A Secular Reading of Alexis de Tocqueville

Abstract

Alexis de Tocqueville is sometimes presented as an almost prophetic political thinker, Annelien De Dijn and Raf Geenens write in their introduction to this book. This is an appropriate observation, indeed. On law, politics, philosophy and other subjects he has presented new ideas that only much later got the recognition that they deserve. According to many commentators this also applies to his ideas on religion. After the relentless onslaught of some radical Enlightenment thinkers on religion (especially Holbach),1 Tocqueville was one of the most impressive nineteenth-century commentators who tried to reconcile modern democracy with religion.2