To write the biography of a thinker is a difficult thing. His thought claims our attention at a level above the doings and deeds of his life, the latter irrelevant to the truth of his thought. “Aristotle was born, philosophized, and died.” That’s all you need to know when reading Aristotle (perhaps close to all you can know). Yet Alexis de Tocqueville had a life more significant to his thought than Aristotle’s. He was in the first place preoccupied with his time, the time when democracy came out of the shadows in which it had been gathering force for centuries to emerge “in broad daylight” (one of Tocqueville’s favorite phrases), visible in form and loud of voice. His time was no mere context surrounding or enveloping his thought but rather the center of his intent. In his Souvenirs and The Old Regime, as well as in Democracy in America, the nature of modern democracy is the main object of his thought.

Together with this fact, perhaps a consequence of it, is Tocqueville’s life-long absorption in the politics of his country. He ran for office in the National Assembly under the monarchy of Louis-Philippe instead of finishing the second volume of Democracy in America, thus postponing its completion for four years. After being elected he took a leading part in its affairs and suffered through the Revolution of 1848, on which he secretly wrote his memorable Souvenirs, not for publication. In 1849 he held office briefly