Tocqueville's resistance to the social

Welch, Cheryl B.

doi:10.1016/j.histeuroideas.2003.08.009

Cited by 9 publications

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“…123 Accordingly, many liberals endorsed what Cheryl Welch has called the "analytical weight the social exerted on the political," the assumption that society established constraints within which political institutions had to operate. 124 This assumption took various forms in the early nineteenth century: the Doctrinaires' vision of l'état social démocratique; 125 the social economy of Destutt de Tracy, J. B.…”

Section: Poverty and The Practice Of Citizenshipmentioning

confidence: 99%

USURPATION AND “THE SOCIAL” IN BENJAMIN CONSTANT'SCOMMENTAIRE

Englert¹

2018

Mod. Intell. Hist.

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As part of Benjamin Constant's academic “revival,” scholars have revisited the political and religious elements of his thought, but conclude that he remained uninterested in the nineteenth century's major social and economic questions. This article examines Constant's response to what would later become known as “the social question” in his Commentary on Filangieri's Work, and argues that his claims about poverty and its alleviation highlight central elements of his political liberalism, especially on the practice of citizenship in the modern age. By interpreting social issues through his original political lens of “usurpation,” Constant encouraged skepticism of social legislation and identified the political implications of a “disinherited” poor class. The lens of usurpation ultimately limited the scope of Constant's solutions to poverty. But his attention to social and economic issues prompts us to reexamine the category of “the social” and its uses in the history of liberal thought, particularly the place of class concerns in the French liberal tradition.

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Section: Poverty and The Practice Of Citizenshipmentioning

confidence: 99%

USURPATION AND “THE SOCIAL” IN BENJAMIN CONSTANT'SCOMMENTAIRE

Englert¹

2018

Mod. Intell. Hist.

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“…This is not to claim that other spheres exercised domination over the political, but to remark on the rise of the social and its more complicated relationship to the political. On these features of Tocqueville's thought, in particular, seeWelch (2004).…”

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Neo-republicanism: Machiavelli’s solutions for Tocqueville’s republic

Kimpell

2009

Eur. Pol. Sci. Rev.

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In this paper, I demonstrate that neo-republicanism, as found in the works of Philip Pettit, Quentin Skinner, Maurizio Viroli, Iseult Honohan, and John Maynor, is underpinned by a conception of the well-ordered republic derived from the classical republican tradition. I also argue that an alternative, modern framework of the republic and its political stability emerged in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and is captured in the work of thinkers like Benjamin Constant and Alexis de Tocqueville. Neo-republicanism, however, collapses these distinct conceptions of political order. It does so in some cases by misinterpreting these nineteenth-century figures as representing the continuation of the classical perspective that calls for virtuous political participation to secure freedom. It does so in others by aligning with a classical framework of political order and yet not seeing its core conundrum as problematic, perhaps because of adopting assumptions associated with an optimistic perspective on social and political change. What is more, even if neither were a problem, neo-republicanism, in its appeal to a classical tradition, overlooks a relevant body of work which dealt with key republican concerns from within the context of increasingly commercial and heterogeneous societies.

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Alexis de Tocqueville

Janara

2011

The Wiley‐Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists

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Tocqueville's resistance to the social

Cited by 9 publications

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USURPATION AND “THE SOCIAL” IN BENJAMIN CONSTANT'SCOMMENTAIRE

USURPATION AND “THE SOCIAL” IN BENJAMIN CONSTANT'SCOMMENTAIRE

Neo-republicanism: Machiavelli’s solutions for Tocqueville’s republic

Alexis de Tocqueville

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