ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the rather different solutions Jacob Burckhardt, John Stuart Mill, and Alexis De Tocqueville proposed for their common problematic while bringing out their shared emphasis on education. Crucial to the aristocratic liberals' political ideal was their stress on decentralization and local self-government, on individual participation in society. It was the obverse side of their attack on centralization and uniformity and the political corollary of their stress on the individual. On the socio-economic front, the aristocratic liberals embodied their ideals in allegiance to the right of private property and a general acceptance of the principles of laissez-faire in economics, although not without some reservations. For all the aristocratic liberals, but for Mill in particular, the economic freedom of the individual was a necessary part of those modern "negative liberties" that they cherished. Education served to overcome a defective sociology of liberty. Aristocratic liberals' focus on education never ignored society and politics.
