Alexis de Tocqueville on Enlightened Self Interest

By Olivia Pierson

Philosopher and historian, Alexis de Tocqueville, at age 25 traveled from France to America during 1831 in order to cultivate a firsthand understanding of America’s experiment in self governance up close.  To understand democracy at all he felt, he needed to understand it in America. A meticulous note-keeper, the result of his tour yielded his highly readable magnum opus Democracy in America in which he used the phrase “self-interest rightly understood,” colloquially remembered as “enlightened self interest.” 

Because Tocqueville was raised as a French aristocrat, with everything that term came to mean after the violence of the Revolution (his great-grandfather Malesherbes defended King Louis and Marie Antoinette before the 1792 December Convention and was guillotined for it), America fascinated him as the greatest yet to be written epic of New World democracy in action. Tocqueville was generous with both his biting criticisms and his reverent praises, whereby as a matter of necessity due to one social system springing out of the other - like Athena from the head of Zeus - the democratic experiment was compared most obviously with its aristocratic parent.

He wrote:

When the world was managed by a few rich and powerful individuals, these persons loved to entertain a lofty idea of the duties of man. They were fond of professing that it is praiseworthy to forget one's self, and that good should be done without hope of reward, as it is by the Deity himself. Such were the standard opinions of that time in morals. I doubt whether men were more virtuous in aristocratic ages than in others; but they were incessantly talking of the beauties of virtue, and its utility was only studied in secret…

In the United States hardly anybody talks of the beauty of virtue; but they maintain that virtue is useful, and prove it every day. The American moralists do not profess that men ought to sacrifice themselves for their fellow-creatures because it is noble to make such sacrifices; but they boldly aver that such sacrifices are as necessary to him who imposes them upon himself as to him for whose sake they are made…

I do not think upon the whole that there is more egotism amongst us than in America; the only difference is, that there it is enlightened—here it is not.
 
[Democracy in America, Volume Two, Section 2, Chapter 8 - ‘The Americans Combat Individualism by The Principle of Interest Rightly Understood’]

​It’s worth noting that Tocqueville conducted this tour thirty years before the Civil War broke out which, of course, altered the nation forever. Democracy had not really begun in the antebellum South, but the fact that all those slavocracies were soon to be entirely overthrown would owe much to that spirit of self-interested, sacrificial willingness within the American DNA that Tocqueville marked - especially considering the noble character of Abraham Lincoln, just an ignominious shopkeeper at that time.  

Tocqueville explored the evolution of “rights” from aristocratic to democratic societies. He argued that individual rights, fundamental to democracy, originated within aristocracy. To fight for one’s rights had been the privilege of the nobility, as the example of the barons fighting King John for the rights of the Magna Carta illustrated perfectly. As society transitioned to democracy, influenced by revolutions and Enlightenment ideals, the concept of rights augmented to embrace all individuals.  Citizenship - even more than equality, was to be the prize.  
 
Tocqueville was also struck by the pivotal role of associations and civic-mindedness in early America at this time, and these associations encompassed a wide range of activities: cultural, religious, professional and charitable organisations. He noted that these groups served as vital areas for political discourse, enabling citizens to collaborate, share ideas, and influence public policy. More importantly he noticed that active participation in civic life was essential for warding off the ever present potential for a tyranny of the majority, and he hated tyrannies of majority after what his ancestors had suffered under the Jacobins (those fanatical Wokies).

One of the most striking things about modern democracies of our era is just how successful they became, to the point where we have this notion of the “silent majority” which does not want to be involved in politics. It mostly just desires to be left alone to indulge in the luxury of evasion - itself a civic right, though not a civic-minded one. Even during the Covid years, I could not honestly say that they were typified by a tyranny of the majority, it was more a tyranny of uppity governance and mindless, baseless edicts, issued through the professional institutions that the majority continued to be bloody silent about. Complacency and apathy were just too normal. 

One thing is for certain, we all got an enormous and painful lesson in why speaking our minds and holding our lines on the basis of self-interest, rightly understood, is utterly imperative to our dignity, our safety and the flourishing of our lives and bloodlines.

I’ll write more about Tocqueville and his magnificent insights into Democracy in America when I’ve finished reading the whole tome. In the meantime, I’ll end with this quote since it succinctly sums up his admiration for democracy as a social system: 

I do not hesitate to say that democracy is not necessarily the most useful or the most perfect form of government; but I maintain that it is the most advantageous for the people who are governed by it. And I ask what other form of government is more likely to be beneficial to the people? I say, therefore, that democracy is the most perfect and most suitable for those who are governed by it; and I say, further, that this is not because it is the most perfect form of government, but because it is the most advantageous for the people.
 
[Volume 1, Part 2, Chapter 7 - Democracy in America]