Opening the Democratic Heart: Interest, Charity, and Well-Being in the Political Thought of Alexis de Tocqueville

Abstract

Alexis de Tocqueville’s concept of intérêt bien entendu, as developed in Democracy in America, is among his most notable concepts. However, it is also among his most ambiguous, with interpretations of its meaning ranging from civic republican to utilitarian to Christian, among others. It is ironic that a concept that roughly translates to interest rightly understood remains so varyingly understood. However, that may explain why his theory of civil society also remains poorly understood, despite Tocqueville’s renown as a theorist of civil society. This dissertation examines Tocqueville’s often neglected notes on intérêt bien entendu to highlight his theorization of it in light of what he understood as forms of Christian virtue and love. In the process, it reconstructs his account of human nature; interrogates his understandings of utility and virtue, and honor and virtue; and draws attention to his style and goals as “democracy’s spiritual director.” It then considers what this reading of intérêt bien entendu clarifies about soft despotism and its effects on democratic institutions and democratic character. The often-unremarked fact that intérêt bien entendu disappears under soft despotism corresponds to the characterization of soft despotism as atomizing, atomistic, and personally individualistic. It also reflects soft despotism’s structural weakening of the spaces and practices of a free, participatory democratic politics and of the civic and social spaces where moral virtues are practiced, habituated, and elevated through the “reciprocal action of men upon one another.” “There is no vice of the human heart that pleases [despotism] as much as egoism: a despot easily pardons the governed for not loving him, provided that they do not love each other.” Finally, it turns to Tocqueville’s writings on charity, social reform, and public policy in the Memoirs on Pauperism and other texts to underline the relationship between intérêt bien entendu and charity and to nuance his account of soft despotism with the help of his writings on the democratic welfare state. Informed by the Christian political economy of his day, Tocqueville’s wrestling with the challenges posed by pauperism and industrialization demonstrates sensitivity to the distinction between ideal theory and what is prudent or possible. It likewise reflects a desire to balance the just demands of solidarity with the vulnerable against the variable political, social, and moral consequences of different forms of public charity. Tocqueville readily admits the necessity of a limited welfare state, or “Christian charity applied to politics.” However, a flourishing democratic social state requires association, the activities of which include pursuing goals associations set themselves and the distinctive moral formation that occurs in the space between the State and the family through fellowship, mutual dependence, and roles and relationships both chosen and given. Following this thread through Tocqueville’s thought helps us situate him in a specific French moral tradition and in discussions of his day about religion’s bearing on liberal political economy and democratic politics. It also suggests Tocqueville may be a resource for contemporary discussions of the anthropological, theological, and religious underpinnings of welfare policy, liberalism, theories of social justice and solidarity, and accounts of human flourishing.