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                   The Tocqueville Program


Every year, the Tocqueville Program sponsors a course and brings prominent scholars and public intellectuals to Furman’s campus with the aim encouraging serious and open engagement with the moral questions at the heart of political life.

The program takes its name from Alexis de Tocqueville, perhaps the greatest student of modern democracy, who understood both the difficulty and the necessity of reminding citizens of a decent and prosperous regime about questions of truth, nobility and eternity. These questions are not always comfortable to discuss and are never easily resolved; but, as Tocqueville understood, these questions cannot be ignored by human beings who seek to live lives of freedom and dignity. 

This year, the Tocqueville Program will embark on a thorough examination of our namesake’s masterpiece, Democracy in America (1835).  With its piercing observations, uncanny predictions, and judicious judgments about all things American and democratic, Tocqueville’s book has come to be regarded by many as both “the best book ever written on democracy and the best book ever written on America.”  But Democracy in America is much more than a book about politics, and contains nothing less than a comprehensive investigation of the effects of democracy on the human soul.  This year’s course and lecture series will examine the lessons we still have to learn from Tocqueville about our country, our regime, and ourselves.

2013 Lectures 

Patrick Deneen
"A Sort of Religious Terror: Why Tocqueville's Deepest Fears About Democracy Have Arrived"
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
4:30pm
Watkins Room, Trone Student Center
Furman University
Reception follows immediately after the address



James W. Ceaser
"Tocqueville's World and Ours"
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
4:30pm
Watkins Room, Trone Student Center
Furman University
Reception follows immediately after the address




Robert Faulkner
"Democratic Greatness?  Tocqueville on American Ambition"
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
4:30pm
Watkins Room, Trone Student Center
Furman University 
Reception follows immediately after the address




Dianna Schaub
"Tocquevillian Perspectives on Slavery"
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
4:30pm
Watkins Room, Trone Student Center
Furman University
Reception follows immediately after the address

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