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14. The Avatars of Religion in Tocqueville
- Fordham University Press
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c h a p t e r 1 4 The Avatars of Religion in Tocqueville Lucien Jaume La folie consiste à préférer sa propre raison, son autorité individuelle, à l’autorité générale ou au sens commun. lamennais, Essai sur l’indifférence en matière de religion One of the complexities presented by Democracy in America is that Tocqueville continuously intertwines his observations of the American case (including the exceptional factors that distinguish the first ‘‘republic in a large country,’’ as one used to say in that period) with the attempt to define a type (or ideal type) that stands out through the American example. This complexity is particularly felt in the case of Tocqueville’s discussion of religion, a topic where he pursues several related or parallel questions: First, what is the common trait that characterizes all of the sects of American Christianity? Second, in what way does religion in America, which is separate from the state, nevertheless relate to the spontaneous ideology present in civil society, which Tocqueville calls ‘‘self interest properly understood’’? Third, in what sense is modern democracy a new and speci fic form of religion? For the most part, interpreters have left aside the last question, as if Tocqueville did not himself take seriously the chapter ‘‘On the Principal Source of Beliefs Among Democratic Peoples.’’ From my perspective, however, this chapter is of essential importance.1 In that chapter Tocqueville asserts that democracy is not an ‘‘exit from religion’’ (sortie de la religion ), to use Marcel Gauchet’s expression,2 but rather a new way into religion: 273 274 Lucien Jaume Regardless of what political laws men are subject to in ages of equality, we may anticipate that faith in common opinion will become a sort of religion, with the majority as its prophet.3 Only in America could Tocqueville observe this reign of the majority (or, as he says in the same chapter, of the public), this religious deference of the democratic individual toward the new authority of modernity. Only in America were the necessary factors in place that favored the formation of a strong and lively public opinion: more democratic elections than the ones found in Europe; freedom of the press and of association; abundant diversity of newspapers; lively sociability within the townships of New England; and a plurality of religious groups. In fact, the question of the metamorphosis of the religious in the thought of Tocqueville confirms, more than in other domains, the three aims pursued by Democracy in America: to grapple with America, to expose in a comparative and critical way the case of France under the July monarchy,4 and to extract an ideal type of modern democracy that is at once favorable to the development of despotism and liberty. In order to position oneself on firm ground, it is useful to start from the question that Tocqueville asked himself, which may explain his interest in the religious transformed into the religion of the public. This question can be put as follows: what can turn democracy—this ‘‘social state’’ that is continuously menaced by the centrifugal forces of individualism—into a community? In fact, Tocqueville does not invent this question: it is widely debated in his time, given the specter of social dissolution in France after the Revolution.5 Moreover, in the literature emerging out of the tradition of Bonald and Lamennais, Tocqueville finds the answers to this question associated with the domain of religious beliefs. Just as Claude Lefort has shown that in Michelet the theologico-political question is both a recovery and a subversion of the monarchical or medieval imaginary,6 so it is useful to grasp the context in which Tocqueville has thought about the phenomenon of the religious dimension inherent to the democracy of free and equal individuals. In this essay, I shall first discuss Tocqueville’s debt to Lamennais, notably with respect to the fear of individualism and the means to maintain the social bond. Second, I shall examine the new meaning that Tocqueville gives to the concept of the religious, and why religion in America can be identified with what he calls the general opinion, that is, the opinion generally shared. This entails an examination of the new ‘‘authority’’ that is constituted by the public, an authority that fulfills the function of persuasion of individuals’ minds and, in that way, forms a new [3.236.171.68] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 14:47 GMT) 275...