Tutelage and Totalitarianism: A Comparative Analysis of Alexis de Tocqueville and Hannah Arendt

• In Event: Thinking with Tocqueville, Rousseau, and Hegel

Abstract

In the wake of discussions surrounding widespread loneliness, decaying local political participation, and increasing dependence on nongeographic forms of community, an analysis of totalitarian and tutelary states is crucial. This paper evaluates the origins and historical process of these pressing modern issues through the lens of Alexis de Tocqueville and Hannah Arendt. I argue that, unlike Arendt, Tocqueville understands the impossibility of separating the social and political spheres entirely and uses the social sphere to resist the tutelary state.

First, I claim that Tocqueville’s tutelary state and Arendt’s totalitarian state both directly stem from their fears that democratic citizens will sacrifice equality over freedom; second, I argue that Arendt’s fear over the decay of authority stems from an unreasonable overemphasis on the faults of the social sphere; third, I assert that Arendt’s appeal to authority leads to less tangible remedies than Tocqueville’s appeals to freedom. Tocqueville and Arendt identify the same origins of isolation through increasing equality and conclude with the tutelary or totalitarian state; they differ in their approach to solving such regimes because they differ in how they value the social sphere, and whether the social can be separated from the political. By accepting that Tocqueville’s perception of the social state holds more practical weight and coincides with reason to a fuller extent than that of Arendt, all democratic citizens can become reinvigorated to make sociopolitical changes and resist the tutelary state.

Author

• Julia G Mahoney, Boston College