Alexis de Tocqueville · Politics

Equality, Liberty, and the Revolution

Tocqueville’s last great work turned from America to the French Revolution, and to the deepest tension in his thought: that a people may passionately love <em>equality</em> while caring little for <em>liberty</em> - and that the Revolution, far from destroying the centralised state, completed it.

What you'll be able to recall

You learned Tocqueville’s analysis of the French Revolution in The Old Regime and the Revolution . Explain in your own words two of his great paradoxes: that the Revolution continued the monarchy’s centralisation, and that a people can love equality more than liberty.

Leads to Karl Marx.

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