Johnson Laurie M. - Honor in America?: Tocqueville on American enlightenment

Tocqueville on American Enlightenment

Laurie M. Johnson

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham Boulder New York London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

ISBN 9780739190470 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780739190487 (electronic)

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

To Larry Arnhart,

who gave me my first copy of Democracy in America,

and who, as my dissertation director,

started me on this long and increasingly happy journey

This book is the third in a series of books I have written on the development of liberal thought and how it impacts honor (the other two are Thomas Hobbes: Turning Point for Honor; Locke, Rousseau and the Enlightenments Answer to Honor). This third book will become a part of a new series I am co-editing with Dan Demetriou entitled Honor and Obligation in Liberal Society: Problems and Prospects. Obviously I have an enduring interest in how the development of liberalism and liberal societies has affected our view of honor, and how such stabilizing concepts as duty, family loyalty, social obligation, and virtue have been challenged as liberal democracy and capitalism continue to evolve. The benefits of liberal democracy are clear: people who live under such regimes are freer and more prosperous than ever before, and in some ways they are happier. Their happiness is connected to their freedom and prosperitythey are happy to the extent that they are able, as individuals, to choose how they will live their lives. They are happy to the extent that they are able to provide for themselves and determine their own fate, without being dependent on the state or society for help. And yet, liberal regimes have not produced universal happiness or satisfaction, and the benefits of liberal democracy, including individual freedom and prosperity, act as a double edged sword.

Freedom, expressed via a strong individualism and demand for autonomy, leads to political, cultural, and religious divisions that very much affect our day to day happiness. It has contributed to the breakdown of the family and also social experiments that do not necessarily lead to happiness or satisfaction. Children born into the resulting cultural chaos grow up less able to make and keep commitments. The pursuit of prosperity, likewise, does not necessarily lead to happiness or satisfaction when either the economy leaves some people out, or when people experiencing financial success find that their relationships suffer and their actual involvement in their family and community life declines. Men and women in such societies, whose strong sense of individualism and materialism keep them from seeing themselves as full members of families or communities (even smaller communities like churches, synagogues, clubs, and service organizations) also are handicapped in their ability to see themselves as full citizens, with a moral obligation to participate in deliberation and voting. I share many of these concerns in common with communitarians, and indeed just this year, I signed the communitarian platform. I come to the communitarian school of thought through a classical conservative lens. I do not agree with every detail in the platform, but I entirely agree with the concerns and issues communitarians raise concerning the unintended consequences of classical liberal ideology and unregulated capitalism.

There is a growing body of literature addressing these kinds of issues, and I am glad to have the opportunity to contribute once again to the conversation. In my introduction, I will spend some time discussing how that conversation has unfolded and why I have chosen Tocqueville as a means of bringing broader concerns about liberal democracy and capitalism to bear on the particular case of America. For now, I would like to thank Justin Race, former acquisitions editor at Lexington Books, who displayed such support for my work and helped Dr. Demetriou and myself launch this series. Joseph Parry has now taken over, and I feel confident that we are in good hands. Id also like to thank Glenn and Claire Swogger, who support the program I direct at K-State, the Primary Texts Certificate. Their encouragement for this program has spurred me to keep going, disseminating ideas that challenge the status quo. On a personal note, Id like to express my gratitude to my parents, Ken and Nina Johnson, for providing me a sense of family in a very concrete way. Family, like honor, is not about genetic or even legal connections, but about actions. But it just so happens that I am happily genetically related to them.

I also want to thank Lois Wetzel, Ciara Chambers, Brett Sitts, and Monica Macfarlane, all (at the time) undergraduate students who assisted me in researching several sections of this book. Ms. Wetzel worked for me for two semesters with a Research Scholarship and worked on Tocquevilles views on Native Americans, African Americans, women, and the family. She continued to work for me after the scholarship, doing more research and formatting for this book. Ms. Chambers is a life-saver who has pulled my manuscripts out of the formatting fire on numerous occasions, and who made one of my textbooks into a Kindle book so that undergraduate students could access it very inexpensively. I will really miss Ciara, because she just graduated and has moved on to law school. Mr. Sitts and Ms. Macfarlane helped with research on Tocquevilles views on the American military/U.S. foreign policy, and religion in America, respectively. These undergraduate students provided as much valuable assistance to me as any graduate student could have, and have all demonstrated their fitness to continue their studies into law school or graduate school. Finally, thanks especially to Spencer Hess, with whom dialogue about these and related issues has given me so much food for thought that I could not hope to encompass even a fraction of my response to it in one book. Still, I