Aristocratic Liberalism: The Social and Poltical Thought of Jacob Burckhardt, John Stuart Mill, and Alexis de Tocqueville

by Alan S. Kahan

"Liberalism" is widely used to describe a variety of social and political ideas, but has been an especially difficult concept for historians and political scientists to define. Burckhardt, Mill, and Tocqueville define one type of liberal thought. They share an aristocratic liberalism marked by distaste for the masses and the middle class, opposition to the commercial spirit, fear and contempt of mediocrity, and suspicion of the centralized state. Their fears are combined with an elevated ideal of human personality, an ideal which affirms modernity. All see their ideals threatened in the immediate future, and all hope to save European civilization from barbarism and militarism through some form of education, although all grow more pessimistic towards the end of their lives. Aristocratic Liberalism ignores the national boundaries that so often confine the history of political thought, and uses the perspective thus gained to establish a pan-European type of political thought. Going beyond Burckhardt, Mill, and Tocqueville, Aristocratic Liberalism argues for new ways of looking at nineteenth-century liberalism. It corrects many prevalent misconceptions about liberalism, and suggests new paths for arriving at a better understanding of the leading form of nineteenth-century political thought. The new Afterword by the author presents a novel description of liberal political language as the "discourse of capacity," and suggests that this kind of language is the common denominator of all forms of European liberalism in the nineteenth century. Aristocratic Liberalism will be valuable to students of history, political science, sociology, and political philosophy.

Genres: Politics, Philosophy

250 pages, Paperback

First published June 18, 1992

Reviews

[Tomislav · Rating 2 out of 5]

An overview of similarities in ideas of Burckhardt, Mill and Tocqueville. The book documents their interpretations of French revolution and modernity, their dislike of the middle class and commercial culture, opposition to centralized state and some other themes. It is a quite short book, based on the author’s dissertation. It makes some good points about the three thinkers, but it is less successful in presenting aristocratic liberalism as a coherent ideology or a meaningful tradition within liberalism. Based only on this book you could conclude that aristocratic liberalism doesn’t amount to much more than intellectual snobbism and humanistic moralizing of the three authors. That seems to be their main point of distinction from other, less noble liberals because they mostly agree on matters of state and economics. Kahan is especially focused on their dislike of middle-class values, which are presented as mindless greed, and basically confines aristocratic liberalism to the middle of 19th century. Other right-wing liberals who leaned towards antidemocratic, anti-egalitarian and anti-utilitarian ideas don’t fit into this faction because they didn’t seem to be antibourgeois enough. The book tries to present a very narrowly defined type of liberalism and it doesn’t do it in a very clear and convincing way.

[Jackson Cyril · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not sure I'd place Mill here. Mill in his later years drastically changed his views and I'm not sure if Kahan appreciates that here.