ABSTRACT
The chapter’s contribution to Tocqueville scholarship is centered around three topics. The first is the complexity of Tocqueville’s approach to majority tyranny, which makes it the first one that might properly be called a “theory,” and not just a bundle of reflections on certain aspects of the problem. The second is the originality of Tocqueville’s socio-cultural perspective, which makes it different from both the Federalists’ and some of his own followers’ more technically oriented political argument. Finally, and perhaps more provocatively, the chapter argues that Democracy in America is best described as a piece of political theology which goes beyond the synthesis of political, social, and cultural aspects of majority tyranny. To reveal these theological underpinnings, Tocqueville’s meditations on providential history, his concept of the “omnipotence” of the majority, and his enigmatically short chapter on democratic pantheism are read along the main line of argument.
