- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: A Brief Life of Alexis de Tocqueville
-
1 Identity in a Time of Historical Transition -
2 Class: Between Two Worlds -
3 Intimacy -
4 Ambition -
5 Melancholy -
6 Skeptical Romantic -
7 Skeptical Philosophe -
8 Skepticism and Religion: “Une Ombre Vaine” -
9 Doubt and the Will to Believe -
10 Exile: Voiceless in Cannes -
1 Vocation: Politics as Calling—Tocqueville's “Beau Rêve” -
1 Vocation: The Responsibilities of Political Leaders -
3 The Dead Sea of Politics -
4 Tocqueville's Aristocratic Liberalism -
1 A Moral Landscape -
2 A Moral History -
3 Escape -
4 . The New World: Fable, Romance, History -
5 . Tocqueville in the Wilderness -
6 Transformations -
7 Beginning Democracy in America -
8 Influences: Voices in the Tower -
9 . Writing as Moral Act -
10 History as Moral Drama -
11 The Birth of a Book -
1 Tocqueville's American Notebooks and Democracy in America -
2 Traveling Through the New Republic with Tocqueville and Beaumont -
3 Democratic Religion: Mad Messiahs and Chaste Women -
4 Class in an Egalitarian Society -
5 Born-Again America: The Creation of an American Identity -
6 Politics: Order and Disorder in the New Republic -
7 A Dark Vision of Democracy's Prospects -
8 The Democratic Psyche and the Hazards of Equality -
9 A Culture of Extremes: The Prospects for Freedom in a Culture Without Limits - Conclusion
- A Brief Chronological Narrative of the Life of Alexis de Tocqueville
- Bibliography
- Index
Ambition
Ambition
- Chapter:
- (p.51) 4 Ambition
- Source:
- Tocqueville and His America
- Author(s):
Arthur Kaledin
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
Known for his persistent, painful self-doubt, Alexis de Tocqueville always saw himself at the edge of things. He experienced sharp swings between euphoria and melancholy and brooded much about the question of ambition. A good aristocrat, he tried to avoid being viewed as ambitious, which for him was a bourgeois vice. Tocqueville was a restless, dissatisfied individual who lived in an almost unremitting state of interior agitation and self-doubt. His ongoing confessional, self-portrait stood in contrast to his ideal self. Tocqueville's “beau réve” of leading France from its moral and political morass suggests an undeniable messianic tinge. The issue of ambition also resonated with class meaning, expressing dismay and self-doubt as a result of the silence with which Volume 2 of his book Democracy in America had been greeted by the “grand public.” Tocqueville was reminded several times by Pierre-Paul Royer-Collard to keep his distance from politics. Royer again recommended patience after Tocqueville lost in his first try for a seat in the Chamber of Deputies during the 1837 elections.
Keywords: self-doubt, Alexis de Tocqueville, melancholy, ambition, self-portrait, France, class, Democracy in America, Pierre-Paul Royer-Collard
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- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: A Brief Life of Alexis de Tocqueville
-
1 Identity in a Time of Historical Transition -
2 Class: Between Two Worlds -
3 Intimacy -
4 Ambition -
5 Melancholy -
6 Skeptical Romantic -
7 Skeptical Philosophe -
8 Skepticism and Religion: “Une Ombre Vaine” -
9 Doubt and the Will to Believe -
10 Exile: Voiceless in Cannes -
1 Vocation: Politics as Calling—Tocqueville's “Beau Rêve” -
1 Vocation: The Responsibilities of Political Leaders -
3 The Dead Sea of Politics -
4 Tocqueville's Aristocratic Liberalism -
1 A Moral Landscape -
2 A Moral History -
3 Escape -
4 . The New World: Fable, Romance, History -
5 . Tocqueville in the Wilderness -
6 Transformations -
7 Beginning Democracy in America -
8 Influences: Voices in the Tower -
9 . Writing as Moral Act -
10 History as Moral Drama -
11 The Birth of a Book -
1 Tocqueville's American Notebooks and Democracy in America -
2 Traveling Through the New Republic with Tocqueville and Beaumont -
3 Democratic Religion: Mad Messiahs and Chaste Women -
4 Class in an Egalitarian Society -
5 Born-Again America: The Creation of an American Identity -
6 Politics: Order and Disorder in the New Republic -
7 A Dark Vision of Democracy's Prospects -
8 The Democratic Psyche and the Hazards of Equality -
9 A Culture of Extremes: The Prospects for Freedom in a Culture Without Limits - Conclusion
- A Brief Chronological Narrative of the Life of Alexis de Tocqueville
- Bibliography
- Index
