Tocqueville, Pascal, and the Transcendent Horizon
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 13044596 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Alexander Jech (0000-0002-4101-1756, University of Notre Dame, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 5 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 109-131 |
| Publication date | 2016-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Political Thought (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2161-1580 • E-ISSN: 2161-1599 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/684560 |
| OpenAlex | W2284580868 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 12 |
This article traces the contours of Pascal’s influence on Tocqueville’s understanding of the human condition and our appropriate response to it. Similar temperaments lead both authors to emphasize human limitations and contingency, especially our mortality, our ignorance of the most important subjects, and the effects of historical contingency on human nature, and both represent the complex internal dynamic of human nature in terms of the interplay of “angel” and “brute.” They disagree over the power and significance of human action. Whereas the motif of human weakness is fundamental for Pascal, Tocqueville repeatedly affirms that, under the right conditions, human beings are “powerful and free.” Beginning from Pascalian premises, and endeavoring to be more faithful to some of those premises than Pascal himself was, Tocqueville aims to illuminate the possibility of an amelioration of the human condition through a “new political science” that redeems the political realm without divinizing it
Contingency · Epistemology · Ignorance · Pascal (unit · Political science · Politics · Realm · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Computer Science · European Political History Analysis · Law · Philosophy · Political Theory and Influence
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,56 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2024 (8) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |