Alexis de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, and the Modern Debate on the Enlightenment

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3971780
AutoresNathaniel Wolloch (0000-0002-9758-7834, The Minerva Humanities Center, Tel Aviv University, Israel, autor de correspondencia)
Año2018
Volumen23
Número4
Páginas349-364
Fecha de publicación2018-05-19
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe European Legacy (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1084-8770 • E-ISSN: 1470-1316
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/10848770.2018.1435009
OpenAlexW2793552961
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas3
Referencias citadas46

This article discusses Tocqueville’s and Mill’s views of the cultural progress of indigenous colonial societies in the context of the current debate about the Enlightenment. The analysis of their philosophical outlooks tends to support Jonathan Israel’s interpretation of the Enlightenment, yet with one important difference: while Israel emphasizes the Radical Enlightenment as the chief instigator of the movement towards modern democracy, Tocqueville’s and Mill’s views emphasize the preponderance of the Moderate Enlightenment, which, while sharing the radical advocacy for rationalism, broad education, religious toleration, the critique of despotism, and other enlightened ideals, nonetheless shunned support of full democracy or universal suffrage. Tocqueville’s and Mill’s Eurocentric views regarding the possible ameliorative influence of colonialism emphasize how the ideals of the Moderate Enlightenment had an overriding effect on the emergence of nineteenth-century liberalism. While this conclusion broadly accepts Israel’s outline of the intellectual history of the Enlightenment, it gives greater weight than he does to the Moderate Enlightenment

Archaeology · Enlightenment · Environmental ethics · Mill · Theology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · European Political History Analysis · History · Philosophy · Political Theory and Influence