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the sight of its own thought .63 Tocqueville reproaches those who have
broken away from their (Christian) traditions, such as the philosophes
and the ideologues, who argue that Pure Reason can justify itself. In
them, Tocqueville finds the worldly spirit of criticism, of finding fault
and tearing down traditional wisdom without offering much else that
is constructive. They proceed from the premise that one ought to be
subject to no other authority than the dictates of one s own reason.
Tocqueville holds that many of the best minds in modern times, have
surely been hypocrites, having everywhere professed doctrines that
seemed to be true as far as they, themselves, were concerned and that
seemed in their eyes opposed to the Christian dogma .64 According to
him, the philosophes and ideologues, in failing to recognize any
authority beyond themselves, allowed their own reason to follow their
own desires and to become egotistical. If individual reason is deprived
of dogma, it will fall under influences that lead it astray. Just as the
person who pretends to follow only his own rules ends up being a slave
New liberalism 31
of his own passions, so does the one, who disdains all dogmas to obey
only his own reason, end up being a slave to the whims of the day.65
Tocqueville argues that true reason is not abstract or autonomous,
but bounded by, and continuous with, the wisdom of the ages. He
emphasizes that the tendency of human thoughts and actions ought to
be governed by the Christian dogma. For him, the wisdom of the ages,
as protected by Christian dogma, is closely tied to a historical reality
and a concrete sense of a particular form of Christian life. That is, Toc-
queville believes that the possibility of knowledge outside the Christian
community is limited to one s place and language, albeit not imposs-
ible; and that knowledge production is never neutral but always dis-
torted by language, taste, patriotism, religion and regime. In other
words, knowledge, which is different from reason itself, is transmitted
by tradition and enforced by traditional (and charismatic) authority.
For Tocqueville, all thoughts stand in relation to a tradition of
thought. All definite particular ideas belong to a specific tradition,
bound to time and place. All human knowledge, including moral
knowledge, is a contingency and therefore is always partial knowledge:
I convinced myself that the quest for absolute, demonstrable truth,
like the search for perfect happiness, was an effort to achieve the
impossible. Not that there are no truths worthy of man s entire
conviction; but be assured that they are few in number . . . One
must therefore accept the fact that proof can rarely be achieved.66
Correspondingly, Tocqueville argues that one cannot sacrifice too
much time in favour of logic .67 Logic, Tocqueville emphasizes, is not
useful for the search and protection of truth. Logic is useful for the dis-
covery of contradictions in the thought, but it is powerless to point in
the direction of truth. Truth cannot be grasped by reference to con-
structed criteria of scientific methods. Tocqueville does not agree with
Enlightenment philosophers like Hobbes and Spinoza, who hold that
truth is logically palatable in terms of True and False. For Tocqueville,
the hope of arriving at such absolute statements is idle. Tocqueville,
like Pascal, believes that contradiction and non-contradiction are both
elements of truth. Truth , for him, consists in not saying what is false,
and not in saying all that is true. 68 All truth is not palatable (bonne à
dire). 69 Tocqueville does not reduce contradiction to logical or cogni-
tive moments that must be eliminated by scientific method, but sees
them as conditions of society. Paradox and contradiction, modification
and exception cannot be avoided in human life. Many certainties in
daily life are contradictory and many errors pass without contra-
diction, but neither the contradiction, nor the non-contradiction can be
32 New liberalism
called a sign of truth. Truth, for him, consists of contradictory forces
that derive all their power from conflicting ideas and sentiments. In
society, theories are less adopted by reason of their logic, than by the
perceived effects that these theories are expected to generate. People,
according to Tocqueville, are moved more by prejudices than by logic.
The motives that drive them are usually inarticulate. The reasons for
actions often remain unclear. Truth can therefore not be reduced to a
system of scientific procedures. Jon Elster, who refers to Tocqueville as
a positive scientist who operates in the causal sphere, detects more than
thirty logical contradictions in Tocqueville s Démocratie,70 while Pierre
Marcel, who treats Tocqueville as a Christian thinker who operates in
the normative sphere, holds that Tocqueville never contradicted
himself .71
Tocqueville asserts that truth, that is, the living truth and not the
determination of a causal relationship, can only be grasped when all
the faculties of the soul are open to it. His intellectual project is not the
discovery of new principles, but rather the protection of an existent
normative order in a contemporary world that changes and attacks all
that had been fixed. Tocqueville, unlike Bossuet and Burke, does not
believe that reason is impotent in acting according to its own lights or
that the individual is foolish while the tradition is wise. What he does
hold is that individual reason poses a threat to the normative order.
Following Pascal, Tocqueville argues that to deny reason is as much a
mistake as to allow only reason; and like Pascal he is neither too opti-
mistic (as the philosophers of the Enlightenment are) nor too pes-
simistic (as the Romanticists are) about the possibilities of reason. For
Tocqueville, reason is a valuable gift that must be used to make
assumptions about the nature of things and events, so as to create a
synthesis that can overcome differences in ideas and interests. Toc-
queville insists that too great a theoretical or metaphysical departure
from common experiences must probably have a fallacy in it some-
where, even though this may appear logically irreproachable. Common
experiences and daily life facts represent knowledge, though this know-
ledge expresses itself in traditions and prejudices rather than in indi-
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