Tocqueville's Road Map: Methodology, Liberalism, Revolution, and Despotism

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Lexington Books, 2006 - Political Science - 217 pages
One of the country's foremost Tocqueville scholars, Roger Boesche has gathered together his writings on Tocqueville from the last quarter century. These essays focus on various specific aspects of Tocqueville's political thought.
 

Selected pages

Contents

Why Could Tocqueville Predict So Well?
1
The Strange Liberalism of Alexis de Tocqueville
27
Tocqueville on the Tension between Commerce and Citizenship
59
Why Did Tocqueville Think a Successful Revolution Was Impossible?
85
The Dark Side of Tocqueville On War and Empire
109
Hedonism and Nihilism The Predictions of Tocqueville and Nietzsche
127
The Prison Tocquevilles Model for Despotism
149
Tocqueville and Arendt on the Novelty of Modern Tyranny
169
Le Commerce A Newspaper Expressing Tocquevilles Unusual Liberalism
189
Index
211
About the Author
Copyright

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About the author (2006)

Roger Boesche was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma on January 24, 1948. He received a bachelor's degree and a doctorate in political science from Stanford University. He began teaching at Occidental College in 1977 and retired in 2017. An expert on political theory and history, he wrote several books including Theories of Tyranny: From Plato to Arendt and The Strange Liberalism of Alexis de Tocqueville. He was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis at the age of 15. After more than a dozen surgeries, he was told by one doctor not to expect to live past 60. He died in his sleep on May 23, 2017 at the age of 69.