/lit/ - Literature

Tocqueville describes America as incapable of free thought. With the contemporary hegemony of the United States over the world, can the intellectual bankruptcy of today be attributed to totalitarian tendencies of democracy? Can intellectualism only thrive in stratified societies?

>>22937992
>America has hitherto produced very few writers of distinction; it possesses no great historians, and not a single eminent poet. The inhabitants of that country look upon what are properly styled literary pursuits with a kind of disapprobation; and there are towns of very second-rate importance
in Europe in which more literary works are annually published than in the twenty-four States of the Union put together. The spirit of the Americans is averse to general ideas; and it does not seek theoretical discoveries. Neither politics
nor manufactures direct them to these occupations; and although new laws are perpetually enacted in the United States,
no great writers have hitherto inquired into the general principles of their legislation. The Americans have lawyers and commentators, but no jurists; and they furnish examples rather than lessons to the world.
>I think that in no country in the civilized world is less attention paid to philosophy than in the United States. The Americans have no philosophical school of their own; and they care but little for all the schools into which Europe is divided, the very names of which are scarcely known to them.
>It must be acknowledged that amongst few of the civilized nations of our time have the higher sciences made less progress than in the United States; and in few have great artists, fine
poets, or celebrated writers been more rare. Many Europeans, struck by this fact, have looked upon it as a natural and inevitable result of equality...
>The religion professed by the first emigrants, and bequeathed by them to their descendants, simple in its form of worship, austere and almost harsh in its principles, and hostile to external symbols and to ceremonial pomp, is naturally
unfavorable to the fine arts, and only yields a reluctant sufferance to the pleasures of literature.
>In America the purely practical part of science is admirably understood, and careful attention is paid to the theoretical portion which is immediately requisite to application. On this
head the Americans always display a clear, free, original, and inventive power of mind. But hardly anyone in the United States devotes himself to the essentially theoretical and abstract portion of human knowledge. In this respect the Americans carry to excess a tendency which is, I think, discernible, though in a less degree, amongst all democratic nations.
>Nothing is more necessary to the culture of the higher sciences, or of the more elevated departments of science, than meditation; and nothing is less suited to meditation than the structure of democratic society. We do not find there, as amongst an aristocratic people, one class which clings to a state of repose because it is well off; and another which does not venture to stir because it despairs of improving its condition. Everyone is actively in motion: some in quest of power, others of gain.

>If I were called upon to predict what will probably occur at some future time, I should say, that the abolition of slavery in the South will, in the common course of things, increase the repugnance of the white population for the men of color. I found this opinion upon the analogous observation which I already had occasion to make in the North. I there remarked that the white inhabitants of the North avoid the negroes with increasing care, in proportion as the legal barriers of separation are removed by the legislature; and why should not the same result take place in the South? In the North, the whites are deterred from intermingling with the blacks by the fear of an imaginary danger; in the South, where the danger would be real, I cannot imagine that the fear would be less general.

Chad coming through,

Retroactively refuted by De Tocqueville.

Reminder he was absolutely retroactively refuted by AdT.

Imagine how weak you'd have to be to be scared of peasants.

You should have listened

Tocqueville’s prediction. How did he get it so right?

On 1853 Tocqueville told his Friend Gobineau, who was basically the inventor of the Aryan master race theory, that in Europe only Germans will take an interest in his theory, which will inevitably end up causing ‘profound reverberations.’ Tocqueville wrote:

> . . . . you have chosen to support precisely that point of view which I have always considered most dangerous to our age. Quite apart from the fact that I believe your theory of history to be false in the extreme application that you give to it, this alone would make it impossible for you to convert me...But in the course of studying the German language, I have not become so German that either the novelty or the philosophic merit of an idea can make me oblivious to its moral and political consequences. . . Today there is no chance whatever that in France any intellectual work will receive either a lively or a lasting reception. Thus I believe that your best chance of success is for your book to create a stir abroad, especially in Germany. Then it will be read in France. For in Europe it is only the Germans who become so enamored with what they consider to be abstract truth that they fail to calculate its practical consequences. The Germans can furnish you with a really friendly audience whose judgment, sooner or later, will produce profound reverberations.

Reminder
>inb4 mod seethes and bans

>>19101804
Genetics is pleb thinking. Literally democracy in a bottle.
Start with Tocqueville.

>>18982009
Can I get a quote?

This kills the China shill
>When Europeans first landed in China three hundred years ago, they found that nearly all the arts had achieved a certain degree of perfection and were surprised that people who had come so far had not gone further. Later they discovered vestiges of certain advanced bodies of knowledge that had been lost. The nation was industrial; it had preserved most scientific methods, but science itself no longer existed. Europeans took this as the explanation for what they found to be the singularly static character of the Chinese mind. The Chinese, following in the footsteps of their forebears, had forgotten the reasons that had guided them. They continued to use formulas without seeking to fathom their meaning. They held on to instruments though they had lost the art of modifying or reproducing them. Hence the Chinese could not change anything. They had to give up making improvements. They were forced always to imitate their forebears in every respect lest the slightest deviation from the path laid out for them in advance plunge them into impenetrable darkness. The source of human knowledge had almost dried up, and though the river still flowed, its waters could no longer increase in volume or change direction.
>China had nevertheless lived in peace for centuries. Its conquerors had adopted its mores. Order prevailed. Material prosperity of a sort was everywhere apparent. Revolutions were rare, and war was all but unknown.

>>18483117
Wrong.

We can align with democracy against the true enemy: pantheism.

Rousseau? No, thanks.

"It may seem as though sovereigns nowadays are interested in men only to make great things with them. I would rather they gave a little more thought to making great men. Better that they should attach less value to the work and more to the worker, and that they always bear it in mind that a nation cannot remain strong for long when each individual in it is weak, and that no one has yet found social forms or political stratagems that can turn soft and faint-hearted citizens into an energetic people."

Will Alexis de Tocqueville give my trust in democracy back? I'm munching on too many redpills right now.

Is Democracy in America a good book?

>the greatest book ever written about America and democracy was by a young French aristocrat who toured America for less than a year
How is that possible?

>>17338455
Not a liberal but I genuinely enjoy de Tocqueville. I don't think anyone has come close in his appraisal of America.

"The same person who is quite willing to leave the government of the entire nation in the hands of an autocrat balks at the idea of not having a voice in the administration of his village - such is the residual weight of the hollowest of political forms."

The whole of America in a sentence.

>>16108505
lol imagine believing this.

tocqueville playlist is now live:

pykewater.com/politics/2020/8/4/tocqueville-alexis-de

>>16011582
>>16011599
>As soon as it is admitted that the whites and the emancipated blacks are placed upon the same territory in the situation of two alien communities, it will readily be understood that there are but two alternatives for the future; the negroes and the whites must either wholly part or wholly mingle. I have already expressed the conviction which I entertain as to the latter event. {r}I do not imagine that the white and black races will ever live in any country upon an equal footing. But I believe the difficulty to be still greater in the United States than elsewhere. An isolated individual may surmount the prejudices of religion, of his country, or of his race, and if this individual is a king he may effect surprising changes in society; but a whole people cannot rise, as it were, above itself. A despot who should subject the Americans and their former slaves to the same yoke, might perhaps succeed in commingling their races; but as long as the American democracy remains at the head of affairs, no one will undertake so difficult a task; and it may be foreseen that the freer the white population of the United States becomes, the more isolated will it remain.

>If I were called upon to predict what will probably occur at some future time, I should say, that the abolition of slavery in the South will, in the common course of things, increase the repugnance of the white population for the men of color. I found this opinion upon the analogous observation which I already had occasion to make in the North. I there remarked that the white inhabitants of the North avoid the negroes with increasing care, in proportion as the legal barriers of separation are removed by the legislature; and why should not the same result take place in the South? In the North, the whites are deterred from intermingling with the blacks by the fear of an imaginary danger; in the South, where the danger would be real, I cannot imagine that the fear would be less general.

>>15582374
>>15582382
Trying to be a politician which is moderate, centrist and sees the benefits of both sides is a thankless job.

Moderate positions will not usually attract large followings and will get eaten up by either wing they try to ally themselves with.

In mass democracies like the ones in the west today there is little desire for nuanced and reasoned discource. Facts aren't really wanted, what is wanted is black/white presentation of conflict.