Tocqueville on Pantheism: The Theory of Democratic Despotism

AbstractThis article argues that Tocqueville considered pantheism as the theoretical foundation of two types of democratic despotism: the omnipotence of “the majority” as an intellectual effect of pantheism, and administrative centralization as a political effect, such as that found in Saint-Simonianism. Focusing on Tocqueville’s critical views against the thirst for “pan” or the passion for unity in postrevolutionary French publications, this article sheds new light on Tocqueville’s theory of democratic despotism, which became a more passionate, even religious idea in the second volume of Democracy in America. Contrasting Tocqueville’s discussion of pantheism with the analyses of certain Catholic thinkers, it also argues that Tocqueville defended a form of individualism against pantheism’s threat to individual liberties.