet, Sketch for a Historical Picture, 177–79. Also see Pitts, Turn to Empire, 29, 168–73; Pagden, Lords of All the World, 10, 160, 169–74, 189, 198–200.

41. For critical discussions, see, for example, Pitts, Turn to Empire, 133–62; Mehta, Liberalism and Empire, 77–114; Habibi, “Moral Dimensions”; Jahn, “Barbarian Thoughts”; Bell, “John Stuart Mill on Colonies.” Less critical assessments include, e.g., Marwah, “Complicating Barbarism and Civilization”; Robson, “Civilization and Culture as Moral Concepts.”

42. See Mill, “A Few Words on Non-Intervention,” esp. 118–20, quotation at 118–19.

43. For Tocqueville’s writings on Algeria, which evince his gradually growing endorsement of aggressive occupation of the colony, see Tocqueville, Writings on Empire and Slavery, passim. On the significant issue of his views on colonialism and its incompatibility with his otherwise liberal views, see also Jardin, Alexis de Tocqueville, 316–42; Pitts, Turn to Empire, 189–96, 204–39, 254–57; Richter, “Tocqueville on Algeria”; Welch, “Colonial Violence.”

44. Welch, “Colonial Violence”; and see also Welch, “Tocqueville on Fraternity and Fratricide.”

45. For his notes on India, see Tocqueville, Écrits et discourse politiques, 441–553. Yet there were limits to the similarity between the English and French nations; see Tocqueville, Writings on Empire and Slavery, 1–4; Pitts, Turn to Empire, 219–26; Jardin, Alexis de Tocqueville, 338–42; Richter, “Tocqueville on Algeria.”

46. See Tocqueville, “First Report on Algeria,” 129–73, 144.

47. See Tocqueville, “The Emancipation of Slaves (1843),” 199–226, quotation at 212.

48. See Tocqueville, “Second Letter on Algeria (22 August 1837),” and “Essay on Algeria (October 1841),” 14–26 and 59–116, esp. 59–88, respectively; Tocqueville, “First Report on Algeria,” 141–42; 142–46.

49. See Muthu, Enlightenment Against Empire.

50. See L’Abbé Raynal, Philosophical and Political History, 3.172–87, 280–83, 306–8. See also Ludlow, “Legacy of the Spanish Conquest.” For other eighteenth-century examples of praise for the Jesuit missionaries in Paraguay, see Muratori, Relation of the Missions of Paraguay, esp. 58–65, 130–36; Robertson, History of the Reign, 3.204.

51. See Jardin, Alexis de Tocqueville, 40.

52. See, for example, Israel, Democratic Enlightenment, 943.

53. Ibid., 819–21.