Individual choice and the structures of history

by Mitchell, Harvey

Alexis de Tocqueville is recognized as one of the most important nineteenth-century historians. In this study, Harvey Mitchell examines afresh Tocqueville's works, in particular the Souvenirs of 1848 and his voluminous correspondence, to shed new light on Tocqueville's philosophy of history. Professor Mitchell exposes the tensions which Tocqueville perceived between determined actions and choice, continuity and change, asking what happens to individual liberty if it is impossible to make a clean break with the past, and if past developments continue to influence the future. Professor Mitchell argues that it was Tocqueville's related concern with liberty in a modern democratic age which led him to write his L'Ancien Regime et la Revolution. . Drawing on the full range of Tocqueville's writings, Individual choice and the structures of history reveals in them a unity of thought and a deep involvement with the philosophical questions raised by historical continuity and change.