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The strange belief of Alexis deTocqueville: Christianity as philosophyLuk Sanders a ba Royal Higher Institute for Defence , Brussels , Belgiumb Evangelical Theological Faculty , Leuven , BelgiumPublished online: 21 Mar 2013.

To cite this article: Luk Sanders (2013) The strange belief of Alexis de Tocqueville:Christianity as philosophy, International Journal of Philosophy and Theology, 74:1, 33-53, DOI:10.1080/21692327.2013.771481

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The strange belief of Alexis de Tocqueville:Christianity as philosophy

Luk Sanders*

Royal Higher Institute for Defence, Brussels, Belgium; Evangelical Theological Faculty,Leuven, Belgium

(Received 7 October 2012; final version received 24 November 2012)

Alexis de Tocqueville is known for his strange liberalism. One of the reasons thereforehas to be found in his lesser known strange religious belief. The three main elementsthat determined his belief were his aristocratic and profoundly religious education, thedramatic loss of his faith after reading eighteenth century French philosophers and hisconviction that the stability of the American democracy was mainly due to religiousmores. These elements explain why Tocqueville appeared in his publications as anobvious believer, hardly bothered by any dubiety, while internally he was a restlessdoubter, sometimes a panicky infidel and occasionally some sort of believer anyway.The focus of this article is a meticulous dissection of Tocqueville’s personal belief bycontrasting it with approaches of religion that look familiar at first sight. AlthoughTocqueville had the highest esteem for Pascal, his wager was not really tempting tohim. James’ will to believe seemed far more attractive, yet Tocqueville’s thinking wastoo empirical to fit with it. Kant furnished strong arguments to overcome this obstacle,and in that respect he offered a solid philosophical ground to consider Tocqueville’soutlook on religion as an authentic religious belief. But what Tocqueville has neverfound was a religious ground to Christianity. As a matter of fact, Christianity wasTocqueville’s philosophical belief, rather than his religious belief.

Keywords: Tocqueville; Christianity as philosophy; fictionalism

“I know, without the Creator raising his voice, that the stars in space follow the curvestraced by his fingers.”

“I am not a believer”Alexis de Tocqueville

In a letter to one of his friends, Alexis de Tocqueville told that, for several reasons, hesupposed that he was generally considered as being a liberal of a different kind who wasoften confused with most of the democrats of his time.1 And nowadays Tocqueville’sstrange liberalism is a phenomenon on its own.2 One of the reasons Tocqueville men-tioned, was that he professes a deep and well-reasoned attachment for morals andreligious beliefs. So it is no surprise Tocqueville also had a strange religious belief.

Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop opened the preface of their authoritativetranslation of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America with the words: ‘Democracy inAmerica is at once the best book ever written on democracy and the best book everwritten on America.’3 Everything looks intriguing, consistent, visionary and crystalclear, only the religious element sounds dissonant, at least to European ears. Religion,if possible Christianity, seemed for Tocqueville to be almost a necessary condition to

*Email: luk.sanders@etf.edu

International Journal of Philosophy and Theology, 2013Vol. 74, No. 1, 33–53, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21692327.2013.771481

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keep democracy alive and stable. However, decades after his death it was discovered byaccident that Tocqueville’s personal belief was much poorer than was thought so far… Yetwe are not facing a classic case of a functionalist, utilitarian or instrumentalist approach ofreligion. Contrary to so many nineteenth century French intellectuals, for Tocqueville theloss of his faith did not feel like the loss of heavy, rusty chains. He rather mourned hisentire adult life for the loss of the precious treasure that Christianity had been during hischildhood. He was eager to believe, struggled desperately with it and sometimes, espe-cially in his publications, he seemed to be a spirited believer anyway.

Innumerable texts have been published on the place of religion in Tocqueville’spolitical thinking, but there are very few texts in English with a main focus onTocqueville’s personal beliefs (this tallies by the way with Tocqueville’s instrumentalistreading of the way Americans experienced their ubiquitous religion).4 A rare exceptionwas The Religious Beliefs of Alexis de Tocqueville by Doris Goldstein, published in 1960in French Historical Studies.5 Yet there are several reasons to belief that the impact of thismere single shot was limited. The next issue of the journal published an angry ‘Commenton Tocqueville Article’: “While the historian may ascertain what Tocqueville said, andwhat he did, only God knows what Tocqueville believed.”6 On top of that, the quotes inGoldstein’s article were in French and were therefore not accessible to most Englishspeakers. It is deplorable Goldstein’s article was (though sometimes mentioned) not reallypicked up by most of Anglo-Saxon Tocqueville scholars, because she was one of the fewamong them who mastered both English and French. The American Tocqueville traditiondiffers from the French, although only a combination of both can grasp Tocqueville’s realoutlook on religion. The direct source of inspiration for his ideas on the societal role ofreligion was situated in the United States, while his education and his entire personalitywere irrefutable products of the oldest French traditions.

Other (more prudent) attempts to discuss Tocqueville’s problematic belief in Englishtexts provoked often the same criticisms. Catherine Zuckert tried to undo both JackLively’s and Marvin Zetterbaum’s criticisms,7 while Peter Dennis Bathory tried to polishoff Cushing Strout’s comment.8 Goldstein’s book on Tocqueville9 was a step forwardtowards a better understanding, just as the English translation of André Jardin’s Frenchbiography of Tocqueville. Jardin collaborated on the still unfinished Gallimard version ofTocqueville’s complete works (Œuvres complètes); almost 10,000 pages of which lessthan half of it is translated into English. So it became hard for Anglo-Saxon Tocquevillescholars to keep up their edgy responses to every indication Tocqueville was not as piousas was meant so far. Yet even in 2000, James Sloat wrote an article named The SubtleSignificance of Sincere Belief. Tocqueville’s Account of Religious Belief and DemocraticStability.10 The focus was Tocqueville’s emphasis on genuine faith, but still without onesingle word on his own existential doubt with respect to belief.11

Meanwhile, after more than five decades, Goldstein’s argument for studyingTocqueville’s personal beliefs is still valid:

Among the numerous remaining tasks of Tocqueville scholarship is the need to relate hisphilosophy of history, his sociological analyses of the function of religion in modern society,and his connection with the French liberal Catholic movement, to his personal religiousoutlook.12

It would indeed allow a better understanding of his political and sociological ideas on therole of religion.

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The focus of this text will be a meticulous dissection of Tocqueville’s personal beliefby contrasting it with approaches of religion that look familiar at first sight, i.e. Pascal’swager, James’ will to belief and Kant’s fictionalism. But first I will describe the context inwhich Tocqueville grew up, how he developed his strange belief, how unbelief came intohis life and what Christianity meant to him.

Tocqueville’s life and work

Alexis was born in the aftermath of the French Revolution in an ancient noble line. TheTocquevilles were a legitimist family, which means that they were loyal to the legitimateheir to the throne (i.e. Louis XVI), and Alexis despised indeed the so-called CitizenKing Louis-Philippe I and his adepts to whom he said: ‘Be rather pagans with a pureattitude […] than Christians in such a way.’13

Yet being a legitimist usually also implied that one considered the Roman CatholicChurch as the only legitimate church. Even as a nobleman often ought to marry a certainlady, regardless he loves her or not, a legitimist nobleman ought to be catholic, regardlesshe believes or not.

Being a legitimist family, the Tocquevilles suffered under the Reign of Terror. Alexis’parents hardly escaped the guillotine. Some of his relatives were less lucky and his parentstook care of their orphans. But in spite of the gruesome flaws of the young republic,Tocqueville understood that democracy was to be permanent in France.

During the eighteenth century, the American democracy had served as a stronglydiscussed model for political reforms in France.14 For that reason Tocqueville wanted tovisit the original model in vivo, hoping to learn some lessons on how the upcomingdemocracy in France could free itself from chaos and terror.15

In the USATocqueville was confronted with a profoundly religious society. ‘Americanliberty was born in the bosom of religion’ he wrote ‘and [it] is still sustained in its arms.’[DA 475]16 He felt taken for a ride by the eighteenth century French philosophers whohad made him believe that democracy and religion were bound to be at loggerheads.

The first full-fledged modern democracy was founded by pious believers (althoughtoday not all authors agree on the importance of their share).17 The young Frenchnobleman came across numerous American churches which actually behaved as religiousinstitutions, unlike the Catholic Church in France during the Old Regime which, accord-ing to Tocqueville, had acted rather as a political institution.18

Tocqueville deeply studied the pitfalls of modern democracy, such as an inclination toindividualism [DA 881–94], to materialism [DA 930–8] and to nihilism [DA 1245–61]. Hedeeply feared a degeneration of democracy into tyranny of the majority, religion being themain remedy. He believed that the greatest advantage of religions is to inspire ‘entirelyopposite instincts […] There is no religion that does not place the object of the desires ofmen above and beyond the good things of the earth, and that does not naturally elevate hissoul toward realms very superior to those of the senses.’ [DA 745].

According to Tocqueville, the main goal of his Democracy had been to renderintelligible the causes why the democratic republic survives in the United States. [DA451] After a profound exploration, he concluded that only one cause is essential in thatrespect, i.e. the mores. Then he tried to find out what among them is favourable formaintaining the political institutions. The final conclusion is that nothing is more favour-able than religious mores.

Religious peoples would be naturally strong where democratic peoples are weak; ‘thismakes very clear how important it is for men to keep their religion while becoming equal.’

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In his correspondence with Gobineau, Tocqueville explained that Christianity placed themeaning of life after this life and in doing so, it gave ethics a more pure, immaterial,disinterested, and higher treat.19 As a result, he considered the existence of God and theimmortality of the soul as what Kant called regulative ideas.

Tocqueville wondered whether man can ever bear complete religious independenceand full political liberty at the same time: ‘I am led to think that, if he does not have faith,he must serve, and, if he is free, he must believe.’ [DA 745] Hence, Tocqueville wasindeed considered as pious until decades after his death.

In 1946, Joachim Wach still described Tocqueville’s indestructible faith. Furthermore,he wrote:

De Tocqueville’s biographers [most probably Antoine Redier and Jean-Jacques Chevalier]could not help casting some light on his religious development. Here again we hope moreinsight will come from a more generous publication of documents. We do not agree with arecent writer who quotes statements from his early correspondence to show that in his youththe great scholar had lost faith in the Catholic religion […] and had embraced scepticism.20

Wach pretends to hope that a more generous publication of documents would bring moreinsight. At the same time, however, he seemed already to know the outcome of thesedocuments, because ‘there is every indication that he never did lose faith, that he couldnot conceive of a life worth the name without the integrating power of religion.’21

Meanwhile, with these more generous publications at hand, it turned out that Wachmisinterpreted it all. Actually, most of the evidence was already available in his time, but,as I mentioned already, it had not yet been translated in English.

When Tocqueville went into politics, he wrote to his brother Edouard: ‘My mostbeautiful dream, going into politics, was to contribute to the reconciliation of the spirit ofliberty and the spirit of religion, the new society and the clergy!’22 Yet his deepest feelingswith respect to religion could be found in his Democracy. Although the passage ispresented as a historical analysis, it might be very autobiographical. First Tocquevilleasserts that in the past centuries, men abandoned their beliefs out of coldness rather thanout of hatred: ‘…you do not reject them, they leave you.’ In his time this was notnecessarily the case among French intellectuals; the next phrase however was verycommon in nineteenth century France: ‘While ceasing to believe religion true, theunbeliever continues to judge it useful.’ Yet the rest of the quotation reflects the core ofTocqueville’s own view of religion:

Considering religious beliefs from a human aspect, he recognizes their dominion overmores, their influence over laws. He understands how they can make men live in peaceand gently prepare men for death. So he regrets faith after losing it, and deprived of a goodof which he knows the whole value, he is afraid to take it away from those who still possessit. [DA 486]

What makes this passage even more remarkable is that three pages before, Tocquevilleseemed to disapprove openly of his secret personal position:

As long as a religion finds its strength in the sentiments, the instincts, the passions that arereproduced in the same way in all periods of history, it defies the effort of time, or at least itcan be destroyed only by another religion. (Political powers can do nothing against it.) Butwhen religion wants to rely on the interests of this world, it becomes almost as fragile as allthe powers of the earth. [DA 483]

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How unbelief came into Tocqueville’s life

Early in the twentieth century, Tocqueville scholar Antoine Redier noticed in Count deFalloux’23 biography on Sophie de Swetchine24 that a letter by Tocqueville was likelyunfinished. Although Redier had had full access to Falloux’s files, he could not find thelast part of this particular letter that Tocqueville would have written to her on 26 February1857. The only thing he found was some correspondence between him and Beaumont inwhich the latter begged the count not to publish the infamous letter. Falloux in returninsisted on its historical importance and Beaumont replied not to fear that the publicationof the letter would be unsuccessful, but rather that it would become too successful. Finallyboth men reached something that was hardly a compromise. Only its first half waspublished and then the letter was burned. But several years after Redier discovered thestory behind the unfinished letter, he found in the documents of Beaumont’s wife a seriesof copies of letters, including the burned one.

The first part of the letter was sensitive and moving, but it was only the second halfthat contained the astonishing family secret. This is a part of the unpublished half of theletter:

Have I ever told you about an incident of my youth, one which has deeply marked my entirelife? […] Until that time, my days had passed in a home full of faith which had not let mysoul be so much as brushed by doubt. Now doubt entered, or rather rushed upon me withunheard-of violence, not just doubt of this or that proposition, but doubt of everything.Suddenly I felt a sensation like that reported by those who have been through an earthquake[…] I was overcome by the blackest melancholy, seized by an extreme disgust for the lifewhich I had not even begun […] Violent passions drew me out of this state of despair; theydistracted me from the contemplation of intellectual ruin towards the life of the senses;but from time to time, these impressions of first youth (I was then sixteen years old) againpossess me; once more my intellectual world totters and I am again lost and desperate in apowerful tide which shakes or inverts every truth on which I have based my beliefs andconduct…25

Tocqueville had had a pious and protected youth. His tutor, the abbé Lesueur, wanted topreserve the apple of his eye from all evil influences, yet at the age of sixteen Alexis’ lifechanged. His mother had an unstable health and so when his father became the prefect ofthe department of Metz, he left the chateau at Verneuil-sur-Seine to accompany his fatherto the prefecture of Metz. So far Alexis had been the perfect student of his beloved yetmodest tutor, but then he got involved in an existential crisis. At the lycée of Metz, hiscircle of friends widened, and in the same period of time a young servant of the prefecturegot pregnant of him. Nevertheless Alexis’ crisis happened in silence; his father wasalways busy, his mother and Lesueur were still in the castle and the child, who was bythe way Alexis’ only descendant was born in secret; it disappeared in history. He spentmost of his time in the library of the prefecture. There he devoured books of Voltaire,Rousseau, Diderot, d’Holbach and others.… Then the dramatic event took place.

Later on, more letters popped up which confirmed Alexis was not as religious as somany Tocqueville scholars had taken for granted so far. Nevertheless, in his Democracy inAmerica, Tocqueville explained that it is by a type of mental aberration and with the helpof a kind of moral violence exercised over their own nature, that men remove themselvesfrom religious beliefs. Faith would be man’s natural inclination: ‘Unbelief is an accident;faith alone is the permanent state of humanity.’ [DA 482] In a footnote on the same pagehe explained circumstantially why the greatest sign of the divine origin of Christianity isin its own character. But in a letter to Arthur de Gobineau, dated February 24th 1857, he

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wrote: ‘I am not a believer (which I am far from saying to brag).’26 So it was notsurprising when Gobineau later wrote to Tocqueville: ‘In your admiration forChristianity that inspires you, you are much less concerned with its absolute truth, thanwith its political usefulness.’27

As a matter of fact Tocqueville wrestled with the subject until the end of his days. Inone of the other letters that showed up, August de Beaumont described the last week ofAlexis’ life. When his wife (who converted from Protestantism to Catholicism in order tobe able to marry her husband) brought him carefully to the subject of confession, hewould have answered: ‘Do not ever talk to me of confession. No never, never! Neveranyone will make me lie to myself, and make grimaces of faith when I miss the faith.’28 Afew days later he received Holy Communion on his bed and confessed anyway.

Before,29 during30 and after31 the discovery of the letter to Madame de Swetchine,several authors have been claiming that Tocqueville finally left this world as an orthodoxCatholic. The turning point where Tocqueville would have found back his genuine faithhad to be situated in the 1850’s, due to his disillusions in secular governance, hisweakening physical condition and his correspondence with the orthodox CatholicSophie de Swetchine. Nevertheless Goldstein’s well-documented article I mentionedbefore, furnished convincing arguments to do away with that idea. But as I also men-tioned, the impact of Goldstein’s article was limited.

Christianity as philosophy

The reason why Tocqueville always kept on focusing on religion was to a large extent dueto his tutor, the Jansenist abbé Lesueur. The man was an idealist, but not so much in thephilosophical sense. He believed in the possible perfection of life and society, in harmonywith a spiritual ideal; always endeavouring to raise man to a higher level of spiritual andmoral understanding.32 Tocqueville’s infinite admiration for that nevertheless very simpleman brought him to restlessness. In a letter to Sophie de Swetchine he said to believe thathis sentiment and desire were higher than his strength and that God gave him the naturaltaste for great actions and great virtues. But he also said to believe that the despair of notbeing able to grasp that great object is ‘one of the main causes of my internal malaise fromwhich I can never heal myself.’33

Tocqueville had an ambivalent attitude towards the idealistic philosophy of Hegel,34 buthe despised every form of materialism in the strongest terms. He rejected the avarice ofmoney, typical for the Louis-Philippe era, as well as any form of philosophical materialism.He rejected narrow self-interest as the basis of political life, even as the mechanistic theories,such as the one of Henry Thomas Buckle, who reduced man to a simple machine.35

In a discussion with the American business-man Nelson Marvin Beckwith (1807–1889), who spent some years in China, Tocqueville wrote that he doubted that the Chinesewere only moved by the passion of material well-being (as Beckwith had told him) and headded to this: ‘From time to time, more elevated aspirations and yearnings of the soultoward an invisible world have never failed to manifest themselves.’36 Tocquevillestrongly believed that religious faith was a condition to realize the higher aspirations ofall men and that is how the realm of religion entered his philosophy. His ideas on thehuman species always reflected a Christian anthropology, inspired by Blaise Pascal. Oneof the strongest ties that bound Tocqueville to Christianity was respect for its spiritual andethical elevation of men but in the end he always had a tendency to consider religion fromthe point of view of man’s freedom and secular well-being. Yet when he believed religionwas favourable to every human being, he did not feel exempt from it. He was sure of his

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case when he insisted openly, strongly, and incessantly on the veracity and salutary powerof a religion of which he was not sure himself. Maybe Tocqueville believed in a belief inGod rather than in God; i.e. Christianity as civil religion, as the handmaiden of politics.Christianity was his philosophy rather than his religion.

To cut a long story short: Tocqueville was not an orthodox believer, but he concealedit, because he wanted to plead in favour of religion for the sake of man’s elevation andhence for democracy. According to Luis Díez de Corral, Tocqueville is close to thosewho, in the words of Pascal, ‘seek while groaning,’ eternally plagued by doubt anduncertainty, ‘captives to the wager.’37 Though, what was Tocqueville’s real attitudetowards Pascal’s wager? Was Tocqueville’s ambiguous attitude towards religion the resultof a doubtful capitulation to the infamous wager of the philosopher he admired so much?

Pascal’s wager

In an article on Tocqueville’s psyche, McLendon compared the Normandic nobleman withPascal: ‘The great difference between the two is that for Pascal existential angst is areligious problem while for Tocqueville it is a sociological one stemming from thedemocratic ideology of equality.’38 Tocqueville indeed had a sociological angst, but hisrelation to religion went far beyond calculated efforts to re-enchant a disenchanted world.

Blaise Pascal was most probably Tocqueville’s favourite philosopher, whom hereportedly read on a daily basis39 and he is probably the author that Tocqueville quotedthe most, although often implicitly.40 Both thinkers had a restless mind41 and they sharedmore than one similarity in their works. They both had a writing style that was very well-structured on the one hand, but sensitive and warm on the other. Catholicism, and more inparticular Jansenism, had an impact on their works; the influence was direct to Pascal andindirect to Tocqueville via his beloved tutor, the Jansenist Lesueur. Blaise Pascal exertedgreat influence on Protestantism, and Tocqueville had a special connection with andwithin Protestant surroundings.42 They both maintained a philosophical style in theirwritings, but at the same time they had some suspicion towards philosophy, keeping ondiscussing the grandeur and misery of man, strongly believing in a certain link betweenliberty and religion. Doubt was a main subject in Pascal’s Pensées (Thoughts), andTocqueville was full of it. Nevertheless the latter described it in horrifying terms: ‘[…]doubt has always seemed to me the most unbearable of the ills of the world; I haveconstantly judged it to be worse than death and inferior only to illnesses.’43

Françoise Mélonio called Tocqueville a ‘Pascalian without faith.’44 Jean-Louis Benoîtadded ‘…without night of the Memorial.’45 However, Tocqueville underwent a reversedMemorial. In a way his earthquake-experience was comparable to the dramatic conversion ofBlaise Pascal, usually referred to as the Memorial.46 Only Alexis’ experience was a conver-sion to the non-belief. The mysterious parchment, on which Pascal described his Memorial,was comparable to the burned letter in which Tocqueville described his loss of faith.

Although Pascal’s Pensées was plainly a religious book, it started from a scepticalpoint of view: ‘The senses mislead the Reason with false appearances […] Reason has herrevenge. The passions of the soul trouble the senses […]. They rival each other infalsehood and deception.’ 47,48 The premise of his wager was sceptical as well: ‘[…]we know neither the existence nor the nature of God.’49 However, neither his scepticismlead to common sense, nor to irreligion, but rather to something that sounds like a Kantianpostulate: ‘by faith we know His existence,’ although Pascal was born 101 years earlierthan Kant. And more than a century before Jeremy Bentham, Pascal, the great mathema-tician, elaborated some kind of felicific calculus, as an attempt to demonstrate that it is in

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everyone’s rational self-interest to believe in God. If God does not exist, it does not matterwhether you believe or not, but on the contrary, if God does exist, then it mattersconsiderably. In that case, the believer goes to heaven and the disbeliever to hell. Inother words, anyone who wants to play safe has to believe.

With his wager, Pascal tried to bring people to religion for the sake of their owninterest. Since he would have been a profound believer and his Pensées is commonlyconsidered as an apologetic writing, however it is quite obvious that he used self-interestonly as a decoy to bring people to faith. Therefore, in Pascal’s reasoning, religion was theend (self-interest for the sake of religion) whereas for Tocqueville religion was only themeans (religion for the sake of mankind, and so of common interest).

Pascal tried to lead people to a God-fearing existence with an argument that belongs tothe sphere of the casino. Paradoxically a profound believer as Pascal hardly tried to bringpeople to sincere religious sentiment, while the apostate Tocqueville put great emphasison genuine religiosity.

Tocqueville’s argument seemed more coherent than Pascal’s; whereas the latterappealed to sentiments of fear rather than of spirituality, Tocqueville struggled to find aconsistent attitude towards religion. It is reasonable to expect from a Church that itbehaves as a Church and even so it is reasonable to call on people to make clear choices.It was Tocqueville and not Pascal who wrote ‘when religion wants to rely on the interestsof this world, it becomes almost as fragile as all the powers of the earth’ (cf. supra).

As a matter of fact we just know that Tocqueville was not impressed by Pascal’swager. In the chapter How the Americans Apply the Doctrine of Interest Well Understoodin the Matter of Religion Tocqueville refers to it: ‘To be mistaken in believing theChristian religion true,’ said Pascal, ‘there is not much to lose; but what misfortune tobe mistaken in believing it false!’ [DA 928] Apparently Tocqueville was convinced thatthe Americans believe as if they knuckle under the pressure of this idea, because in themargin of the original manuscript of the Democracy he wrote: ‘This thought, which doesnot seem to me worthy of the great soul of Pascal, sums up perfectly well the state ofsouls in the countries where reason is becoming enlightened and stronger at the same timethat religious beliefs falter.’

Tocqueville’s disagreement with the wager must have been two-fold. First he did notagree that there is not much to lose in mistaking to believe the Christian religion to betrue, because ‘if religion does not save men in the other world, it is at least very useful totheir happiness and to their grandeur in this one.’ [DA 744] And though it is useful to anindividual that his religion be true, it is not necessary for society: ‘Society has nothingeither to fear or to hope concerning the other life; and what is most important for societyis not so much that all citizens profess the true religion but that they profess a religion.’[DA 473]

Secondly he would have most probably agreed with William James’ criticism thatwhen religious faith expresses itself in such terms, it is put to its last trumps: ‘SurelyPascal’s own personal belief in masses and holy water had far other springs; and thiscelebrated page of his is but an argument for others, a last desperate snatch.’50 Like James,Tocqueville felt clearly that a faith in masses and holy water, adopted wilfully after such amechanical calculation, lacks the inner soul of faith’s reality.

One of the real springs of Pascal’s belief must have been his Night of the Memorial,but Tocqueville witnessed a reversed Memorial. On the other hand, in spite of theseMemorials, reversed or not, one may wonder whether Pascal’s and Tocqueville’s outlookson Christianity were so different from one another. This may not be understood as anattempt to overrate Tocqueville’s religious sentiment, but rather as an attempt to question

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Pascal’s zealous faith. His Pensées was a compilation of many fragments that were foundin his desk and cupboards after his death. Since these apologetic notes were addressed tohimself, their function might have been to convince himself. In that respect, Tocquevillemight learn us more about Pascal’s outlooks on Christianity than vice versa.

James’ will to believe

William James did not only criticize Pascal’s wager, he also put forward an alternative,which is his well-known concept of the will to believe. The few texts that are left onTocqueville’s doubtful belief show a vigorous will to believe. Moreover, James reflectedfrom the typical American point of view that inspired Tocqueville to his insights on theconstructive societal role of religion, as formulated in his Democracy.

In a letter to Francisque Corcelle Tocqueville wrote in tangible despair: ‘If you know arecipe to believe in God, then give it to me.’51 To Gobineau he wrote: ‘Alas! It [faith] isnot accessible to all spirits and many of those who purchase it have not been lucky so farto find it.’52 And to his cousin Louis de Kergolay he wrote that when he was seeing adevotee (un dévot), he felt an extreme desire to come to the point of thinking and feelingthe same way, with the obviousness (l’évidence) that such a thing is impossible to him.53

In his Pragmatism, James asserted to disbelieve firmly that human experience is thehighest form of experience extant in the universe. He seemed rather to believe that ashuman beings we stand in the same relation to the whole of the universe as our canine andfeline pets do to the whole of human life, we would be tangents to the wider life of things:

But, just as many of the dog’s and cat’s ideals coincide with our ideals, and the dogs and catshave daily living proof of the fact, so we may well believe, on the proofs that religiousexperience affords, that higher powers exist and are at work to save the world on ideal linessimilar to our own.54

Like Pascal, James took scepticism as a starting point for his conception of faith assuch. The key element of his will to believe is that man’s impassioned nature not onlylawfully may, but must, decide an option between propositions, whenever it is a genuineoption that cannot by its nature be decided on intellectual grounds: ‘[…] for to say undersuch circumstances, “Do not decide, but leave the question open,” is itself a passionaldecision – just like deciding yes or not – and is attended with the same risk of losingtruth.’55

Earlier in his essay he described that an option is the decision between two hypothesesand that an option is genuine when it is of the forced, living, and momentous kind. Aforced option is an option, for which there is no possibility of not choosing. An option isliving if both of its constituent hypotheses are live, where a live hypothesis is one that youmight seriously wind up believing as a result of an inquiry.

If I say to you: ‘Be a theosophist or be a Mohammedan,’ it is probably a dead option,because for you neither hypothesis is likely to be alive. But if I say: ‘Be an agnostic or beChristian,’ it is otherwise: […] each hypothesis makes some appeal, however small, to yourbelief.56

Finally, an option is momentous when the opportunity is unique, when the stake issignificant, or when the decision is irreversible if it later proves unwise.

So the question whether Tocqueville was an agnostic or a Christian was at least agenuine and forced option. His internal wrestling with agnosticism and Christianity

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showed the option was also living. And finally, Beaumont’s description of Tocqueville’slast days illustrated how momentous the option was to him.

James believed that our fear for error is overrated. He compared it with a generalinforming his soldiers that it is better to keep out of battle forever than to risk a singlewound… ‘a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness.’57

But when a child sees its parents putting the presents under the Christmas tree and notSanta Claus, some doubt could be left and it could still stick desperately to its will tobelieve in him. Yet Tocqueville did not have such a lightness of heart. Although Jameselaborated his will to believe decades after Tocqueville’s death, the Normandic noblemanwrote in the letter to Corcelle that I already mentioned: ‘If the will to believe would besufficient to actually believe, then I would be devout since a very long time.’

Walter Kaufmann wrote that James’ appeal depends entirely on blurring the distinctionbetween those who hold out for 100% proof in a matter in which any reasonable personrests content with, let us say, ninety percent, and those who refuse to indulge in a beliefwhich is supported only by the argument that after all it could conceivably be true.58

Obviously Tocqueville did not believe 100% nor for zero. But he was probably tooempirical to upgrade his belief from maybe some 50% (only his mind, not his heart) up tothe full hundred, just for the sake of his own peace of heart. His Democracy was based onan impressive arsenal of empirical material. Before his journey to America (that lastednine months), Tocqueville profoundly studied the American history, culture and politicalsystem (among others by attending François Guizot’s famous Sorbonne lectures). InAmerica he not only visited a huge amount of archives and libraries, he also interviewedhunted Indians, black slaves, as well as politicians on almost any level.59 Even after hisjourney and before writing his Democracy, Tocqueville continued to study profoundlyAmerican society (his so-called second journey to America). Consequently, it is notobvious that Tocqueville would abandon so easily the classic adaequatio intellectus etrei (correspondence between intellect and object).60 Even though Tocqueville wasinspired by the rationalist Pascal, his empiricism was an obstacle to let his religiousfeelings penetrate into his heart, which seems to me the most obvious explanation whyTocqueville’s will to believe did not lead to an actual believe.

But James challenged empiricism. He thought the greatest empiricists are onlyempiricists on reflection: when left to their instincts, they dogmatize like infalliblepopes…

When the Cliffords61 tell us how sinful it is to be Christians on such ‘insufficient evidence,’insufficiency is really the last thing they have in mind. For them the evidence is absolutelysufficient, only it makes the other way. They believe so completely in an anti-Christian order ofthe universe that there is no living option: Christianity is a dead hypothesis from the start.62

Tocqueville might have been sensible to this argument. So although Tocqueville wasrarely enchanted by philosophical thaumaturgies as a bail-out for complex problems, I willgo further in this challenge of empiricism. Immanuel Kant’s fictionalism might help in thisrespect.

Kant’s fictionalism

Although it has been called as such only centuries after him,63 and that there is a profusionof primitive examples of it in ancient and scholastic times, the actual philosophicaltradition of fictionalism – the so-called philosophy of as-if – finds its footing in the

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work of Immanuel Kant. And just as Tocqueville’s, Kant’s thinking was an interweavingof rationalism, empiricism and scepticism.

David Hume denied the possibility of finding general and self-evident principles bywhich all logic deduction had to start. In that respect his scepticism was similar to that ofthe ancient Timon, and so were the effects: philosophy as such became problematic andcommon sense had to function as a bail-out of the nihilism provoked by it. From afictionalist point of view, common sense was mere acting as if epistemologist aporias aresimple to resolve; it was an appeal just to think less hard. In his Prolegomena, ImmanuelKant had harsh words for Thomas Reid, James Beattie, James Oswald and JosephPriestley. He believed they missed the point of Hume’s problem, and misjudged hishints for improvement. Common sense might be useful for immediate application, Kantwrote, but it is not a convincing kind of fictionalism in a universal mode:

Hammer and chisel are perfectly fine for working raw lumber, but for copperplate one mustuse an etching needle. Likewise, sound common sense and speculative understanding areboth useful, but each in its own way; the one, when it is a matter of judgments that find theirimmediate application in experience, the other, however, when judgments are to be made in auniversal mode, out of mere concepts, as in metaphysics, where what calls itself (but often perantiphrasin) a sound common sense has no judgment whatsoever.64

Ancient philosophy did not deal very bravely with scepticism,65 but after Hume modernphilosophy trembled on its foundations. A main reason why Kant has been up to nowconsidered as one of the greatest philosophers of all times, is because he found afictionalist answer66 to scepticism that was sophisticated enough not to make philosophersfeel like hypocrites or cheap fakers. Today numerous philosophers believe that one cannotknow anything with certainty of the thing-in-itself,67 although they do not seem to botherto act as if they have certainty on the ground of all kinds of things.

To Kant representations and concepts may be either pure (a priori) or empirical (aposteriori). A pure concept which transcends the possibility of experience is referred byKant as an idea. Thus, an idea of pure reason may also be defined as a transcendentalidea. And it was in Kant’s elaboration of these transcendental ideas that the expression asif caught the attention of the neo-Kantian Hans Vaihinger, the godfather of fictionalism.Kant distinguished three transcendental ideas: a theological, a psychological, and acosmological one. And corresponding thereupon he postulated three regulative principles:God, the soul and the totality of the universe. This passage deserves to be quoted atlength, because it is the very origin of fictionalism as such:

Following the [transcendental] ideas named above as principles, we will first (in psychology)connect all appearances, actions, and receptivity of our mind to the guiding thread of innerexperience as if the mind were a simple substance that (at least in this life) persists inexistence with personal identity […] Then second (in cosmology) we have to pursue theconditions of the inner as well as the outer appearances of nature through an investigation thatwill nowhere be completed, as if nature were infinite in itself and without a first or suprememember […] Finally and thirdly (in regard to theology), we have to consider everything thatmight ever belong to the context of possible experience as if this experience constituted anabsolute unity, but one dependent through and through, and always, and always still condi-tioned within the world of sense, yet at the same time as if the sum of all appearances (theworld of sense itself) had a single and supreme and all-sufficient ground outside its range […](emphasis in original)68

In other words, we ought not to deduce the internal phenomena of the mind from asimple thinking substance, but deduce them from each other under the guidance of the

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regulative idea of a simple being; we ought not to deduce the phenomena, order, and unityof the universe from a supreme intelligence, but merely draw from this idea of asupremely wise cause the rules which must guide reason in its connection of causes andeffects.

Transcendental ideas may also be regulative principles for the understanding. They areno constitutive principles of the empirical world, but pure concepts of reason. Yet theymay be applied to the empirical world in order to guide the understanding. Pure reason isa regulative principle, which acts to unify the empirical concepts of the understanding.And even so Vaihinger wrote: ‘[…] the object of the world of ideas as a whole is not theportrayal of reality – this would be an utterly impossible task – but rather to provide uswith an instrument for finding our way about in this world more easily.’69

So Kant made it possible to put God outside through the main gate (as aconstitutive principle of the empirical world), in order to sneak Him subsequentlyback in through the backdoor (as a regulative principle of reason). In this sensereligious belief is at least semi-fictional (an unproven construct of which the verifia-bility is uncertain). But a deeper elucidation of Kant’s understanding of belief pointsout that to him it was rather a full fiction. In his treatise On a recently prominent toneof superiority in philosophy,70 Kant distinguished three different meanings of that sameword.

There he explains that theoretically ‘to believe’ can be considered as a synonym forholding something to be probable.71 But of that which lies beyond the bounds of possibleexperience, one can say neither that it is probable, nor that it is improbable. That wouldimply something halfway between thinking and knowing. Something might be consideredas probable when more than half the certainty is on its side. The reasons must thereforecollectively contain a partial cognition, a part of the knowledge of the object on which thejudgment is passed. And so e.g. the expression I believe that the soul lives on after deathdoes not make sense when believe is taken strictly theoretically.

To Kant the position is the same with the second meaning, viz. the belief in thewitness of another that allegedly has reference to something super-sensible, since theauthenticity of a report is always an empirical matter and the person (or the Scripture) inwhose testimony I am to believe, must be the object of an experience. But if he is taken tobe a super-sensible being, then I can be taught by no experience (since that would be self-contradictory), as to his very existence, nor as to the fact that it is such a being whotestifies this to me.

In the third, moral-practical sense, however, Kant asserts that a belief in the super-sensible is not just possible, but inevitable! For the sum of morality in myself, althoughnot empirical, is, according to Kant, given with truth and authority (through a categoricalimperative), though the latter prescribes a purpose (the highest good), which, theoreticallyregarded, cannot be achieved through my powers alone, without the contributory might ofa world governor. However, to believe in this, from a moral and practical viewpoint, doesnot mean to apprehend its reality beforehand in a theoretical sense. To Kant, it rathermeans ‘to act according to the ideal of this purpose, as though such a world-governmentwere real.’72 So since, according to Kant, it is not within the reach of my senses to knowwhether God exists or not, a rightly understood belief (i.e. a moral-practical one) impliesacting as if God is real.73

And so when bringing together James’ will to believe (including its criticism toempiricism) and Kant’s true meaning of believing, one can wonder what objection isleft for Tocqueville to consider himself as a believer in the full meaning of the word.According to Marcel Gauchet, Tocqueville was ‘one the very rare authors who had the

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luck to be right in spite of themselves.’74 Therefore, from Kant’s point of view,Tocqueville’s believe is more sincere and common than it felt to Tocqueville himself.

In a surprising letter to his friend, the Catholic philosopher Louis Bouchitté,Tocqueville wrote to be rather disappointed in philosophy with respect to the profit heobtained from it. It never would have brought him any further than some simple personalideas from which he used to start, and:

These ideas easily lead to the belief in a first cause that is at once obvious and inconceivable;these ideas also lead to fixed laws as the physical world and reveals it to be assumed in themoral world; they lead to belief in the providence of God, therefore his justice to theresponsibility of human actions, which were allowed to know that there is good and eviland, consequently, they lead to belief in another life.75

Tocqueville seems to have forgotten here suddenly his earthquake experience of doubtabout everything. As a matter of fact, he claims to accept at least Kant’s three regulativeprinciples: God, the soul (at least the responsibility of human actions) and the totality ofthe universe (the physical world), as well as Kant’s postulates of practical reason: theexistence of God, freedom, and the immortality of the soul.76

Although Bouchitté was not a close friend, it is not sure whether Tocqueville was justpleasing here his correspondent with some nice words. At least, Doris Goldstein tookthese words seriously and maybe rightly so. Although she did not mention Kant, herstrongest arguments therefore fit perfectly in his outlook on religion. Tocqueville did notaccept the idea of an afterlife as a dogma of the church, she said, yet he found it in man’svery nature. In another letter to Bouchitté he said that an instinct, not contrary, butstronger than reason, brings us to the belief that death is not the end of life, but rathera modification of life. Then he said he believes that same instinct is persuading uscorrectly that the ones whom we regret in this world do not have to regret to have leftit.77 In another moving letter to Corcelle, he described his feelings about the loss of hisbeloved father. There he wrote that both his life and the way he died provided him withthe greatest proofs or religion.78 Kant postulated the immortality of the soul on almostexactly the same moral and humane grounds; since the highest good is not necessarilyachievable in this life, there must be an afterlife.79

In his dramatic letter to Madame de Swetchine, he wrote at the end that it was only‘from time to time’ that those impressions possess him again, and that ‘my intellectualworld totters.’ But it is sure Tocqueville felt uncomfortable with his own poor faith. Jean-Louis Benoît called Alexis at once an agnostic and a spiritualist.80 Tocqueville definitelymade contradictory statements on his religious beliefs. Therefore it is most unfortunatehe never read (profoundly) Kant’s ideas on religious belief, since the Prussian professorreached a manual that could have offered more coherence in Tocqueville’s personalbelief.

Maybe Tocqueville did not need to mourn about his lost faith, since, according toKant, he did not necessarily lose it. Tocqueville wrote that the Catholic faith would besweet to him. Yet ‘its first condition is to believe in all the dogmas of the CatholicChurch,’ he said… ‘and these dogmas, always challenged by my reason, I do not want torecognize nor approve when in reality I can never admit them!’81

In the same letter in which Tocqueville wrote not to be a believer, he calledCatholicism ‘the religion I profess.’ Nevertheless he had an almost visceral reluctanceto the dogmas of the original sin and the Immaculate Conception.82

In Tocqueville’s Notes on the Qur’an and other Texts on Religions, the editor, Jean-Louis Benoît, quotes a letter of Tocqueville to his tutor Lesueur that was unpublished

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before and in which Tocqueville seemed to get angry at the idea that all men would havebeen born guilty because of Adam’s sin.83 But in his Religion within the Boundaries ofMere Reason, Kant made an interesting analysis on the ideas of the evil nature of man andthe original sin. And finally he concludes: ‘the statement, “The human being is evil,”cannot mean anything else than he is conscious of the moral law and yet has incorporatedinto his maxim the (occasional) deviation from it.’84

Benoît also quotes a letter of Tocqueville to Corcelle in which the author is almostoutrageous because of the instauration by Pope Pius IX of the dogma of the ImmaculateConception.85 But in his Religion Kant explained how well-suited the idea is of the birth,independent of any sexual intercourse (virginal), of a child untainted by moral blemish.He even discusses the biological difficulties of it, but then he concludes: ‘But what is theuse of all this theorizing pro or contra, when it suffices for practical purposes to hold theidea itself before us as model, as symbol of humankind raising itself above temptation toevil (and withstanding it victoriously)?’86

So Kant has put these dogmas in the perspective of the elevation of man, which onceagain fits perfectly in Tocqueville’s thinking.

For several reasons it seems obvious that Tocqueville was not familiar with Kant’sphilosophy. He never mentioned him in his publications and only once in his rich corre-spondence, in a letter to Gobineau. In that letter, Tocqueville commissioned Gobineau (whowas his research assistant), to focus his research on German authors, since ‘I do not knowGerman.’87 Gobineau finally finished a report on the history of morals (Coup d’œil généralsur l’histoire de la morale) in which he wrote scarcely seven pages on Kant’s oeuvre.88 Andat that time no French translations of Kant’s oeuvre were available yet, at least not when theDemocracy was published.89 According to Benoît, Tocqueville also read an article (of 33pages), named Kant et sa philosophie (Kant and his Philosophy), written by Victor Cousinand published in the Revue des deux mondes, in February 1840.90 Benoît also wrote: ‘[…]so much the affinity with Pascal’s thinking has been established and confirmed, so much thelink to Kant is problematic.’ And on the same page he wrote that the most obvious linkbetween Tocqueville and Kant is an indirect one: ‘both studied profoundly the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau; […] but it is dangerous to go any further than that.’91 So Tocqueville’sknowledge of Kant was only indirect and very limited.

Kant explained that a rightly understood belief implies acting as if God is real and thatthere is no reason to get furious about the dogmas of the Catholic Church. Like Kant,Tocqueville used the idea of a Supreme Being as a regulative principle. But only Kantcould give philosophical ground to it. In his public life, the apostate Tocqueville praisedGod for the sake of politics, but in his private life, he could not entirely turn his back toGod either. And according to Kant, a rightly understood belief is a morally-practicalbelief, which is fictional and inevitable. Although Tocqueville was not enthusiastic aboutphilosophy as such, it is difficult to imagine that Tocqueville would have remainedindifferent to the solution Kant had reached.

Kant could have conveyed Tocqueville a philosophical ground to reconcile with God,the Christian faith, the dogmas of the church, and with his own public (political) ideaswith respect to religion.

It seems too perfect to be true; well so it probably is. Although Tocqueville’s personalbeliefs with respect to religion used to provoke much controversy until the twenty-firstcentury, a rather accurate description of it had already been given publically by Henri-Dominique Lacordaire, shortly after his death. This liberal cleric took over Tocqueville’sseat at the Academy française, and in his acceptance speech, he not only praised hispredecessor, he also gave a fairly realistic description of his personal religious belief.

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He said that Tocqueville’s moral earnestness and integrity had shown him the active,living and personal God who regulates everything, but nevertheless he did not alwaysloved God as a Christian. Lacordaire admitted that in this respect Tocqueville’s faith leftmuch to be desired; it was faith of reason rather than of the heart, it lacked the trueChristian’s ardour and love.92

To understand Tocqueville’s political and religious ideas it might help to keep in mindthat his heart functioned in a different mode than his head. His head converted todemocracy; by heart he always remained an aristocrat. In his head he always remaineda Christian; his sceptic heart lost the faith.

So although Kant could have offered Tocqueville some peace of mind, what he reallyneeded was peace of heart. Yet therefore probably two problems would have remained,which are, in general, the two weakest spots of religious fictionalism as such.93

In his The Future of an Illusion, Freud seriously wondered whether it was wise tospread publicly his analyses of the religious fairy tales (i.e. all religion). He too wassensitive to the argument of the constructive societal role of religion. But then he came tothe most classic argument against fictionalism: ‘There is no appeal to a court above that ofreason.’94 Actually fictionalism is a philosophical mind game95 and in the letter toBouchitté, I already mentioned, Tocqueville wrote not to believe much in the power ofphilosophy anyway: ‘I would have had a passionate taste for philosophical studies […]when they would yield me more profit.’ There he also wrote that for all kinds of religiousideas the finest metaphysics had never provided him more clear notions than commonsense did.96 Well maybe Tocqueville should have tried harder, since the only modernphilosophers he studied were French. As I mentioned before, he felt as if he were takenfor a ride by them. Besides, Tocqueville was also sensitive to the arguments of thesceptics97 and for everyone who takes scepticism seriously it is difficult to find a betteranswer to it than religious fictionalism. Though in order to bring Tocqueville to anotherconclusion than Freud, the second problem would have been a more important obstacle.Kant could have conveyed Tocqueville some philosophical ground to reconcile with God.But that would be with the God of the philosophers, as Pascal called him disapprovinglyin his Memorial, not with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Tocqueville did not havea will to believe in the God of the philosophers. This critique has been formulated in manyforms, but I will put it in the words of Rüdiger Safranski:

[…] religions do not emanate from a psychological act of the will, undertaken with the aim toeliminate some deficiency; they arise – actually you cannot put it otherwise – from a holyevent. That must happen. But it happens only when people believe in it. And we can onlynotice whether we believe in it, when we are changed by it.98

Such a holy event was missing in the development of Tocqueville’s outlook on religion.The most existential moment with respect to religion in his life, was probably his reversedMemorial, which had drifted him away from faith. Every fictionalist, instrumental orfunctionalist approach of religion has difficulties on the individual level in experiencingholy events, like a real Night of the Memorial. In the end, fictionalism somehow remainsan appeal to psychological suppression.

Conclusion

The three main elements that determined Tocqueville’s strange belief were his aristocraticand profoundly religious education, the dramatic loss of his faith in the library of the

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prefecture of Metz after reading eighteenth-century French philosophers and his conclu-sion that the stability of the American democracy was mainly due to religious mores.Especially these elements explain why Tocqueville appeared in his publications as anobvious believer, hardly bothered by any dubiety, while internally he was a restlessdoubter, sometimes a panicky infidel and occasionally some sort of believer anyway.

Yet with respect to religion, he never adopted an easy attitude of cheap opportunism.So although Tocqueville had the highest esteem for Pascal, his wager was far fromtempting. James’ will to believe seemed more attractive, yet Tocqueville’s thinking wastoo empirical to fit with it. Kant furnished strong arguments to overcome this obstacle,and in that respect he offered a solid philosophical ground to consider Tocqueville’soutlook on religion as an authentic religious belief. But what Tocqueville was reallylooking for, was a religious ground to Christianity. As a matter of fact, Christianity wasTocqueville’s philosophical belief, rather than his religious belief.

And finally yet another question remains.… What is the impact of the discovery of theTocquevilles’ family secret on the power of Alexis’ political ideas? Tocqueville concealedhis unbelief because it does not make sense to plea in favour of a religious belief, whenyou do not believe it yourself. A barrister who does not believe in the innocence of hisown client will never admit it, when he tries to convince the jury that his client isinnocent. And a doctor will never tell his patient that the medicine he is giving him isjust a placebo, because otherwise its healing effect disappears. To his servant Lampe, Kanttoo presented moral duties, grounded in reason, as divine commandments, just for thesake of the poor man’s peace of mind. But on the other hand, Tocqueville’s unbelief alsoreinforces the idea that religion has a constructive role to play in man’s elevation andhence in democracy. Since the Pensées was an apologetic book, it is obvious that Pascal’sessential concern was not his reader’s self-interest, but to bring him to God. On thecontrary, the apostate Tocqueville cannot be suspected of such a hidden agenda.Therefore, when Tocqueville pleaded in favour of a dominant role for religion in ademocratic society, it is difficult to imagine that he meant by that something differentthan what he actually said. Because of his unbelief, it becomes obvious that whenTocqueville pleaded in favour of a major role for religion in society, he must have beensincere in at least that respect.

Notes1. Letter to Eugène Stoffels, dated 24 July 1836 : ‘[…] un libéral d’une espèce nouvelle […] on

me confonde avec la plupart des démocrates de nos jours.’ de Tocqueville (1860) OC V, 431.2. For an overview, see Boesche’s classic work (1987) Strange Liberalism of Tocqueville.3. de Tocqueville (2000) Democracy in America, xvii.4. Hardly had Tocqueville arrived in the Far West, that he wrote to his cousin Louis de Kergorlay

about religious praxis in America: ‘Religion is observed much the way medicine was taken byour fathers in the month of May: it may not do any good, but neither can it do any harm, andanyway, people seem to say, it’s best to abide by the general rule […]’ (de Tocqueville Lettersfrom America, 89) . And in his Democracy Tocqueville asserted not to be sure the Americansare convinced of the truth of their religion, yet they are very convinced of its utility. [DA 472]

5. Goldstein (1960) Religious Beliefs.6. Lukacs (1961) Comment on Tocqueville Article.7. Zuckert (1981) Not by Preaching.8. Bathory (1980) Tocqueville on Citizenship and Faith.9. Goldstein (1975) Trial of Faith.10. Sloat (2000) Sincere Belief.

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11. The phrase that comes closest to the subject is in footnote 84: ‘Peter Augustine Lawlerpresents Tocqueville as one of the regretful skeptics.’

12. Goldstein (1960) Religious Beliefs, 379.13. de Tocqueville (1959) OC IX, 278.14. The most influential book in this respect was probably Condorcet O’Connor and Arago (1786)

Influence de la Révolution).15. Strout (1969) Tocqueville’s Duality.16. Quotations of Democracy in America will be formulated under this form: [DA 475], which

means Democracy in America page 475. The translation I used is de Tocqueville, Democracyin America (2010).

17. See e.g. Noll (2002) Old Religion.18. See de Tocqueville (2004) L’Ancien Régime, 58 and de Tocqueville (2004) État social et

politique, 7.19. Tocqueville (1959) OC IX, 46.20. Wach (1946) The Role of Religion, 77.21. Ibid., 77.22. de Tocqueville (1866) OC VII, 212.23. The legitimist Count de Falloux (1811–1886) was Minister of Public Instruction under the

Second Republic. His famous law (la loi Falloux) in 1850 was a compromise between lay andclerical education under which France would operate until the fall of the Third Republic. Seealso his Falloux du Coudray (1882) Discours et mélanges politiques.

24. See Falloux du Coudray (1860) Vie et œuvres. Parts of it were translated in Falloux (1967) Lifeand Letters.

25. Brogan (2006) Tocqueville, A Life, 49–50. The letter was originally published in Redier (1925)Comme disait Tocqueville, 287–88.

26. de Tocquevill (1959) OC IX, 57.27. Ibid., 66–7.28. Ibid., 1329. See Baunard (1913) Foi et victoires, 123–250.30. Baunard’s attempts to put Tocqueville in the straitjacket of an Orthodox Catholic after the

1850’s were reinforced by Anoine Redier, the person who discovered the letter31. See John Lukacs in de Tocqueville (1959) European Revolution.32. Goldstein (1960) Religious Beliefs, 380.33. Redier (1925) Comme disait Tocqueville, 28234. de Tocqueville (1867) OC VI, 260–1.35. de Tocqueville, Tocqueville on America after 1840, 293.36. Ibid., 295.37. Díez del Corral (1965) Mentalidad política de Tocqueville, 118. See also [DA 480].38. McLendon (2006) Jansenism, 699.39. de Tocqueville (1977) OC XIII-1, 418.40. For example when Tocqueville wrote: ‘A great man has said that ignorance is at the two ends

of knowledge’ [DA 299], he was referring to Pascal’s Pensées (§83 in the Lafuma-edition[1958]) without mentioning him.

41. See Lawler (1993) The Restless Mind.42. Between the lines of his Democracy one can read that Tocqueville secretly considered

Protestantism as a more democratic form of Christianity. But that he could not admit, sincehe went to America to find solutions for his own country (with a long Catholic tradition).

43. de Tocqueville (1983) OC XV-2, 29. Also in his Democracy Tocqueville described the evil ofdoubt: ‘When religion is destroyed among a people, doubt takes hold of the highest portions ofthe intellect and half paralyzes all the others […] You defend your opinions badly or you abandonthem, and, since you despair of being able, by yourself, to solve the greatest problems that humandestiny presents, you are reduced like a coward to not thinking about them.’ [DA 744–5]

44. Mélonio (1984) La religion selon Tocqueville, 74.45. de Tocqueville (2007) Notes sur le Coran, 10.46. In October 1654, Blaise got involved in an accident, whereby the horses pulling his carriage

plunged over a parapet. As if it was a miracle, the fragile Frenchman got away without ascratch. But he was so impressed by the event that he went unconscious. A month later he got

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a vision that influenced the rest of his life. Blaise wrote down this experience of conversion ona parchment, The Memorial. He always kept it with him, in the hem of his robe.

47. Pascal (1958) Pascal’s Pensées, 27.48. Cf. ‘There is no man in the world who has ever found, and it is nearly certain that none will

ever be met who will find the central ending point for, I am not saying all the beams of generaltruth, which are united only in God alone, but even for all the beams of a particular truth. Mengrasp fragments of truth, but never truth itself. This admitted, the result would be that every manwho presents a complete and absolute system, by the sole fact that his system is complete andabsolute, is almost certainly in a state of error or falsehood, and that every man who wants toimpose such a system on his fellows by force must ipso facto and without preliminary examina-tion of his ideas be considered as a tyrant and an enemy of the human species.’ [DA 715].

49. Pascal (1958) Pascal’s Pensées, 66.50. See The Will to Believe in James (1992) Writings, 46051. de Tocqueville (1983) OC XV-2, 29.52. de Tocqueville (1959) OC IX, 278.53. de Tocqueville (1860) OC V, 321.54. James (1907) Pragmatism, 116.55. James (1992) Writings, 464.56. Ibid., 458.57. Ibid., 470.58. Kaufman (1958) Critique, 83.59. Tocqueville’s Democracy was just the conclusion of all this empirical material. But the notes

he took in America were published separately (only in French) in (de Tocqueville, Voyages enAmérique 1991).

60. The quote stems from Thomas Aquinas’ Quaestiones disputatae de vertate (QI, Art. I). RenéDescartes formulated it in his own words: ‘the word “truth,” in the strict sense, denotes theconformity of thought with its object.’ See Descartes (1997) Philosophical Writings, 139.

61. James’ essay The Will to Believe was written as a response to W.K. Clifford’s essay The Ethicsof Belief.

62. James (1992) Writings, 466.63. The neo-kantian German Hans Vaihinger (1852–1933) was the first to elaborate pretending as

if something is true as a philosophical method. His fictionalism presented both an interpreta-tion and a continuation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, in which fictive procedure isfundamental. See Vaihinger, Philosophy of As if.

64. Kant (2002) Prolegomena, 57.65. It was only in the third century A.D. that scepticism became contrary to the temper of the age,

which was turning to dogmatic Christianity. Then the ancient world turned aside fromscepticism, without answering its arguments, which is in itself a flirt with fictionalism.

66. See Schaper (1966) The Kantian Thing-in-itself.67. One could wonder whether it is desirable that we know the ground of things anyway, since

what would be left for the one who knows everything? According to C.S. Lewis it is perfectthat windows are transparent, but only because the street or garden beyond it is opaque, sincethe whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. What if we wouldsee through the garden too? It is no use trying to see through first principles. ‘If you see througheverything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world.To “see through” all things is the same as not to see’ (Lewis [2001] The Abolition of Man, 81).

68. Kant (1977) Critique of Pure Reason, 606–7.69. Vaihinger (1911) Philosophy of As if, 15.70. Kant (2002) Superiority in Philosophy.71. Ibid., 437.72. Ibid., 438.73. Even the New Testament does not necessarily consider faith as cognitive knowledge of

positive facts. At the commencement of the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrewsfaith is defined as a proof of things not seen.

74. Gauchet (1980) L’Amérique et nous, 44.75. de Tocqueville (1866) OC VII, 476.76. Tocqueville’s declaration of faith also means that according to Bertrand Russell, he was a

Christian. In his Why I am not a Christian (2004, 2), Russell explains that in order to call

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oneself a Christian, one must have three definite beliefs: belief in the existence of God, beliefin life after death, and belief that Christ has a specific significance. But it is doubtful thatTocqueville would be a believer according to Nietzsche, who defined faith as not wanting toknow what is true (Der Antichrist, §52).

77. Goldstein (1960) Religious Beliefs, 384–5 and Tocqueville (1866) OC VII, 146.78. Goldstein (1960) Religious Beliefs, 385–6 and Tocqueville (1866) OC VII, 310.79. Kant (1977) Critique of Practical Reason, 123–5.80. de Tocqueville (2007) Notes sur le Coran, 9–10.81. de Tocqueville (1959) OC IX, 14.82. de Tocqueville (2007) Notes sur le Coran, 10.83. Ibid., 114.84. Kant (2003) Religion, 55.85. de Tocqueville (2007) Notes sur le Coran, 114.86. Kant (2003) Religion, 95.87. de Tocqueville (1959) OC IX, 60.88. Ibid., 316–2289. According to François Azouvi and Dominique Bourel (1991) (De Königberg à Paris), the first

French translation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason appeared in 1835, i.e. the year in whichthe first volume of Democracy in America appeared. The first translation of the Critique ofPractical Reason was published only in 1848.

90. Benoît (2004) Tocqueville moraliste, 46 and 73–4.91. de Tocqueville (2007) Notes sur le Coran, 344.92. Lacordaire (1861) Discours à l’Académie française, 4, 24.93. These are also Cordry’s two main arguments in his, Critique of Religious Fictionalism (2010).

In the same issue of this journal, Andrew Eshleman made an attempt to counter thosearguments (Eshleman [2010] Religious Fictionalism Defended).

94. See Freud (1961) Future of an Illusion, 28. See also Hood (1992) Freudian Critique.95. This argument has even been used in favour of fictionalism, as did Lonnie Kliever, based on

game theory and Johan Huizinga with his Homo Ludens. See Kliever (1981) Fictive Religion.96. de Tocqueville (1866) OC VII, 476–7.97. In his Democracy, Tocqueville wrote with a lot of authority. Therefore it is surprising that at

the very end of the last volume, he all of a sudden seems to feel overwhelmed with doubtabout his abilities to know the truth as such. Therefore he recommends his readers to rely moreon God. Whereas Tocqueville wrote in the first volume of his Democracy: ‘I am envisagingreligions only from a purely human viewpoint.’ [DA 746] on the very last pages of the secondvolume he wrote: ‘I try hard to enter into this point of view of God, and from there I seek toconsider and to judge human things.’ [DA 1282]

98. Safranski (1995) Wiederkehr der Götter, 251.

Notes on contributorLuk Sanders studied social and military sciences (Royal Military Academy, Brussels) and philoso-phy (at the universities of Brussels, Leuven and Antwerp). His publications cover mainly thesubjects of citizenship, political ideologies and the political and religious thinking of Alexis deTocqueville. He is researcher at the Royal Higher Institute for Defense (Brussels) and teachesphilosophy at the Evangelical Theological Faculty (Leuven).

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