Question

Tocqueville noted that the development of public charity was the result of industrialization in England. Explain. Be sure to include in your discussion his argument on the development of man from the state of nature, private versus public charity and the natural idleness of man

Answer 1

Answer:  Alexis de Tocqueville was a 19th-century French political thinker and one of the leading names in liberal thought. His theoretical concerns led him to an active political career in France, where he was a parliamentarian and minister of state.

We can say that Tocqueville's main concern was the dilemma between freedom and equality. For him, humanity would be moving towards equality of opportunity, desirable and natural, but which could constitute a threat to freedom.

Tocqueville analyzed the sociopolitical development of some European societies compared to the United States, describing both the values, habits and customs of the peoples studied, as well as their political institutions, focusing mainly on the relationship between civil society and the state. Thus he identified equality as the main feature of democracy. For him, egalitarian development would be a universal and unstoppable process in human societies. Each country would have its own democratic process, with its particular characteristics, defined mainly by the action of civil society.

The author argued that all these deviations from democracy could be avoided by the political activity of citizens and by democratic institutions. Hence the importance of an efficient body of laws that not only guarantees equal opportunity among citizens, but also safeguards individual freedoms. His defense of a liberal democratic political system that guaranteed individual freedoms in an egalitarian society led him to be considered one of the leading thinkers of liberalism.