Tocqueville’s Defense of the “Rights” and “Privileges of Humanity”

This paper examines Alexis de Tocqueville’s use of the “rights” and “privileges of humanity” and their relation to ordered liberty. While Tocqueville appreciates both the universality and particularity of humanity, I argue that he ultimately views forms of particular humanity as conditions of freedom threatened by democracy. Humanity’s particularity is manifest in the peculiar notions of praise and blame meted out by the political community, the patriotic devotion to one’s nation, and a shared belonging in mores, habits, and language; these “privileges” or “rights of humanity” ground practical freedom within a particular political community. By contrast, democracy’s universalizing tendency abstracts from and softens inherited mores and notions of honor, opening familial, religious, and social relations to greater mobility. However, Tocqueville ultimately perceives the overshadowing of humanity’s particularity by radical democratic universality and pantheism; the gradual abolition of any distinguishing, even exclusionary “privileges” of the political community leaves democratic man groundless and without practical orientation. In response, I argue that Tocqueville favors a humane and moderate particularity in one’s “rights” or “privileges of humanity” that resists devolving into an inhumane exclusivity, encouraging democracy’s universalizing impulse to respect the human associations that contribute to the flourishing of political life.