America Seen from How Democracy in America Is Read : An Integrated Image of American Society

摘要

Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America is probably one of the most oftreferred books today in the United States. It is widely seen as the best book ever written on this country, its words endlessly quoted by different political camps which claim the book as their own. This article examines the ways in which the American have read this magnum opus of the Frenchman, especially during the last few decades, on the assumption that their reading is reflecting their perceptions on contemporary American society and its future. The aim of this article is twofold. First, it tries to show that Democracy has long been read in America as an (or, in not a few cases, the) important source to reflect on a remedy for an increasingly “individualistic” and thus “despotic” American society. What the American have commonly found a solution to this problem out of reading the book is the restoration of the tradition of self-government, which is highly hailed by Tocqueville as an admirable feature of American society. Second, this article aims at showing that, although the different political views between conservatives and liberals (one of the most visible political divisions in this society today) are surely affecting the American reading of Democracy, this is only one aspect of the story. Many Americans, whatever their political tendencies are, end up calling for the revival of a self-governed American society as a consequence of studying the book. This common ‘conclusion’ derived from their reading could be interpreted as a proof that the image that America is the country built on citizens' active participation in public affairs is widely shared among the American themselves. In this considerably diverse society that could fragment at any time potentially, the image has thus been contributing to keeping it in unity, probably to not a small extent.