Sugary excerpt from Sean Wilentz's must-read review of Leo Damrosch's book on Alexis de Tocqueville and his views of America, Tocqueville's Discovery of America:
Early on, Tocqueville rejected the idea dear to the Constitution's framers and mourned by later patricians that disinterested civic virtue would animate the new republic. In its place, Tocqueville said, the Americans had found a way for individual interest (understood in the French, intérêt, as including everything that matters to an individual) to take the place of virtue, to make, he wrote, "a sort of refined and intelligent egotism" into "the pivot on which the whole machine turns." Interest properly understood required no grand sacrifices of station or treasure, but it did require a fundamental sense that individual well-being actually required foresight, small daily compromises, and acts of cooperation, lest disorder turn into chaos. Interest could provide no spirituality, but it could provide ethics and ethical habits that, even if based in utility, could reinforce morality and enhance political stability.
I'm still amazed to realized that Tocqueville was more right than wrong about America and to realize that Americans are probably unique in their belief that individual interest can be a source of virtue. An example of this belief is that Americans are most willing to believe that the ones who fight for their individual interest successively and become right are good people who deserve what they earned than the French.
Comments