Tocqueville's Christian Citizen

Tocqueville's Christian Citizen Marinus Ossewaarde Introduction Alexis De Tocqueville is well known for his critique of democracy. A French statesman, he was left with the legacy of the French Revolution that had torn his fatherland and had changed the course of human history for good. Tocqueville, unlike many of his contemporaries, believed that the Revolution ought not to be seen as incidental or unexpected, despite the fact that it was without precedent in human history and so tarnished with human blood. The French Revolution is part of a trend that traces the path of democracy. Living in the revolutionary France of the nineteenth century, he hoped to find out what France may expect from its course of civilization, what it may expect from its democracy. Tocqueville was a social critic: he deplored what he saw happening around him in France. He believed that France was poorly governed. He was critical of the rise of the bourgeoisie and believed that everything had become vulgar, low, and mean. He rejected the rising materialism as "a dangerous disease of the human mind," which he found in positivism (Comte and St. Simon) and socialism (Proudhon and Blanc). He believed that scientific and economic determinisms were serious threats to liberty and human.