Political Studies Books
| Date | 01 June 2002 |
| Published date | 01 June 2002 |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9248.00502 |
| Subject Matter | Original Article |
POLITICAL
STUDIES
BOOKS
Political Theory 366 Asia-Pacific 423
Britain and Ireland 385 Other Areas 426
North America 396 International Relations 435
Europe 407 Comparative 439
366 POLITICAL THEORY
Sheldon Wolin here revisits the major
themes of his influential writing on
modern politics – the eclipse of the politi-
cal, the problematical vocation of the
political philosopher, and the dangers
posed by democratic loss in the contem-
porary world – through a stimulating con-
frontation with Alexis de Tocqueville. The
premise of this ambitious book is that one
can gain a deeper sense of the challenges
facing both modern and ‘postmodern’
politics by following Tocqueville’s simulta-
neous attempts to create a political life
and to reinvent political theory by strad-
dling the various dichotomous worlds of
Wolin’s title: America and France, ‘archaic’
and modern, political and social. The
book contextualizes Tocqueville among a
wide array of modern political theorists
and discusses in detail his major works in
chronological order (the 1835 and 1840
POLITICAL THEORY
TOCQUEVILLE BETWEEN TWO
WORLDS:
the making of a Political and
Theoretical Life
by Sheldon S. Wolin
Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press,
2001. 650 pages, $35.00,
ISBN 0 691 07436 4
WRITINGS ON EMPIRE AND
SLAVERY
by Alexis de Tocqueville
(Jennifer Pitts edited and translated)
Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2001. 315 pages, £29.50,
ISBN 0 8018 6509 3
Readership: Advanced
undergraduates, postgraduates,
academic/research
Rating: ****
Reviewer: CHERYL B. WELCH
(Simmons College)
Democracies, the Souvenirs, and The Old
Regime and the Revolution).
Both serious students of Tocqueville and
practitioners of political theory are likely
to appreciate the penetrating portrait of
Tocqueville that results from this fertile
meeting of two minds. Most impressive
are Wolin’s extended discussions of the
significance of Tocquevillian metaphors
for the vocation of a theorist: theory as
‘voyage’ and theory as a kind of pain-
terly aesthetic that reacts to spectacle,
composes tableaux, and obsesses over
distance and perspective. A series of
meditations rather than a tightly struc-
tured argument, Wolin’s narrative some-
times wanders, stranding the reader
without clear signposts. Nevertheless,
his depiction of Tocqueville as a theorist
who struggled – sometimes valiantly,
sometimes ‘absurdly’ – to transpose the
political idiom of ancienneté into an
inhospitable modern context, thereby
illuminating the predicament of any the-
orist of modern democracy, is arresting
and provocative.
Wolin argues that as Tocqueville recoiled
from the pettiness of politics in the July
Monarchy and the politically turbulent
implications of the social question in mid
century, he increasingly turned to religion
and nationalism, and away from demo-
cratic participation, to sustain his vision of
ordered liberty. Yet Wolin says little about
the issues with which Tocqueville was
most involved in his parliamentary ca-
reer, and in particular about Tocqueville’s
nationalism and imperialism. (Indeed,
Wolin more concerns himself with a rare-
fied Arendtian concept of ‘the political’
than the pedestrian stuff of actual
‘politics’.) Hence perhaps Wolin’s least
persuasive claim is to have shown how
Tocqueville combined ‘the theoretical
life with the career of a politician.’
Jennifer Pitts’s welcome new translation
of Tocqueville’s writings on slavery and
empire wades directly into this terrain:
the liberal politics of French nationalism.
Pitts for the first time gathers together
Tocqueville’s most important writings on
empire and presents them in an excellent
English translation, with a set of erudite
but non-intrusive notes that guide the
reader skilfully through the thicket of
political history and interpretative
scholarship. The inclusion of his writings
on India would have made the collection
even more valuable, but Pitts presents
essential materials for English readers to
assess Tocqueville’s confrontation of the
non-European world and to re-evaluate
his more well-known works in the light of
this material.
In her substantial interpretative introduc-
tion, which discusses the evolution of
Tocqueville’s private and public writing
on Algeria, Pitts confronts the essential
question: does his defence of violent
colonialist policies contradict the liberal
democratic principles espoused in
Democracy in America? She concludes
that, although ‘[e]fforts to reconcile
Tocqueville’s widely divergent statements
on politics and morality in the context of
imperialism must ultimately fail,’ his posi-
tions on Algeria and on Anglo-American
expansionism may exhibit more continu-
ities than have previously been recog-
nized. Moreover, to consider Tocqueville’s
imperialism as an ‘inexplicable lapse’ begs
the question of the relationship of his
liberalism to his nationalism. She argues
that historical pressures on liberals, in par-
ticular the demands of nation building,
explain their tolerance – indeed embrace
– of imperialist aggression. In making
available Tocqueville’s writings on empire,
then, Pitts also raises important historical
and theoretical questions about the rela-
tionship of liberal theory to imperialist
practice and about the adequacy of
western liberal theory in a post-colonial
world.
POLITICAL STUDIES BOOKS 367
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY:
from Plato to Mao
by Martin Cohen
London: Pluto Press, 2001. 256 pages,
£13.99, ISBN 0 7453 1603 4
Reviewer: GEOFFREY THOMAS
(Birkbeck College, London)
Cohen aims to provide an historically-
based introduction to political philosophy
through a ‘synthesis’ – the author’s
own word – of ideas and arguments
from Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke,
Rousseau, Adam Smith, Marx and Engels,
J. S. Mill, Comte, Emile Durkheim, Max
Weber, Hegel, Nietzsche, Mao Zedong
and Francis Fukuyama, with walk-on parts
for Aristotle and others. ‘Timeline’ sec-
tions between chapters provide context
and continuity. Continuity is also served
by Cohen’s penchant for noting un-
expected similarities: between Plato and
Durkheim, Machiavelli and Mao, Weber
and Nietzsche. There is a modest but
helpful amount of direct quotation,
giving the reader an authentic flavour of
the original writings; and the choice of
text for Mill is particularly good. Instead
of the (almost inevitable) On Liberty,
Cohen takes Principles of Political
Economy. This enables him to explore
Mill’s view of the total role of govern-
ment, not just the role fixed by the liberty
principle. Cohen is a lively writer whose
style makes the book an entertaining
and accessible guide to a wide variety of
theorists. For critical comment, I think the
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