… if all of us who come from Nietzscheism, from nihilism, or from historical materialism, said in public that we were wrong and that there are moral values and that in the future we shall do what is necessary to establish and illustrate them, don't you believe this would be the beginning of a hope?
Tocqueville's argument that great revolutions will become more rare is sobering, if not chilling. But we may warm to it when we realize that it is a prospectus of realignment, intended to raise the sights of democratic statesmen and political scientists. The problem of constitutionalist statesmanship it exhibits is to combine two antithetical moralities: revolutionary morals and the morals of commerce. This paper takes seriously Tocqueville's view that “the books that have made men reflect the most and have had the most influence on their opinions and actions are not those in which the author has sought to tell them dogmatically what it is suitable to think, but those in which he has set their minds on the road leading to truths and has made them find these truths for themselves” (to Corcelle, 17 September 1853). By highlighting Tocqueville's understanding of realigning statesmanship, it seeks to reopen his approach to the study of realignment as an exercise of significant choice by the electorate, a choice of constitutional forms.
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