Moral or Civic Virtue? Understanding Interest Rightly Understood

• In Event: Nineteenth Century American Political Thought

Abstract

Alexis de Tocqueville’s concept of intérêt bien entendu is one of his most famous concepts but it is also arguably his most ambiguous. It is therefore widely and variously interpreted by scholars in light of its echoes with concepts of republican or civic virtue, economic or utilitarian theories of interest, and with Christian and even Aristotelian or natural law approaches to virtue. What is less ambiguous is, in the words of one scholar, Tocqueville’s valuation of the centrality of associations in both the moral and the political life of the American democratic social state. However, as another scholar has recently noted, similarly underappreciated is the complexity of Tocqueville’s account of association, despite its familiarity to many contemporary readers in both political science and political philosophy. Clarifying distinct moral and religious and political modes and manifestations of intérêt bien entendu brings into sharper focus Tocqueville's understanding of not just the spillover between the spheres of civil society and politics, in Joshua Mitchell’s words, but also the permeability of those two domains. This presents both opportunities and challenges for contemporary liberal theories and allows for reflection on the distance between Tocqueville’s America – and Tocqueville’s normative account of democracy – and our own.

Author

• Sarah Helene Gustafson, Catholic University