The Place of Religion in the Liberal Philosophy of Constant, Tocqueville, and Lord Acton by RALPH RAICO

Author:RALPH RAICO [RAICO, RALPH]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-61016-000-1
Publisher: Ludwig von Mises Institute
Published: 2010-11-06T16:00:00+00:00

It is clear from what has gone before that Tocqueville conceived of religion as offering a possible extra-rational and authoritative solution for some of the problems of democratic society. What is difficult to judge is whether he thought it necessary that such a solution should be resorted to as a substitute for rational persuasion.

The problem occurs primarily because of a chapter in the second volume of Democracy, “How the Americans Combat Individualism by the Principle of Self-Interest Rightly Understood.” Here he outlines how the more elevated and self-sacrificing ethical systems of aristocratic times have been replaced, in that laboratory of the democratic experience that is the United States, by another doctrine “that man serves himself in serving his fellow creatures and that his private interest is to do good.” This is an example of a modern people having become aware of the inevitability of a certain degree at least of “individualism” and having come to terms with it by turning it to advantage. The Americans

have found out that in their country and their age, man is brought home to himself by an irresistible force; and, losing all hope of stopping that force, they turn all their thoughts to the direction of it. They therefore do not deny that every man may follow his own interest, but they endeavor to prove that it is the interest of every man to be virtuous.121

The linking up of personal hedonism in this way with social utilitarianism is another manifestation of the increasing “rationality” of the world. In words that might have been written by any number of social thinkers from Burke to Max Weber, Tocqueville asks:

Do you not see that religious belief is shaken and the divine notion of right is declining, that morality is debased and the notion of moral right is therefore fading away? Argument is substituted for faith, and calculation for the impulse of sentiment.122

But, with the sort of resigned realism that contributed to distinguishing him from more conservative observers of the same process, he asserts that one must accept this new state of affairs as given and take advantage of some of its own features to mitigate its worst potentialities:

If, in the midst of this general disruption, you do not succeed in connecting the notion of right with that of private interest, which is the only immutable point in the human heart, what means will you have of governing the world except fear?123

Tocqueville concedes that this new ethical system is more likely to produce moderation and regularity than any spectacular acts of self-sacrifice. Nevertheless, it will serve its function if, while not generating many acts of saintly virtue, it induces the great majority of mankind to comply with the minimal demands of morality. He therefore gives it his endorsement:

I am not afraid to say that the principle of self-interest rightly understood appears to me the best suited of all philosophical theories to the wants of men of our time, and that I regard it as their chief remaining security against themselves.

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